Books Matter: Circulating Digital and Printed Texts (3/27/15)

Please join the Ph.D. Program in English, GC Digital Initiatives, and CUNY DHI on Friday, March 27 2015 from 4pm-6pm (Room 4406, Graduate Center, CUNY):

Books Matter: Circulating Digital and Printed Texts

“Bookshelf spectrum 2.0 – mission accomplished!” by flickr user Pietro Bellini

What is the place of the printed book in an era of digital reading devices and web-based publishing, and how have digital workflows changed academic publishing? How are digital texts circulating in new and varied forms? This roundtable will explore how the growth of digital media has altered the material form of the printed book and posed new challenges for institutions, such as libraries, that are focused on providing access to them.

Jeffrey Binder, Graduate Center, CUNY
Erin Glass, Graduate Center, CUNY
Matthew K. Gold, Graduate Center, CUNY
Steve Jones, Loyola University Chicago
Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia
Marion Thain, New York University

Reception to follow

Miriam Posner, “How Did They Make That? Reverse Engineering Digital Projects” – 3/27/14

Please join CUNY DHI for a special presentation on making DH projects by Miriam Posner, Digital Humanities program coordinator and a member of the core DH faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. The event, which is co-sponsored by the Fordham Fordham Digital Humanities Working Group, will take place on March 27 from 6:30-8:30pm in room C202. Please register here.

“How Did They Make That? Reverse Engineering Digital Projects”
The catch-all term “digital project” can refer to a daunting array of technologies and methods. For a newcomer (or even an experienced practitioner), it can be hard to know where to start. In this presentation, we’ll examine a range of digital projects to get a handle on what’s out there. Then I’ll share some simple principles for figuring out the sources and technologies that constitute a “project.” You can use these principles to model your own project, or just to understand and evaluate someone else’s.

Miriam Posner is the Digital Humanities program coordinator and a member of the core DH faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches in the DH program, advises undergraduate and graduate students, and ensures the smooth development of this new interdisciplinary program. Prior to joining UCLA, Posner was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Emory University Library’s Digital Scholarship Commons. The author of a number of pieces on digital humanities, Posner also writes on the history of technology, particularly the history of medical imaging. Her book, Depth Perception, on medical filmmaking, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, “Track Changes: The Literary History of Word Processing” – Oct 15, 4:15-5:30pm – Room C204/C205

Please join us for a talk by Matthew Kirschenbaum on his forthcoming book project, which was recently profiled in the New York Times: The Muses of Insert, Delete and Execute. Matt’s visit is made possible by the Office of the Provost at the Graduate Center and is being made in connection with the Digital Praxis Seminar.

This event will take place on Tuesday, October 15, 2013 from 4:15-5:30pm at the Graduate Center, CUNY in C204/205 (Concourse Level). Please join us!

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Track Changes: The Literary History of Word Processing

Mark Twain famously prepared the manuscript for Life on the Mississippi (1883) with his new Remington typewriter, the first literary text ever submitted to a publisher in typewritten form. Today we recognize that the typewriter changed the history and material culture of authorship. But when did writers begin using word processors? Who were the early adopters? How did the technology change their relationship to their craft? Was the computer just a better typewriter—faster, easier to use—or was it something more? And what will be the fate of today’s “manuscripts,” which take the form of electronic files in folders on hard drives, instead of papers in hard copy? This talk, drawn from the speaker’s forthcoming book on the subject, will provide some answers, and also address questions related to the challenges of conducting research at the intersection of literary and technological history.

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Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland and Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH, an applied thinktank for the digital humanities). He is also an affiliated faculty member with the College of Information Studies at Maryland, and a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, was published by the MIT Press in 2008 and won the 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS), the 2009 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), and the 16^th annual Prize for a First Book from the Modern Language Association (MLA). In 2010 he co-authored (with Richard Ovenden and Gabriela Redwine) Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, a report published by the Council on Library and Information Resources and recognized with a commendation from the Society of American Archivists.Kirschenbaum speaks and writes often on topics in the digital humanities and new media; his work has received coverage in the Atlantic, Slate, New York Times, The Guardian, National Public Radio, Wired, Boing Boing, Slashdot, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. His current book project is entitled Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, and is under contract to Harvard University Press. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. See http://www.mkirschenbaum.net for more.

