Topic > Digital Curation and Innovation in Digital Humanities

IndexIntroductionBodyConclusionReferencesIntroduction“A Greatly Unexplored Area”: Digital Curation and Innovation in Digital Humanities' is an article written by Alex H. Poole. Functioning as an assistant professor at Drexel University (specifically in the College of Computing and Informatics), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Poole has written many articles regarding the issues of data management and curation, data storage, digital humanities, and their interdisciplinary interactions. . The author has written numerous articles not only on this particular topic but also on other problems that arise when working with data in the modern world, where every person unintentionally creates gigabytes of data every day. According to the sixth edition of DOMO, an average of 2.5 exabytes of information is generated every day. For scaling references, an exabyte is known as being made up of 1 billion gigabytes. And the number of data generated is constantly growing. Alex H. Poole has recently written more than ten articles on data management and related issues. In this essay I will refer to some of them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “A Very Unexplored Area” is based on the results of a survey of Digital Humanities start-up grant projects. The purpose of this survey was to first clarify which data sources were used, reused, creating participants and what challenges they faced. Secondly, the investigation aims to identify what challenges these projects faced. As the projects were mainly made up of Tiers 1 and 2, their funding differed greatly for this reason, it was also noted how the data created and used differed from each other. Where Level 1 projects were found to produce mostly theoretical data (such as reports and documents), Level 2 projects were found to be much more precise in nature, including prototypes and demonstration projects. Since both reports and prototypes have been mentioned as data sources, it would be wise to understand what exactly data is in these contexts. Is the data considered an article? Perhaps a piece of computer code, or the timestamp of a Facebook message sent, or even the prototypes themselves? Searching the Internet for a definition of “data” will yield a multitude of results, some of which describe data as “information in raw or unorganized forms (such as alphabets, numbers, or symbols).” The Office of Digital Humanities, where LDS projects took place, describes data as “generated or collected project materials such as citations, code, algorithms, digital tools, documentation, databases, geospatial coordinates, reports, and articles.” In response to the previously posed questions, it can be stated that all previously stated forms of data do indeed qualify as data, as far as the definitions provided are concerned. From my perspective, all entities in the world are composed of elements that can be seen as data, regardless of our ability to understand the multiple forms of data we may encounter. Body Before proceeding to discuss the questions raised by the author, it is essential to understand what is meant by data curation, digital humanities and the correlation between these two terms. Digital curation can be described as a set of activities aimed at archiving and managing data throughout its life cycle. There are several data lifecycle models, but none that are unified and meet the needs of any institution. For example, I2S2 is usedmainly for research purposes, while the IT industry uses the capability maturity model. Only the DCC is considered to be somewhat suitable for almost all disciplines, although some adjustments are necessary for optimal functionality.technologies and humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as reflection on their application. DH can be defined as a new way of completing scholarship that involves collaborative, interdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing.” Humanities include disciplines such as art, music, history, etc. A few years ago, people could hardly believe that it would be possible to draw using a device such as a computer, however today people are able to use Photoshop, Paint Tool SAI, ArtRage and many other similar programs and software, to make sketches or entire works of art. Digitalization has touched every aspect of our lives, including those we could barely imagine. The digitalization of the humanities, on the one hand, has increased efficiency. On the other hand, digital humanities have also caused some problems and issues that require solution. For example, even if one is an experienced or renowned artist, he or she will be required to relearn how to draw, using non-traditional tools. Digital humanities, like any other discipline, uses and generates an enormous amount of data. Using digital tools can make the work of storing and managing data easier than manual storage, but it also causes other new challenges that were not common before. These will be discussed further in this essay. The article addresses the issue of data management at all stages: creation, use, storage and reuse. The context of the article is based on 45 interviewed participants and their responses to survey questions. As the results showed, first, every project created some form of data. The data created has been found to range from simple presentations and reports to software and prototypes. Second, every project reused someone's data, whether it was taken from web-based sources or paper-based. Third, most participants stored data institutionally, some using cloud storage and/or web-based platforms such as YouTube. Repeated use of created data is always in question. Even though participants said they would reuse the data, verifying such a thing poses many challenges and difficulties in obtaining evidence. Speaking of real life experiences, I'm currently working on a programming project, while using websites like StackOverflow.com to gather ideas or see how people have solved problems I face, as well as to see if there are others who have encountered similar problems. I create new data by writing code and documenting the process. Personally I keep the code on GitLab. First of all I find web based storage to be a better alternative in terms of storing my data, as the probability of losing data from the internet itself is quite low. Conversely, though, if my laptop were to fail or if there was a hard drive failure, I wouldn't be able to restore what I was working on. Second, because I work in a team, other people need to have easy access to the code I've written. Upon completion of the project, however, the data created by me and the team could be used by others, for example if the code is open source or by members of our own team if we intend to update it in some way. Alex H. Poole also identifiessome challenges that emerged during the investigation. One of these was caused by the technologies used by the participants. While it wasn't the most common challenge and only a few participants tackled it, technology at the interface between two disciplines plays a critical role. First, as mentioned in the article “Convergence of Digital Humanities and Digital Libraries” by Ying Zhang, Shu Liu, and Emilee Mathews, “Technologies used in DH create barriers to new scholars learning and project sustainability” . Not all technologies are intuitive. Sometimes you need to learn how to use a certain software yourself or attend courses/workshops. Secondly, Digital Humanities institutions are distributed all over the world. Digital humanists in Russia and New Zealand, for example, may use different technologies and methodologies for data management. In the future, it may cause problems due to the combination of data from these two countries. The appearance of misleading data or even data breaches will be the consequence of such behavior. Another problem Alex H. Poole addresses is data usage. Participants in this survey found the data issue to be the most challenging part. Understanding data, including translation issues and data complexity, data cleanliness, and file format are the most common issues. These issues go hand in hand with data curation. In essence, these problems were caused by a lack of proper data management and curation. According to the article by Alex H. Poole and Deborah A. Garwood "Interdisciplinary Scholarly Collaboration in Data-Intensive, Publicly-Funded, International Digital Humanities Work", in which they discuss the issue of communication and collaboration in more depth than in ' “A very unexplored area”: digital curation and innovation in the digital humanities'; it is a vital part of digital curation in the digital humanities. First, this problem is extremely common for interdisciplinary research, when people with different backgrounds, using different tools and frameworks, work on the same project. Secondly, duplication of information occurs. For example, reinventing the wheel happens more often than we might assume. People spend time inventing something new without knowing that it was invented years earlier, by others in distant lands, in different cultural contexts. However, speaking of digital humanities, digital curation is not the only problem that scholars face. Digital humanities is known to be a fairly new discipline and has been in its infancy for less than 100 years. Unlike other fundamental disciplines, not only is there a lack of a real curriculum, but there is no curriculum at all. This problem represents an obstacle for Digital Humanities today. The Digital Humanities are in such a state of desperation because of this problem, that “even a bad textbook would be better than a missing textbook.” Furthermore, according to “Ten Challenges for Digital Humanities and the Way Forward” published in the International Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science, the authors mention the lack of adequately digitized big data. Another key challenge for digital humanities is financial support, which is sometimes underestimated. As a result, digital humanities research may not be accurate due to the use of cheaper technologies and resources. Conclusion Data curation is definitely a very important part of any research conducted, especially in digital humanities projects. Also the most promising and innovative research in the field of disciplines &-09-2014-0116