History GR8975

What is a Book in the 21st Century?

Working with Historical Texts in a Digital Environment

Spring 2017

Wednesdays, 4:10pm-6pm, Studio @ Butler

Some Friday Labs, 2-4pm, Studio @ Butler

Some shared sessions with the Experimental Methods Group (Fridays 3-5pm)

and Professor Dennis Tenen

INSTRUCTORS: Terry Catapano (CU Libraries) and Pamela Smith (History), with guest lectures by **Steven Feiner **(Computer Science)

Course Instructors

Prof. Pamela Smith

Office: Fayerweather 605

Email: ps2270@columbia.edu Telephone: 212-854-7662

Office Hours: Thursdays, 1-3pm, and by appointment

Prof. Terry Catapano

Special Collections Analyst, Columbia Libraries (DLIST)

Digital Lead, Making and Knowing Project

Email: thc4@columbia.edu

Project Manager

Naomi Rosenkranz

Email: njr2128@columbia.edu Telephone : (626) 374-9467

Course Assistants

Atif Ahmed: atif.ahmed@columbia.edu

Mehul Kumar: mk3916@columbia.edu

Varsha Maragi: vgm2115@columbia.edu

Jeffrey Wayno: jmw2202@columbia.edu

This course will introduce graduate students to techniques of working in digital environments. The course is intended mainly for humanities and social science students who are novices with little or no experience in using digital platforms, but we also welcome students from all disciplines, as well as those who might be familiar with constructing websites or blogs, or even with creating minimal editions. Through hands-on assignments (with plenty of assistance), you will master a variety of skills that constitute literacy in digital humanities, and, by the end of the semester, you will be able to take your newfound digital literacy with you as you pursue your own study, research, and future work.

Throughout the course, your skills will be built by implementing them to collectively create a small scale digital edition, which will be festively launched at the end of the semester. This digital edition will draw on collaboration with and research done by the Making and Knowing Project (http://www.makingandknowing.org/) on an anonymous sixteenth-century French compilation of artistic and technical recipes (BnF Ms. Fr. 640). The Project’s existing English translation of this manuscript will constitute the "data" with which students in this course will work to create their small scale edition.

This rare French manuscript resulted from the compilation of craft knowledge over time, followed by its subsequent "disassembly" in a late sixteenth-century workshop by an author-compiler-practitioner who experimented on techniques contained in the manuscript’s “recipes.” While the course will focus on this intriguing manuscript and the research that has been carried out on it, the skills you will learn over the course of the semester are widely applicable to other types of Digital Humanities projects, and, indeed, in many fields outside of traditional academic study.

The Making and Knowing Project, directed by Professor Smith, has produced the transcription and English translation of this manuscript, "disassembling" Ms. Fr. 640 through research seminars and workshops, involving multidisciplinary teams of students and scholars. The Project is now engaged in creating a complete critical digital edition, which represents a reassembly of this manuscript in a 21st-century form. In this course, you will be an active participant in the Project’s exploration of the technologies that allow not just a reading of the text but an interaction with the content itself. This is in direct resonance with the ways that this sixteenth-century recipe collection can only be transformed from text to knowledge when the techniques contained within it are practiced, whether in the sixteenth century or in the Making and Knowing Laboratory reconstructions today. Through this exploration, the course aims to foster reflection on the constraints of the codex as a framework and vehicle for the production of knowledge, and to re-think the technology of the book and what it means to read a text. To this end, the course also includes collaboration with Professor Steven Feiner’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (CGUI, http://graphics.cs.columbia.edu/home/home/).

This course is one component of the History in Action Initiativ*e of the Columbia Department of History. The American Historical Association (AHA) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are collaborating to re-think career education for history PhD candidates at four selected universities (Columbia, Chicago, New Mexico, and UCLA) and to continue, expand, and enhance the AHA’s "*Career Diversity and the History Ph*D" initiative. The long-term goal is to establish a new norm: that doctoral graduates in history** and** the humanities will be equipped with the skills to pursue a wide spectrum of career opportunities and communicate their research to a broad audience.*

ASSESSMENT:

Participation, initiative, effort: 10%

Weekly assignments and field notes: 30%

Final edition project: 60%

SCHEDULE:

Please note: You will encounter many unfamiliar and possibly intimidating terms in the following syllabus, but FEAR NOT! Learning a new craft involves not just "how to do" it, but also “how to talk” about it. Hands-on techniques are in general difficult to put into words, so this practitioners’ jargon is often necessary.