David Mimno on Topic Modeling with MALLET, September 30th, 4:15-5:30pm

Please join CUNY DHI and the Digital Praxis Seminar for a talk by David Mimno on Topic Modeling with MALLET.

This event will take place on Monday, September 30, 2013 from 4:15-5:30pm at the Graduate Center, CUNY in the 9th floor Skylight Room.

Details are below – we look forward to seeing you there! Please RSVP here.

In the last ten years we have seen the creation of massive digital text collections, from Twitter feeds to million-book libraries, all in dozens of languages. At the same time, researchers have developed text mining methods that go beyond simple word frequency analysis to uncover thematic patterns. When we combine big data with powerful algorithms, we enable analysts in many different fields to enhance qualitative perspectives with quantitative measurements. But these methods are only useful if we can apply them at massive scale and distinguish consistent patterns from random variations. In this talk I will describe my work building reliable topic modeling methodologies for humanists, social scientists and science policy officers.

Bio:

David Mimno is an assistant professor in the Information Science department at Cornell University. His research is on developing machine learning models and algorithms, with a particular focus on applications in Humanities and Social Science. He received his BA in Classics and Computer Science from Swarthmore College and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was a CRA Computing Innovation fellow at Princeton University. Before graduate school, he served as Head Programmer at the Perseus Project, a digital library for cultural heritage materials, at Tufts University. Mimno is currently chief architect for the MALLET machine learning toolkit.

CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative Fall 2013 Semester Schedule

We’re delighted to present our Fall 2013 CUNY DHI Speaker Series Schedule, which this year includes events associated with the Graduate Center’s Digital Praxis Seminar. All talks take place at The Graduate Center, CUNY, located on 5th Avenue between 34th and 35th. Please join us!

source: phototrails.net

Lev Manovich on Data Visualization
Mon 9/23, 4:15pm-5:30pm, C415A: Lev Manovich (Graduate Center, CUNY) on Data Visualization

David Mimno on Topic Modeling
Mon 9/30, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Skylight Room 9100: David Mimno (Cornell) on Topic Modeling with MALLET

Doug Eyman & Collin Brooke on DH and Rhetoric
Tues 10/8, 6:30pm-8:30pm, Room C415A: Doug Eyman (George Mason University) on “Digital Rhetoric and the Infrastructure of DH” and Collin Brooke (Syracuse University) on “Too Big to Scale? Culturomics and Crypto-Rhetorics”

Matthew Kirschenbaum on Word Processing
Tues 10/15, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Room C204/C205: Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland) on “Track Changes: The Literary History of Word Processing”

William Turkel on Physical Computing and the Humanities
Mon 10/21, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Skylight Room (9100): William Turkel (Western University Ontario) on humanistic fabrication and physical computing

Larry Smarr on Digital Culture and the Future Internet
Wed 10/30, 6:00pm-8:00pm, Room C205: Larry Smarr (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)) on “Digital Culture and the Future Internet”

Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Scholarly Communication
Mon 11/4, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Room 9206/9207: Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Modern Language Association) on scholarly communication

Ray Siemens on the Digital Social Edition
Mon 11/13, 4:15p-5:30p Rooms C204/C205: Ray Siemens (University of Victoria) on the Digital Social Edition

Katina Rogers on Alt-Academic Careers
Mon 11/18, 4:15p-5:30p Rooms 9204/9205: Katina Rogers (Modern Language Association) on Alt-Academic Careers

Tom Scheinfeldt on DH Project Management
Mon 11/25, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Skylight Room (9100): Tom Scheinfeldt (University of Connecticut) on managing DH projects

Simone Browne on Race, Surveillance, and Technology
Mon 12/9, 4:15pm-5:30pm, Skylight Room (9100): Simone Browne (University of Texas at Austin) on race, surveillance, and technology

December 12: DH and Graduate Education–Bethany Nowviskie (UVa) on “The Praxis Program at the Scholars’ Lab”

Please join us for our final meeting of the semester on Monday, December 12, 6:30-8:30pm at the CUNY Graduate Center (Room 9204) for an exciting session on Digital Humanities and Graduate Education:

Bethany Nowviskie, “The Praxis Program at the Scholars’ Lab.”

