Author Archives: Caleb McDaniel

Room Change

Posted on January 23, 2014 | Comments Off on Room Change

Beginning tomorrow, Friday the 24th, our class will meet in Rayzor 121 instead of in Duncan College. Please be sure to complete the readings for tomorrow before coming to class and be prepared to discuss them. As you read, you should think generally about these questions: What are the challenges confronting historians who wish to digitize primary sources or use sources that are already digitized? What are the potential benefits?

Comments Off on Room Change

Posted in Announcements, Readings

Using Twitter Lists

Posted on January 23, 2014 | Comments Off on Using Twitter Lists

As I mentioned in class yesterday, I’ve created a Twitter list for this course so that you can easily find your classmates (and me!) on Twitter.

Unfortunately, I also misinformed you about the way that Twitter lists work. You can subscribe to a list, but doing so will not make tweets from this list show up in your timeline. Instead, to see the lists you’ve subscribed to, you have to click on “Lists” from your timeline page when you log in to Twitter, as explained in this how-to gallery. Following someone directly is the only way to ensure that their lists show up in your Timeline.

Many people actually view this as a feature of lists, since it means that you can sort of “follow” many more people than you actually see in your timeline. For example, here are some other lists curated by digital humanities and digital history people. Try subscribing to some and check in on the list from time to time this semester; you may find conversations happening that touch on our readings or projects in class!

And remember, unless you click through to the RiceDH list, you won’t see tweets of class members on your timeline (unless, of course, you choose to follow them directly).

Comments Off on Using Twitter Lists

Posted in Tools

Twitter Tips

Posted on January 18, 2014 | Comments Off on Twitter Tips

Your first homework assignment requires you to create and use a Twitter account. If you’re just getting started with Twitter, that could be confusing! Here are some links that should help: Continue reading →

Comments Off on Twitter Tips

Posted in Tools

Academic Integrity Policies

Posted on January 17, 2014 | 1 Comment

As mentioned in the What to Expect section of the syllabus, this course encourages and will often require collaboration. Working with others is among the stuff digital humanists like. It’s also part of your "Team Participation" grade for this class.

Asking for help is central to the ethos of fields like programming and digital history, as evidenced by Q&A forums like Digital Humanities Questions and Answers and Stack Overflow. Spend very much time on these forums, and you’ll also learn that "Googling it" is one of the first things that digital humanists and programmers do when they get stuck.

Collaboration should not excuse violations of academic integrity, however, and such violations will still be reported to the Honor Council. You can collaborate in this course and still honor the Honor Code so long as you carefully follow these guidelines (some of which are borrowed or paraphrased from the list of course policies in Rice COMP 140. (Click “Continue reading” below to read the guidelines for this course.)

Continue reading →

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Announcements, Collaboration, Teaching

Homework #1: The Anatomy of an Ad

Posted on January 17, 2014 | Comments Off on Homework #1: The Anatomy of an Ad

If you prefer, you can download this homework assignment as a PDF file.

What information from a runaway slave ad would need to be captured in digital form in order for the information to be useful to a historian? How can that information be stored in a way that makes it easier for a computer to understand it?

In this assignment you will use three runaway slave advertisements from a nineteenth-century Texas newspaper to come up with a simple schema for digitizing the data in the ads. After deciding on the elements in your schema and their data types, you will put the information into valid JSON, a simple data formatting language that is easy for both humans and machines to read.

Note: This instruction sheet is long and detailed in order to make the assignment as clear as possible, but don’t be daunted by the length! If you work through this step-by-step, you will be able to complete the assignment for full credit, and help will be available!

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Homework #1: The Anatomy of an Ad

Posted in Homework, Runaway Ads

Sample Ads for Friday

Posted on January 16, 2014 | Comments Off on Sample Ads for Friday

Yesterday in class we talked about JSON as one of the ways of representing structured data in digital form; tomorrow we will be talking about what kinds of data are contained in a runaway slave advertisement that a historian might want to represent. To prepare for this discussion, please take a look at the following sample ads before coming to class:

As you look at these ads, which all come from editions of a Houston newspaper called the Telegraph, please make note of things that surprise you. Also, are there any elements of a runaway ad that appear across all these examples? Do you notice any changes over time? Can all of these advertisements be classified as runaway ads? Be prepared to share your findings at the beginning of class tomorrow, or (if you choose) you can post your comments here.

Comments Off on Sample Ads for Friday

Posted in Data, Readings, Runaway Ads

Mapping Ancient Trade Routes

Posted on January 15, 2014 | Comments Off on Mapping Ancient Trade Routes

On Monday we talked a little bit about how a future historian might be able to reconstruct roads using geolocated tweets. One of you shared with me this project showing that a current historian is doing something similar using coins and Google Earth. Thanks for the cool digital history project tip!

Comments Off on Mapping Ancient Trade Routes

Posted in Links

JSON Examples and Links

Posted on January 15, 2014 | Comments Off on JSON Examples and Links

If you’d like to look more closely at the JSON examples discussed in class, here are the exhibits from the handout. To test their validity, you can copy each one to your clipboard and paste it into the JSONLint site and click on "Validate." You may also want to take a look at the JSON specification page that I had up on the screen.

If you still feel a bit lost with these examples, don’t worry; we will spend more time clearing up confusion on Friday and throughout the next week. The point of these exercises is to show some of the challenge that comes from representing information that is interesting to humanists in formats that computers can more easily digest. On Friday, we’ll also talk about the arguably more challenging task of deciding what information we want to represent!

These are the other links that were discussed today:

Finally, after today’s lightning-quick introduction, you may be interested in knowing why historian Ian Milligan thinks that JSON rocks.

Comments Off on JSON Examples and Links

Posted in Data, Links, Programming, Taxonomy

Links from Monday

Posted on January 14, 2014 | Comments Off on Links from Monday

Before coming to class on Wednesday, please be sure to go through the readings for January 15. We will be talking about two big questions in regard to these readings:

  1. Why would an archive of tweets be useful to historians?
  2. How does Twitter work "under the hood"?

You may also be interested to look more closely at some of the things I introduced in class yesterday, which can be found at the following links:

Comments Off on Links from Monday

Posted in Links, Readings

Welcome to Digital History Methods!

Posted on January 9, 2014 | Comments Off on Welcome to Digital History Methods!

This will be our course homepage for HIST 318; consider bookmarking it and plan to return to it frequently for announcements, pre-class instructions, and further details on assignments. Be sure to read the syllabus carefully before our next class. You also need to complete this brief survey about your interests and previous experiences with history classes and digital technology. If you have time, you may also enjoy browsing some of the older posts on this page, which came from an earlier course introducing undergraduate and graduate students at Rice to some major issues in digital history.

Comments Off on Welcome to Digital History Methods!

Posted in Announcements