**Please see ****here** for a short and easy to read version of the class schedule and syllabus that includes the digital skills introduced in each class.

Be sure to bring your computer (not tablet) to every class.

**Week 1: Jan **18 - Introduction

Get to know your many collaborators in this class!

To prepare in advance of the class on Jan 18:

• To do:

  • If you do not already have one, please create a GitHub account.

    • To join: https://github.com/join

    • For more information and help with creating an account - https://help.github.com/articles/signing-up-for-a-new-github-account

    • Please send your GitHub profile name to Naomi Rosenkranz (njr2128@columbia.edu) before the start of class.

  • Please fill out this form to be granted access to the Project’s Google Drive which serves as the Project's collaborative workspace for transcription, translation, and annotation of the manuscript, BnF Ms Fr 640.

    • You will need a Gmail account explicitly ending in "@gmail.com," so if you do not have one already, please create one. PLEASE DO NOT ACCESS THE GOOGLE DRIVE WITH YOUR LIONMAIL ACCOUNT.

    • Please consult the following introductory document with more information about Google Drive, and which explains in brief how our files are organized within the folder, and provides further instructions and details about access.

• **Read and **Explore:

  • The Making and Knowing Project website

  • The Making and Knowing Project Flickr account, the Project’s photo repository from lab reconstructions

  • Making and Knowing Wikischolars site, to which you will be granted access by your instructors. (As in the Making and Knowing Laboratory, students will keep field notes in a course wiki each week, recording their assignments, experiments, and learning each week.)

  • Making and Knowing Google Drive (once you have been granted access by your instructors)

  • Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (CGUI) website

  • Digital competencies (and the larger site: http://allaboardhe.org/)

    • See also the Short Guide to the Digital Humanities

In class on Jan 18:

• Introduction

  • Aims and overview of the course (Smith and Catapano)

  • The Making and Knowing Project and BnF. Ms. Fr. 640 (Smith)

  • Digital literacy - resources and digital competencies (Jessica Brodsky)

  • Overview of and Digital Editions and Editing (Catapano)

  • Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (Feiner)

Homework assignment Jan 18:

• Reading (for lab on Jan 20):

  • Milligan and Baker: Introduction to the Bash Command Line

• Assignment 1 (due Jan 25):

  • Begin to familiarize yourself with your assigned folios from the course GitHub and read through them. (You can also read in the pdfs we sent on Wednesday, but also find them on the GitHub repository.)

  • Complete Digital Competencies Evaluation #1 and permission and contribution forms, and bring them to class.

• Reading (for Jan 25):

  • "User Story" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story

  • G. Thomas Tanselle. A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). Available at Book Culture.

Lab 1: Jan 20 - workshop with Dennis Tenen

• Introduction to Command Line, and help with GitHub

  • Be sure to have read Milligan and Baker: Introduction to the Bash Command Line

  • D. Tenen GitHub notes and tutorials

  • For Reference: Cunix/unix tutorial

    • More info about using PuTTY (for Windows users)

• Practical help with GitHub [WILL HAPPEN IN NEXT LAB]

**Week 2: Jan 2****5 - **General introduction to text editing and scholarship

What is a "book"? How does it organize text and content? What aims does it achieve? Who does it reach? What is Scholarly Editing and Textual Criticism? What are the rationale, purposes, scope, and features of scholarly editions?

In class on Jan 25:

• Discussion: What *is a *book? Digital Humanities projects, scholarly editions, user stories

• Introduction of the Casebooks Project by director, Prof. Lauren Kassell, Cambridge University

Homework assignment Jan 25:

• Assignment 2 (due Feb 1):

  • Read about User Stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story

  • From class on January 25, think about the Casebooks Project and the Making and Knowing Project, derive 3-5 user stories related to our proposed online edition of BnF Ms. Fr. 640, based on your reading of your folios. In class, we will discuss the user stories and create a document that we will collaboratively add to GitHub.

