1. Thematic Research Collections
Prof. Alvarado
MDST 3703/7703
18 September 2012

2. [XKCD]

3. Business
• Anyone having problems connecting to their
home directory?
– Come see me if so
• Quiz 1 will be posted on Collab today

4. Comments
• “It is much more than just the technology, it’s
about the conscious decision made by real live
humans who design the technology.”
• “I think in order for digital representation to be
able to achieve a maximum functionality there
needs to be a move away from simply
recreating a card catalog online with
attachments to the documents.”
• “… nothing can ever truly replace the
experience of being in a physical library itself.”

5. Comments
• “As complex as the hypertext may
become, it must remain user friendly to be
of any value.”
• “… the first thing that sticks out is the
diversity of structure of the collections.”
• “… there [are] still some drawbacks to
digital collections, for example, the lack of a
great system for annotating documents.”

6. Comments
• “There is something to be said for walking
into a library and pouring over
pages, without interruption from
technology, for hours and having to forge
the way for your own trail of connections
from one document to the next, much like
the work hyperlinks do for us.”

7. Review
• So far, we have looked at two big ideas
– The idea of hypertext, and its realization in
HTML
– The concept of text markup, and its realization
in SGML, XML, TEI, and HTML
• Remember:
– TEI and HTML are specific markup languages
– SGML and XML are specifications for defining
markup languages
– XML lets you create the languages on the fly

8. What mechanism do SGML and
XML provide to define specific
markup languages?

9. DTDs
Document Type Definitions
More generally, these are called
schema

10. <!DOCTYPE NEWSPAPER [
<!ELEMENT NEWSPAPER (ARTICLE+)>
<!ELEMENT ARTICLE
(HEADLINE,BYLINE,LEAD,BODY,NOTES)>
<!ELEMENT HEADLINE (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT BYLINE (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT LEAD (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT BODY (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT NOTES (#PCDATA)>
[DTD]
<!ATTLIST ARTICLE AUTHOR CDATA #REQUIRED>
<!ATTLIST ARTICLE EDITOR CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST ARTICLE DATE CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST ARTICLE EDITION CDATA #IMPLIED>
]>
For example, a DTD for a newspaper
No need to remember the syntax for DTDs, just their purpose

11. DTDs can also be used to define
genres, such as
essays, poems, novels
The distinction between document
type and genre is fuzzy

12. Genres in the Humanities
• Primary sources
– Tax records, letters, diaries, paintings, oral
history, manuscripts, first editions, etc.
• Secondary sources
– Essays and “monographs” (books)
• Tertiary sources
– Encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.

13. Primary Sources

14. Essays and books are the staple
secondary sources
But these can become primary sources too …

15. Tertiary Sources

16. Is this a
genre?

17. [The Rotunda]

18. [Library of Babel]

20. Is this a portable
library or a book?
[Talmud]

21. Are libraries and books
distinct?

22. If not, are there schema for
libraries?

23. What about this?
• Trivium
– Grammar
– Rhetoric
– Logic
• Quadrivium
– Arithmetic
– Geometry
– Music
– Astronomy
Does this not form the plan of a library?

24. [Berners-Lee’s diagram]

25. Hypertext blurs the distinction
between documents and libraries
Instead, we have a docuverse
(or a vast intertext)
The library is one big document
Every document is a little library

26. Overview
• Today, we consider a set of projects that are
built on this premise
– Either as attempts to fulfill it or as reactions to it
(because hypertext can be scary)
• We look at specific examples of “digital
collections”
• Within the framework defined by Palmer and
McGann
– The TRC as an emerging genre of digital
scholarship

27. What is a thematic research
collection?
How is it different from a
traditional library?

28. TRCs overcome the problem that
libraries scatter content
They consolidate content

29. Features of the TRC
• electronic
• heterogeneous datatypes
• extensive but thematically coherent
• structured but open-ended
• research oriented
• authored or multi-authored
• interdisciplinary
• collections of digital primary resources

30. Critical Convergences and Effects
• They coincide with the move away from
theory and toward historicism
• They produce a renewed focus on the
materiality of text
• They achieve “contextual mass”
• They force collaboration and inter-
disciplinarity
• They become laboratories for research

31. McGann on Secondary Sources
• “[W]hen scholarly journals publish their work
online … in electronic form, they open their
materials to integration within a scholarly
network whose range and power outstrip
current paper-based publication. Furthermore,
electronic publishing permits scholars to
present their work in far greater depth and
diversity. Essays can present all their
documentary evidence as part of their
argument (in notes and appendices, or in
electronic links to the original documents).”

