Intermediate Report: Fundamental Topics in Digital Humanities

1 Aim of the project

  • Support text based research in East-Asian Studies through a new electronic infrastructure
  • Implementation should support critical textual scholarship
  • Let the Researcher/User be in control, do not require central authority
  • Collect existing data and put them in a research environment to make best use of them

2 Schedule & output

  • April 2013 to March 2016
  • Sketching of methods, data format, infrastructure
  • Port existing tools to enable the research community to use it
  • Desired output:
    • Data and programs
    • A user community
    • A handbook with explanations of how to use the system
    • Researchers' testimony: reports on using the system for specific research projects

3 Background(1): Text

  • Most texts have a long history and come in many versions and editions
  • Over the centuries many commentaries have been written and emendations or annotations proposed
  • Scholars want to trace and evaluate these connections and discover new ones
  • No single publication/institution can solve this problem -> collaboration is needed

4 Background(2): Metadata

  • A key to understanding a text lies in the information (data) about the texts
  • Traditionally, this type of information has been collected in catalogs and commentaries
  • This information should be combined with the texts themselves to provide new insights
  • We want also tap into the long traditon of 目録学 which will provide fruitful insights

5 How can this be realized?

  • We do not yet have definite answers, this project is trying one way
  • We are experimenting with a new infrastructure, that can be used for a network of text repositories:
    • Server side: Kanseki repository (Gitlab)
    • Client side: Mandoku, Kanripo Website

6 Use case(1): Close reading

  • Reading/translating/annotating of a text
    • requires frequent lookup of words in the text database and dictionaries
    • collecting of annotations, references
    • writing of translation, analysis, study

7 Use case(2): Thematic study

  • topical reading in many different texts
    • requires creation of specific lists of texts of interest
    • keeping notes in relation to the texts
    • link from text location to notes
  • publish the results / research data

8 Use case(3): Browsing and searching

  • Researching of phrases and words in various contexts
    • Browser or Mandoku
    • Research notes are kept in Word or other programs

    -> What is needed to best support this?

  • Other use cases?

9 For casual browsing: Kanripo Website

  • http://www.kanripo.org
  • Very early stage of development
  • Searching and browsing of text and catalog
  • more to come:
    • what do we need?

10 For close reading: Mandoku

  • A specialized environment and interface to the repository
  • Quick lookup of phrases in the text database
  • reference dictionaries incorporated
  • preview available -> see separate document

11 Technical digression

  • Mandoku is based on Emacs and Org-Mode:
    • Why Emacs?
      • Is there a better tool for this purpose?
    • What is Org-Mode? (http://orgmode.org/)
      • An extension of Emacs for planning and organizing
      • Also used for research assistance and writing of academic papers, presentations etc.
      • Used also for note taking, blog articles etc.
  • Viable perspective? Other possibilities?

12 Technical details: Repository

  • The texts are kept in the repository under a version control system
  • This allows
    • to keep multiple corresponding versions of a text
    • to keep a record of what has been edited (by whom)
    • updating and collating of multiple copies in different locations

13 Gitlab

  • A clone of the popular <a href="www.github.com">Github<a> code sharing site
  • Set up at http://gl.kanripo.org
  • 8951 texts have been processed and set up in repositories
  • Provides some functionality for creating research groups, user interaction etc.
  • Editing on-site is possible, but awkward
  • Not specially suited for working with texts -> additional/other access point is needed

14 Available data

Date: 2014-09-27

Author: Christian Wittern

Created: 2014-09-27 Sat 12:49

Emacs 24.3.1 (Org mode 8.2.7b)

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