Scholarly and Research Communication (E-Journal)
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Firing on all cylinders: Progress and Transition in INKE’s Year 2
Full text linkUse of project teams is increasing; however little is known about collaboration as it actually occurs over project’s life. This paper explores nature of collaboration within Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) after two years of funded research. The second year is characterized by forward research progress, positive relationships, and transitions and challenges related to human resources, team restructuring and partner institutional policies. INKE is drawing upon structures and processes, including in-person meetings, multiple communication channels and evolving governance documents to support the collaboration. The paper concludes with recommendations for similar long term, large-scale project team
The Circuits of Reading the Digital: Some Models
Full text linkIn theorizing the digital text, I will take a two-pronged approach: a) what aspects of reading cannot be accounted for by the types of digital textual analysis done so far in the digital humanities, and b) how can technology (be “used” to) account for such possibilities? To answer the second question, we need to stop seeing the computer as a “means” (i.e. we “use” a computer) and to start thinking about the computer itself as a part of the literary process. This is perhaps to blur the distinction between e-literature and media studies on the one hand, and digital humanities on the other. However, it presupposes that technology is not something to be feared (as “tampering” with the text), but that it is rather something intrinsic, to be conceived on its own terms. Indeed, the computer can enhance the literary experience and highlight aspects of the text that were not noticed before, and vice versa, in a sort of feedback circuit, bringing with it hermeneutic questions that hitherto have been only indirect. What might we discover from exploring the symbiotic relationship between the text and the machine and about the minds and bodies that encounter these? Such encounters occur not only through visualization, but through sonorization and through the body. Such hybrid encounters require a broader view of language than that provided by information theory, which has apparently dominated digital literary studies. I will use my own digital humanities project on the visualization of French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s works (http://mallarme.uvic.ca) to explore models of reading the digital
Digital Archiving Printing Blocks and Establishing Woodblock Bibliography
Full text linkA great number of printed books were published in Japan after the establishment of commercial publishing in the Edo period (1603–1867). Even though it is well-known that most of the books were printed by means of woodblocks, these printing blocks have not been studied in detail because they are difficult to access and physically handle. However, digitization of the printing blocks revolutionizes research and also facilitates information sharing. This article will present a new method of digitizing printing blocks and archiving them in an online image database. The article will also draw attention to what kind of information we can retrieve from the blocks, especially circumstances of publishing that conventional bibliographies based on the printed books cannot reveal
“Reconfiguring Narrative” Using Digital Tools
Full text linkThis article describes the use of digital technology and text markup in the production and dissemination of scholarship. Traditional narrative, as static, linked arguments and paragraphs reflect the constraints, limitations but important use of print technology. “Reconfiguring the narrative” to reflect the capabilities of online scholarship enables readers and writers to engage in more thorough explorations of the text, theory, concepts, and interpretations (Landow, 2006)
Responding to Change and Transition in INKE’s Year 3
Full text linkUse of project teams is increasing, however little is known about collaboration as it actually occurs over the life of projects. This paper explores the nature of collaboration within Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) after three years of funded research. The third year is characterized by change and transition with new team members, partners, and sub-research areas. INKE continues to draw upon structures and processes, including team building activities, in-person meetings, multiple communication channels, evolving governance documents to support the collaboration, and incorporating collaboration-ready individuals. The paper concludes with recommendations for similar long term, large-scale project teams
Children of the (Touch)screen: A Genesis
Full text linkThis article describes experiments in teaching Spanish and Spanish literature using technology, which began in 1993 and have continued until today. The article describes the exciting genesis of a layperson who was lucky enough to dare, try, assess, and renew her teaching along the way through the use of technology via incipient uses of the Internet. 
Cracking the Agrippa Code: Cryptography for the Digital Humanities
Full text linkIn The Laws of Cool, Liu (2004) argues that the art book Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (Gibson, 1992) is an exhibit of destructive creativity. According to Liu, the book’s great auto-da-fé  occurs when the software program, which is included with the book, displays an electronic poem, and then self-encrypts, a mechanism that destroys or “permanently disappears” (p. 340) the poem. This article argues that Liu’s understanding of encryption is incorrect. Encryption is not destruction because enciphered text is necessarily subject to cryptanalysis (“cracking”). Relatedly, this article demonstrates that Kirschenbaum’s thesis of “no round trip” is mistaken (Kirschenbaum, Reside, & Liu, 2008). Agrippa was fully cracked and reverse-engineered in the course of an online, global cryptanalysis challenge. This article describes the forensic details of Agrippa and its cryptographic routines
The Face of Interface: Studying Interface to the Scholarly Corpus and Edition
Full text linkHow can we study the interface of scholarly knowledge across print and digital epochs? To ask about interface across epochs is to take a concept that makes sense in the digital world and anachronistically bring it to bear on print in a way that could confuse both. Nonetheless we need to develop ways of thinking about the relationship between design, knowledge and audience across media, and to do that we find ourselves remediating concepts like interface. This paper takes the category of interface and adapts it to studying the design of the corpus and edition
Move Over: Learning to Read (and Write) with Novel Technology
Full text linkThis article examines how novel technology affects readers’ understanding of digital objects. It begins by examining some recent scandals involving digitally manipulated photographs and argues that some of the uproar stems from the novelty of the techniques used in the manipulation, rather than the manipulation itself. It then explores some of the challenges in using novel technology to mediate the representation of historical objects in scholarly form. The article concludes with some thoughts on early experiments with the objects of the Visionary Cross project, a digital edition of a collection of objects belonging to the Anglo-Saxon “Visionary Cross” tradition
The Limits of Modelling: Data Culture and the Humanities
Full text linkWillard McCarty’s Humanities Computing (2005) opens a dialogue about modelling in the humanities. I extend that conversation by complicating his version of the model and by looking at the limits of modelling to find out what it is not. I suggest that, unlike scientific models, humanist models cannot be separated from the mode of Humanism that produced them. I argue that databases are not always models and that the boundary between model and database helps us to understand the advantages and limitations of both. A renewed appreciation of database culture can help to move humanist scholarship in new directions