  • Create your profile in Wikischolars. If you have questions about how to do this, and can come to Monday’s lab class, please feel free to attend 10:10-2 for the whole class, OR, from 11:30-12:15, we’ll cover field notes, and from 12:30-2, we’ll cover an intro to using WikiScholars, and troubleshooting for GD and WikiScholars.

  • If you can’t come to Monday’s class, there will be office hours for troubleshooting help announced later this week.

Reading (for Feb 1):

* Identify and read the annotations relevant to your folios.

Lab 2: Jan 27 - Wiki, GD, and GitHub workshop****

• Dennis Tenen, Introduction to GitHub

• Wiki Scholars introduction and setup

• M&K Google Drive troubleshooting,GitHub troubleshooting

• Photos of today’s lecture notes from Dennis Tenen

  • Whiteboard

  • Workflow

**Week 3: Feb ****1 - **Data and Project Management

How do we think about the social, intellectual, and physical infrastructure of producing a "book" or a “digital project”? What is distinctive about digital projects? What is the range of concerns for a digital editing project?

In class on Feb 1:

• Class discussion and exercise:

  • User stories

  • The whole class will:

    • Discuss and refine user stories and collaboratively contribute to a shared document on the class Github repository

    • From user stories create "feature requests" in the issue tracker

• Lecture and discussion:

  • Project Management

    • "Agile" development and management

    • Collaboration and Communication

    • Release Management

    • Technical Debt and Digital Obsolescence

  • Data Management

    • Identifiers

    • Metadata

    • Tracking

    • Preservation and Sustainability

    • Licensing: Creative Commons and open access

    • Optimising for Re-use

Homework assignment Feb 1:

• In Wikischolars, create your profile. Begin taking rudimentary field notes that record the process of doing your homework. Transfer your field notes into Wikischolars field note pages.

• Metadata: For 5 of your folios (r and v), create a metadata table, based on the schema/template we came up with in class.

  • See this sample based on one of Tianna’s folios, and a description of the elements of the template

  • Remember, please read and use the folios in GitHub. At the same time, have a look at the manuscript pages in Google Drive, including looking at the HD images of your folios.

• If you come up with additional metadata fields, please create a new issue in GitHub. Also use the issue tracker tracker if you come across problems while filling in the table.

• Remember to do the reading also:

Reading (for Feb 8):

* Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative "[Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials](http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/FADGI_Still_Image_Tech_Guidelines_2015-09-02_v4.pdf)"

Lab 3: Feb 3 - Metadata

What are the categories by which we organize our "content," our “materials,” our “digital assets”?

• We will start this assignment in the lab, and students will finish at home:

  • Create master table of metadata elements collaboratively, to be filled in for homework: What are the considerations we may need to have for creating a digital edition? What should our metadata be?

  • Here is the Schema/template we came up with in class:

  • Us the template to create table of metadata for your assigned folios and add to GitHub.

    • Add to issue tracker as you come across issues while filling in the table

**Week 4: Feb **8 - Digital Image Fundamentals

Representing a representation: How are images represented digitally? How are they viewed, processed, and referenced? What are their advantages and limitations?

In class on Feb 8:

• Discussion:

  • Reconciliation and resolution of metadata issues

• Lecture and discussion:

  • Digital image fundamentals

• Tool:

  • Viewshare

Homework assignment Feb 8:

• Add a few more items to your metadata table

• Attempt to create a viewshare account, at viewshare.org

• Assignment 4 (to be started during Lab 4 and due Feb 15):

  • Using the new metadata table, enter the data for your entries (see second sheet "Guide" for examples and descriptions of the fields)

  • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Feb 15):

  • Read http://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html

  • Re-read and re-do the exercises in Milligan and Baker: Introduction to the Bash Command Line

  • Take a look at "Unix for Poets" https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/lec/124-UnixForPoets.pdf, we will be doing the exercises together in class

  • If you’re interested, here is a video on regular expressions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRR9fOXkfRE

Lab 4: Feb 10 - Using metadata in Viewshare

• Review metadata table - create a composite table

• Create presentation metadata in Viewshare

• Start Assignment 4 (if needed, finish for homework)

Week 5: Feb 15 - Text Fundamentals

What is digital text? What can it do that printed type on paper cannot? How may digital or "electronic" text be “processed”? What sorts of study and inquiry does text “processing” facilitate? How does the way digital text is “prepared” affect its possible uses?

