Technology and (Humanities) Research

John Unsworth

May 4, 2000


Creation of a research resource

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War

Using existing resources

Making of America
 Perseus

New kinds of questions, new understanding

Text Analysis: The World of Dante
Ready Access to Primary Sources: Valley Newspapers
Reconstruction: Crystal Palace

The importance of careful design

 Durability vs. immediacy: The Book of Thel, Copy F
 Separating capture from delivery: The Salisbury Project
 Designing for content: Rossetti, Double Works

Standards

 Text Data/Metadata: SGML, TEI and TEI-Lite, XML, XSL, EAD
      Dublin Core, Marc, etc.
 Databases: SQL, Flat/Relational, Export
 Image Data: JPEG, MPEG, PNG vs. GIF, TIFF,
 Video Data: MPEG vs. Quicktime
 Model Data: VRML vs. Autocad, FormZ, etc.

Working with libraries

 Cataloguing: Project Report From the Nyingma Tantras Project
 Preservation: Avoiding Technological Quicksand
 (Intellectual) Access: Blake Image Search

Collaborative work

Blake-Proj

(Potentially) Interdisciplinary work

Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture

Experimental work

The Rossetti Archive
WaxWeb

The importance of peer review

Postmodern Culture
The William Blake Archive

The importance of documentation

The William Blake Archive

The role of publishers

The Valley of the Shadow
Piers Plowman
The Rossetti Archive


Document URL: http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu
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