32. Contextual Mass
Instead of building large collections, “digital
research libraries should be systematically
collecting sources and developing tools that
work together to provide a supportive context
for the research process.”

33. Let’s look at some examples
and see how they stack up

34. 6 Questions
1. What’s in the collection?
2. How is the collection organized? Any guiding
metaphors?
3. How easy is it to find things?
4. How effective is it achieving contextual mass?
How connected are things?
5. What tools does it provide for researchers?
6. How much does it involve users in a
community?

35. Backstory: IATH
• Institute for Advanced Technology in the
Humanities
– http://www.iath.virginia.edu
• Established in 1992
• Funded by IBM
• VOTS and RA two founding projects
• VOTS was a demonstration project for IBM;
pitched as "as a research library in a
box, enabling students at places without a large
archive to do the same kind of research as a
professional historian."

36. VOTS Intro
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy
rod and thy staff they comfort me.
(from Psalm 23)

37. What’s in the site?
• Focused on primary source documents
relating to the US Civil War
– Thousands of primary source documents
– Newpapers, letters, diaries, maps, images, go
v docs
– Augusta Co, VA and Frankln Co, PA
– 1859 to 1870

38. How is it organized?

39. The Library Metaphor

40. How easy is it to find things?

41. Quick exercise: find out if the
Confederate Army ever made it to
Carlisle, PA

42. How connected are the parts?
Does it achieve contextual mass?

43. Not very connected
Items have few connectors to
other items
(e.g. no links in the metadata)

44. What tools does it provide to
researchers?

45. Tools
• Search and browse
• Timelines
• Animations
– http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/VoS/MAPDEMO/T
heater/TheTheater.html
• Resources for using the site

46. Does the site seek to build a
community?

47. Not internally

48. The Rosetti Archive

49. What’s in site?
• Focused on the works the Pre-Raphaelite
poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828–1882)
– Paintings, poems, letters, etc.
• Also some secondary source material
– Art history and literary criticism

50. How is the collection
organized?

51. The site is organized as a
traditional database
Search, List, Display

52. How easy is it to find things?

53. Getting to Bocca Baciata
• Find the painting, Bocca Baciata
• Search [image records]
• What do you do when you get there?
• How is the site structured?

54. Bocca Baciata 1859

55. Exercise: Find a painting of
Bocca Baciata

56. Easy, if you know what you are
looking for

57. How connected are the parts?
Does it achieve contextual mass?

58. Some connectivity among
parts, but not much.

59. What tools does it provide to
researchers?

60. Does the site seek to build a
community?

61. The Tibetan Himalayan Digital
Archive

62. What’s in the site?
• A vast collection of Tibetan documents
• An interactive collection of maps
• Videos and images

63. How is the collection
organized?

64. Cross between a database and a
library
Hybrid

65. How easy is it to find things?

66. Exercise: Find the city of Lhasa

67. How connected are the parts?
Does it achieve contextual mass?

68. The site is highly connected
It can be confusing knowing where
you are

69. What tools does it provide to
researchers?

70. Tools
• Interactive map
• Place dictionary
• Thesaurus
• Etc.

71. Does the site seek to build a
community?

72. Yes

73. Other IATH Examples
• The Blake Project
– http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/
• The World of Dante
– http://www.worldofdante.org/
• The Chaco Archive
– http://www.chacoarchive.org/cra/

74. Other Examples
• Princeton Dante Project
– http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html
• Perseus Project
– http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
• A House Divided
– http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/