In class on Feb 15:

• Lecture and discussion:

  • Text fundamentals, representation, and encoding

  • What can you do with digital text?

• Regular expression exercises: see: http://dh.obdurodon.org/#regex

• Tool:

  • Linux command line text utilities

Homework assignment Feb 15:

• Assignment 5 (due Feb 22):

  • TBD

  • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Feb 22)

  • TBD

Lab 5: Feb 17 - GitHub lab

• Git/Github practice and troubleshooting

Week 6: Feb 22 - Version Control

The mess of digital reproduction: how to maintain control of content, issue, edition, "release"? How can digital tools accommodate textual “instability”?

In class on Feb 22:

• Lecture and discussion

  • Version control

• Exercise:

  • Version control and representation of textual variance in traditional critical editions

Homework assignment Feb 22:

• Assignment 6 (due Mar 1):

  • TBD

  • Digital Competencies Evaluation #2

  • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Mar 1):

  • Tenen, Dennis and Wythoff, Grant: Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown

Lab 6: Feb 24 - SPEAKER - STUDIO@BUTLER 2-3PM

Week 7: March 1 - Text Markup: Introduction and Overview

Digital text: How it works in practice, part 1. Approaches for preparing textual data to represent implicit "formal" or “structural” features

In class on Mar 1:

• Introduction to structured text, basic markup technologies

  • Markdown

  • HTML/XHTML/HTML5

Homework assignment Mar 1:

• Assignment 7 (due Mar 8):

  • Practice markdown of your folios, and use it to present your folios

  • Commit to repository in GitHub

  • Consider the affordances and limitations of markdown and bring your ideas to the next class about what more you want from markup of your folios

  • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Mar 8):

  • DeRose SJ, Durand DG, Mylonas E, Renear AH. "What is text, really?" SIGDOC Asterisk J. Comput. Doc. 1997 Aug; 21(3):1-24. doi: 10.1145/264842.264843

  • "What is XML and why should humanists care? An even gentler introduction to XML" http://dh.obdurodon.org/what-is-xml.xhtml

Week 8: Mar 8 - Text Markup Continued: Semantic Markup

Digital Text: How it works in practice, part 2. "Text Encoding" or “Markup” for preparing textual data to represent both “formal” and “semantic” textual features.

In class on Mar 8:

• Lecture and discussion:

  • Introduction to XML

  • Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and customized markup

• Exercise:

  • Begin determination of our possible markup tag set

• Tool:

  • XML-aware text editor

Homework assignment Mar 8:

• Assignment 8:

  • Due Monday March 20: Fully develop a markup element set and apply to your folios within GitHub

  • Due Wednesday March 22: Compare and review partner tag set and, using the issue tracker, comment on partner tag set. Be prepared to present to the rest of the class on Mar 22 during class.

  • Update your field notes

• Reading:

  • John Lavagnino, "Electronic Textual Editing: When not to use TEI" http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/lavagnino.xml

Lab 6: Mar 10 - Markup

• Text editor and markup troubleshooting and help

Spring Break: Mar 15 - NO CLASS

• Working on Assignment 8 [DUE Monday Mar 20 to your peer reviewers]

Week 9: Mar 2****2 - Text Markup Continued: Establishing Consensus

Digital Text: How it works in practice in collaborative projects (part 3). How to decide what to tag and what not to tag. The role of the "schema" in formally defining (i.e., for a computer) a “document type” or “tag set”

In class on Mar 22:

• Present your comparison and review of your own and partner group’s tag set. Discussion of different markup

