Digital Scholarship & Publishing Services

Before you can undertake computational text analysis, it's necessary to obtain a corpus of digitized texts and, in many instances, take steps to prepare them for further processing. This digital humanities workshop focuses on the technical and ethical dimensions of corpus development. We will explore:

• the risks, benefits, and implications of depending on optical character recognition (OCR) to transcribe text;
• best practices for preserving the integrity and usability of a corpus via file formatting, naming, and organization choices;
• the ethics of data cleaning and preparation;
• evaluating common sources for textual research data; and
• ways in which AI can (and can't) assist with these challenges.

Note: No previous experience with any of these topics is assumed, but this workshop includes hands-on exploration in small groups and requires active participation.

Note: This workshop is the first in a three-part series on minimal computing; other workshops are scheduled for 10/31 (Static, Low-Compute Publication) and 11/14 (Minimal Computing in Digital Humanities Scholarship).

[Online] This workshop introduces fundamental concepts and practices of minimal computing, with a focus on two key ethical areas: reducing the environmental impacts of computation and ensuring broad, equitable access to digital resources by minimizing their computational dependencies. Participants will explore how to balance those ethical imperatives with the computational requirements of scholarship, particularly in the digital humanities. Specific topics of discussion will include static website generation and maintenance, accessibility via minimal design, and the types of foundational knowledge required to facilitate a minimal approach to computation for research. 

No previous experience with digital scholarship tools or methods is required.

[Online] This workshop introduces participants to the fundamentals of transforming textual information into numerical data, a crucial step in computational text analysis. We'll explore the processes that convert words into vectors (essentially row matrices, lists of numbers), enabling the comparison, clustering, and classification of text. Through hands-on exercises, we'll gain practical experience in vectorizing text and understanding how these numerical representations can catalyze new insights into linguistic patterns, themes, and relationships. No particular background in text analysis, programming, or mathematics is required.

Learning outcomes: Participants will develop a basic understanding of text vectorization and its applications in various text analysis methods.

[Online] Computational text analysis can be hard. It takes prep work, it requires an understanding of arcane processes and workflows, and it often demands iteration, patience, and technical skill. In other words, it feels a lot like something that might be easier if AI were to lend a hand.

This workshop explores what happens when we invite AI into our text analysis workflows. We'll look specifically at how ChatGPT can assist in various stages of text analysis, including tasks such as summarization, sentiment analysis, and theme extraction. The workshop emphasizes transparency and repeatability, ensuring that participants understand how the model operates, how to interpret its outputs, and how to encourage it to "show its work." Through examples and hands-on exercises, we'll develop a foundational understanding of how to use ChatGPT for text analysis in a way that is ethical, transparent, and broadly useful. No previous experience with text analysis or AI is required, and there is no programming component.

[Online] In this workshop, we'll examine how to build certain values of minimal computing into the practice of creating lightweight, efficient, and sustainable digital publications. Digital "content," including scholarly work, often comes at a high computational and environmental cost. We'll talk about tools and techniques that prioritize minimal resource usage while maintaining functionality and accessibility.

Together, we'll learn how to set up and use static site generators, explore low-compute publication tools, and understand the benefits of minimal computing in various contexts. By the end of the session, participants will have the knowledge and skills to create static websites and publications that align with minimal computing principles.

Note: While there are no prerequisites for the workshop, you may want to enroll in Intro to Minimal Computing (RCR, 19 September 2024) for a broader overview of minimal computing practices and the ethical commitments that animate them.

This session explores how minimal computing can promote ethical, accessible, and equitable scholarship by reducing technological barriers, minimizing environmental impact, and improving the resilience of digital humanities projects. We'll discuss a range of practices that align with these principles and will explore tools that embody or facilitate minimal approaches, with a focus on how those approaches can be used in DH research, publication, and pedagogy. The workshop will balance practical concerns with critical discussions about the implications of adopting minimal computing, thereby helping participants to choose tools and design projects that align with their values.

Note: While there are no prerequisites for the workshop, you may want to enroll in Intro to Minimal Computing (RCR, 19 September 2024) for a broader overview of minimal computing practices and the ethical commitments that animate them.