Welcome to the second installment of a monthly feature in which I
explore how open source software and the open source way are used in the
digital humanities. Every month I will take a look at open source tools you can
use in your digital humanities research as well as at humanities research
projects that are using open source tools today. I will also cover news about
transparency and open exchange as well as how the other principles of the open
source way being applied to the humanities.
Let's start with an explanation of the digital humanities. The
digital humanities is where traditional humanities scholarship—or, the academic
study of arts, language, history, and the like—meets the digital age. By using
technology in new and innovative ways, digital humanities scholars can create
research projects that explore topics in ways that were not possible (or were
extremely laborious undertakings) before computers.
Text/data mining, visualization, information retrieval, and
digital publishing are some of the key features of digital humanities research.
With computers, it is possible to analyze text, discover patterns, and
visualize data with relative ease. For example, digital humanities projects can
make reading and analysis a collaborative undertaking, like what the Infinite Ulysses project has done with James Joyce's
novel Ulysses.
In March, several interesting new software releases and tutorials
came out. I have highlighted the most interesting of them below. Perhaps one
will inspire you in your own digital humanities research or help you learn
about this interesting field of scholarly research.
4
new tools and tutorials
Use
Twine 2.0 to tell interactive stories
On The Chronicle of Higher Education's ProfHacker blog, Anastasia Salter shares how Twine 2.0 can be used in education. Salter introduces
readers to this
beginner-friendly, open source tool for creating interactive, branching
stories. Twine is easy enough for beginners, making it great for K-12
classrooms, but it is also powerful enough to be used to create interactive,
online lessons.
Using Twine, a historical or literary narrative can easily be
transformed into an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story. Readers could
learn by taking an active part in the narrative and making choices that impact
their experience. Every branching choice could lead readers down a different
path, allowing them to experience a different story and learn new details with
each play-through.
Twine runs in a web browser, so check out the online version or download it and
run your own copy locally.
New
release of Omeka improves accessibility and usability
Omeka is
a powerful content management system specifically designed for creating
scholarly collections of textual, audio, and visual resources. The newest
version, Omeka 2.3, came out on March 10. This latest version has several new
features, but some of the major enhancements are in the areas of
accessibility and usability. Omeka is already easy to use, but the new
enhancements will make for a better workflow.
If you have never used or heard of Omeka, check out the Omeka showcase to see projects built using Omeka, or
try the Omeka Sandbox for a sample installation. If you like
what you see, you can download Omeka and
a large number of add-ons from the Omeka website. If you do not
want to host your own installation, Omeka.net—a hosted version with free and paid
payment plans—is an alternative.
Create
interactive editions of visual materials with Neatline
The Scholars' Lab at
the University of Virginia Library released an update for Neatline,
an Omeka plugin "for creating interactive editions of visual
materials." With Neatline a scholar can create an interactive exhibit
built around a map, a painting, a scanned page of text, or similiar items. In
addition to the base Neatline plugin, there are a few
extentions—NeatlineText, NeatlineSimile, and NeatlineWaypoints—which
provide even more advanced features.
Neatline creates beautiful interactive exhibits without requiring
too much technical knowledge. Explore the Neatline demos to
see many excellent examples of what can be accomplished with Neatline and
Omeka.
Design
SVG patterns for data visualization with Textures.js
When visualizing data, it is important to make sure that the
visualization is both understandable and visually appealing. One excellent way
to do this is to use Textures.js—a new
JavaScript library for creating SVG textures. Textures.js can create textures
in different colors and patterns so that the data being visualized is clear and
understandable.
Textures.js is built on top of the powerful D3.js library,
a JavaScript library for "manipulating documents based on data."
D3.js has a GitHub wiki that includes a large number of examplesof
how it can be used to visualize data. You can also find a large number of
tutorials and books on the wiki's tutorial page.
Check out D3.js and Textures.js the next time you want to create a quality
visualization, and I think you will be happy with the results.
Source | http://opensource.com/
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