Praxis is a radical re-imagining of the methodological training offered to graduate students in the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia Library. Alongside our well-established program for Grad Fellows in Digital Humanities, six new students are apprenticing with us to design and build Prism, a tool for “crowd-sourced” textual analysis, visualization, and  interpretation.  Our goal — as we test a hands-on curriculum live and in public — is to spark conversation about methodological training in the humanities. How should we prepare the next generation of knowledge workers for emerging faculty positions and alternative academic careers?

Readings/Links:

Bethany Nowviskie is director of digital research and scholarship at the University of Virginia Library Scholars’ Lab and associate director of the Scholarly Communication Institute. She is the editor of #Alt-Academy: Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars.

Ben Vershbow on “NYPL Labs: Hacking the Library” [video]

The CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative is happy to release video from our November 14, 2011 event on Digital Humanities in the Library with Ben Vershbow of the New York Public Library. Ben’s talk was titled “NYPL Labs: Hacking the Library.” Please read our original announcement for more details on the talk. We thank Ben for an excellent session and a lively Q&A!

November 14: DH in the Library – Ben Vershbow (NYPL) on “NYPL Labs: Hacking the Library” (apologies for the focus issues at the start of the video; it gets better!)

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32399999[/vimeo]

Q&A Session
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32400612[/vimeo]

Digital Humanities in the Classroom – Mark Sample and Shannon Mattern [video]

The CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative is pleased to release video from our October 18, 2011 event on Digital Humanities in the Classroom with Mark Sample and Shannon Mattern. Please read our original announcement for more details on their talks. We’re very grateful to them for sharing their work with us!

Mark Sample, “Building and Sharing When You’re Supposed to be Teaching”

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32382483[/vimeo]

Shannon Mattern, “Beyond the Seminar Paper: Setting New Standards for New Forms of Student Work”

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32385882[/vimeo]

Tags | classroom, pedagogy, teaching, video

November 14: DH in the Library–Ben Vershbow (NYPL) on “NYPL Labs: Hacking the Library”

Please join us on Monday, November 14, 6:30-8:30pm at the CUNY Graduate Center (Room C201) for an exciting session on DH in the Library:

Ben Vershbow (New York Public Library)

The digital humanities and libraries have a deeply intertwined history. DH centers frequently are allied with or physically housed in library infrastructure, and many early digital humanities projects were in essence digital librarianship: organizing information online, building accessible digital archives, preparing and encoding texts for the world wide web. To this day, libraries look to digital humanists for new theories and methodologies in areas as diverse as digital preservation, linked open data, and geospatial information.

The New York Public Library is something of an outlier in this history. A public research institution, not beholden to a faculty or student body, its user base is an entire city, and also a vast array of thinking people around the world. It is an incubator for books, technologies, businesses and works of art. Thousands of scholars, writers, artists, students, workers and job seekers use its reading rooms and free internet access to pursue vectors of thought and creation. Its digital collections (still a tiny fraction of overall holdings) are accessed through web browsers around the world. Yet only recently has NYPL begun to actively engage with the digital humanities community and to adapt some of its ideas and methods to the immense task of redefining the public library for the information age.

Since 2007, the Library has been actively modernizing its digital infrastructure: embracing open source software and agile development processes, laying the foundations for a trusted digital repository, and working blogging and social media into its service models. NYPL Labs is a recently formed unit that is charged with building on these advances through bold experimentation with new technologies, development of advanced interfaces and research tools, and deep collaboration with curators and the public. This talk will cover current and future projects of the Labs, and through the lens of these first efforts, ponder what an urban public research library might look like a few decades down the road.

Ben Vershbow is a New York-based digital humanities geek and theater artist. For four years, he was editorial director at the Institute for the Future of the Book, working with Bob Stein. Currently, he is manager of NYPL Labs, a digital innovation unit at The New York Public Library, and runs a theater collective, Group Theory.

Open Access Event: Open Access Scholarly Publishing as Thought and Action

Reposted from the <a href=”https://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/09/19/open-access-scholarly-publishing-as-thought-and-action/”>Open Access @ CUNY blog</a>:

Tags | openaccess, publishing