Blog Post 2: Data and Digitization

 

    From the textbook chapters on Data Modeling and Use and Digitization we can further our understanding of digital humanities. Specifically, the chapters detail the necessary considerations for transforming human information into digital formats with regards to data. When creating data from documents and artifacts one must decide what information is structured or unstructured, meaning what data can be explicit and what data is ambiguous. We must also consider how the data is made, what is considered from the original physical thing that is being digitized, and remember that almost all data is partial and only represents some features of a thing, making most data biased for a specific purpose. Furthermore, when digitizing data there is much to be considered ethically, financially, sustainably, and around the privacy of human data. Consistent formatting matters, as well, since digitization must be at least somewhat preservatory and work long-term for computers and humans. Digitizing documents and humanities projects must be a careful process with considerations for all possible future usage.           

For example, I chose to analyze The William Blake Archive for the class’s upcoming assignment. I think this project is especially revealing of the difficulties of digitizing and creating data from human artifacts because Blake used writing and drawings in his work, which makes cataloguing and sorting his themes and topics more difficult. This is an example of the types of structured and unstructured data one must figure into the digital humanities. His writings and their dates, words, topics, lengths, and authorship are all examples of structured data that can be sorted into a table or assigned unambiguously to a category. However, his drawings and their usage are much less distinct and cannot be described explicitly, which can create difficulties when attempting to create data on Blake. If we apply the textbook’s considerations to the Blake archive, we can see that it might be difficult to financially support an ongoing digitization and organizational website like the Blake Archive. If this is the only truthful and in-depth archive of Blake’s work, how do digital humanists preserve it for long-term sustainable usage on the internet? There are many electronic and ethical factors for humanists to consider when digitizing data and documents like William Blake’s work.