• Establish the final, consensus markup

• Formalize this consensus markup in a schema

• Begin applying the consensus markup - troubleshooting, understanding, reporting, diagnosing, and fixing errors

Homework assignment Mar 22:

• Assignment 9 (due Mar 29):

  • Apply consensus markup to your folios

  • Review partner group’s markup (through issue tracker)

    • Identify Issues:

1. Bugs

2. Commentary

   • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Mar 29):

  • David Birnbaum: Digital humanities course XSLT materials

  • **http://dh.obdurodon.org/#xsl**t

    • http://dh.obdurodon.org/xslt-basics.xhtml

    • http://dh.obdurodon.org/xslt-basics-2.xhtml

**Week 10: **March 29 - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 1

Digital text: How it really works.

In** class on March 29:**

• Review and troubleshooting of your marked-up folios

• Lecture and discussion:

  • Transformation of XML - XSLT

Homework assignment Mar 29:

• Assignment 10 (due Apr 5):

  • Complete folio markup

  • Update your field notes

• Reading (for Apr 5):

  • Birnbaum DH course XSLT materials

  • "Losing the Thread," Aeon, 2016: https://aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-human-technology

NOTE: In lieu of a lab this week, TA Office Hours for troubleshooting

Week 11: April 5** - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 2**

Moving from preparation of digital textual data to "processing" and “application”, particularly “transformation” or “conversion” into appropriate formats for publishing in an online edition.

In class on Apr 5:

• Transformation of XML - XSLT

• Publishing platform via Jekyll using Ed

Homework assignment Apr 5:

• Assignment 11 (due Apr 12):

  • Transform marked-up pages to Jekyll markdown

  • Revisit feature requests from Week 3 and evaluate status of requests

  • Update your field notes

**Lab 7: Apr 7 - XSLT workshop - **IN BUTLER 208

• Hands-on XSLT session

NOTE: Additional TA Office Hours will be scheduled

Week 12: April 12 - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 3

In class on Apr 12:

• Continued: Transformation of XML - XSLT

**Week 13: Apr **19

• Students Working on Editions

Lab 8: Apr 21 - Computer Graphics and User Interface Lab

• Presentation by Computer Graphics and User Interface Lab (Feiner and digital assistants)

Week 14: Apr 2****6 - Review and Conclusion

The Future of Digital Text (yikes!): preservation, sustainability, archiving

In class on Apr 26:

• Preservation, sustainability, archiving

• Complete Digital Competencies Evaluation #3

Week 15: Launch of Edition

May 23-25: Working Group Meeting with invited scholars. Attendance required, if at all possible.

S****tatement on Academic Integrity

The intellectual venture in which we are all engaged requires of faculty and students alike the highest level of personal and academic integrity. As members of an academic community, each one of us bears the responsibility to participate in scholarly discourse and research in a manner characterized by intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity.

Scholarship, by its very nature, is an iterative process, with ideas and insights building one upon the other. Collaborative scholarship requires the study of other scholars' work, the free discussion of such work, and the explicit acknowledgement of those ideas in any work that inform our own. This exchange of ideas relies upon a mutual trust that sources, opinions, facts, and insights will be properly noted and carefully credited.

In practical terms, this means that, as students, you must be responsible for the full citations of others' ideas in all of your research papers and projects; you must be scrupulously honest when taking your examinations; you must always submit your own work and not that of another student, scholar, or internet agent.

Any breach of this intellectual responsibility is a breach of faith with the rest of our academic community. It undermines our shared intellectual culture, and it cannot be tolerated. Students failing to meet these responsibilities should anticipate being asked to leave Columbia.

Disability-Related Accommodations

In order to receive disability-related academic accommodations, students must first be registered with Disability Services (DS). More information on the DS registration process is available online at www.health.columbia.edu/ods. Faculty must be notified of registered students’ accommodations before exam or other accommodations will be provided. Students who have (or think they may have) a disability are invited to contact Disability Services for a confidential discussion at (212) 854-2388 (Voice/TTY) or by email at disability@columbia.edu.