Amidst reports of exploding heads, some great blog posts are appearing describing the THATCamp Canberra experience. Feel free to add details below:

• How to become an expert in technology tools for the humanities
• Takeaways from THATCamp Canberra, 2011

Hi Everyone,

I have created a Google doc with (my) takeaways from the Digital Culture Public Sphere session. I know that Pia Waugh (Convener of the Public Sphere) wants to use and incorporate this into her documentation as soon as possible, so it would be great if you could make any additions/changes in the next day or so.

I hope I’ve been able to capture and represent most of the major points (thanks to Yvonne for her excellent note taking), although obviously add anything I didn’t get. It would also be ideal if anyone had further case studies or precedent to add from here.

Thanks,

Suse

Those of us who were still there after the end of the final session posed for a picture:

Thanks, people. Until next time…

I am interested in how people are managing their digital image collections, including working with RAW images.

What cataloging, metadata and annotation tools are people using, either offline or online?

How do we analyse our image collections and what tools are there to help with this?

UPDATE: Thanks Anna Gerber for offering to hold our hands on this one

I learn better by doing than listening. After attending the bootcamp sessions today, lots of us understand theoretically how the tools work.

Can some kind person with more coding experience run a session where participants make their own something using the tools we learned about today?

I would like to create a little webpage (probably as a post on my WordPress site ? ) where I could embed a widget that is querying the NLA People and Organisations set. (For example something that pulls in the entry for Tim Winton then fetches the DBpedia info about him and displays it).  Maybe another widget-y thing that produces an interesting something using Tim’s Trove Tools? My idea is that we focus on how the queries are built and pulling in and matching datasets .

We could use something similar to the Netvibes Ecosystem where you can easily make widgets where they do the “wrapper” (graphics and embed code) and you get to focus on just making a query.  I am sure there is something even better.

Vague, but I am sure other people can develop and build on this.

Kathryn Greenhill suggests a session where we create some presentations, mining from sources/tools shown at Bootcamp sessions. Sounds good!

Data storage and retrieval technologies give us unprecedented access to volumes of data that are impractical to analyse manually. The quantity of data can be extreme:  a collection of just one month of the worlds online media and social media contains some 386 million posts, articles etc. – about 3TB of text data! Even more modest collections are often far too large to read in their entirety.

This has lead to many techniques and advances in automated text analysis. I would like to propose a session in which those who use or wish to use automated text analysis techniques come together to exchange notes, discuss effective approaches, identify stumbling blocks and potential sources of error etc…

I myself come from a machine learning background and have only very recently began work in a humanities context. What I can offer is some more technical knowledge of what can be done, such as algorithms to detect sentiment or discussion topics running through a corpus. What I hope to gain is an understanding of how these techniques, or ones like them, are and can be used in the Humanities.

Building on the Trove bootcamp sessions, I’d be interested in a discussion about the possibilities and challenges the NLA’s Trove repository for large-scale analysis (and associated issues: ‘hacking’, institutional connections, history from afar). In relation to this, but more broadly, I’d like to consider the implications of using data as the basis for theorising about the past and culture – especially data that, as in Trove, are mutable and often unreliable.

I’d be interested in any sessions on electronic editions, particularly sessions that discuss the tools and platforms that can support electronic editions for researchers with limited technical experience. Can Omeka be used for such projects? What other tools and resources are available? What are the limits of such platforms for complicated textual histories? How can print editions and electronic editions work together?

At AustLit, we often talk about enhancing AustLit data in order to visualise and analyse the cultural networks that influence the composition, publication and reception of literary works. Such analysis inevitably extends beyond literary works to other cultural products, particularly when writers contribute to several forms (eg fiction in serial and book forms, drama, radioplays, screenplays etc.). It also extends to other art forms when visual artists and literary artists commune socially, artistically or professionally.

We’ve been experimenting with LORE to see how relationships can be defined and visualised with the tools we have at hand. But discussion with anyone who is pursuing similar research questions or who has experience with software such as Cytoscape would be very valuable. I’d like to participate in such a session if anyone else in interested in joining me.