Text Encoding for Humanities Scholarship: What, Why, How?

All handouts and templates from this workshop can be found here.
Slides with notes are here.
Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman
Women Writers Project, Brown University

May 14 & 15: 9:00-5:30
UCLA’s Biomedical Library (Louise M. Darling)

Location

RSVP Monday & Tuesday

How are digital texts used in research? How are they created? How does text encoding practices impinge upon and affect traditional scholarly work? What is text encoding, anyway, and why does it matter? Aren’t search engines enough?

This two-day seminar explores the role and significance of the text encoding in current digital scholarship, aiming to give participants a thoughtful introduction to the issues and practices surrounding the creation of scholarly digital texts. It also provides an introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines, the widely used international standard for creating rigorous digital texts for humanities research. The seminar combines hands-on experimentation with discussions of encoding theory and strategy, editorial perspectives, publication methods and tools, and the changing shape of digital research. Participants will also have the opportunity to explore practical questions about planning and running digital humanities research projects.

This seminar is the second in a series of twelve funded by the NEH and designed by the Brown University Women Writers Project (WWP), with the goal of helping humanities faculty and students learn about text encoding in a way that addresses their interests and needs. With nearly two decades of experience and research, the WWP is internationally known as a center of expertise in scholarly text encoding. The project’s online collection, Women Writers Online, serves as a model for issues of text representation and digital scholarly research.

About the instructors:

Julia Flanders is the Director of the WWP and serves as vice-chair of the TEI Consortium. Her research focuses on the political and social dimensions of digital humanities scholarship and of text encoding in particular. She is also the editor of Digital Humanities Quarterly, a new open-access digital journal.

Syd Bauman is the North American Editor of the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines, and the Senior Programmer/Analyst at the WWP. His work focuses on developing data standards, tools, and digital materials that reflect the real needs and constraints of humanities research.

For a workshop schedule and more information about this NEH funded seminar series, please see
http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/seminars/UCLA/

This is a two-day seminar/workshop that combines discussion and hands-on training using PCs.

Email:zoe@ats.ucla.edu with questions.
This event is sponsored by UDHIG, UCLA-Digital Library Program, and ATS

(from Reem Hanna-Harwell)
FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2007

WHERE: Royce Hall 306 - Herbert Morris Room

WHEN: Detailed Workshop schedule below

RSVP: If you plan to attend a particular session, please write to

kroberts@college.ucla.edu

Please specify which session(s) you will attend in your rsvp.

10:30 AM to 12:00 NOON - ACLS WORKSHOP FOR FACULTY FELLOWSHIPS

Under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, major funders of humanities research in the United States, Christina Gillis will conduct a workshop outlining the range of ACLS fellowship opportunities to the faculty and offering advice on presenting successful “scholarly arguments” for faculty research projects. ACLS brochures will be available at the workshop. Questions will be welcome. Several UCLA faculty members that have received ACLS fellowships in the past will also be present to answer questions and provide input via their own experiences.

Notes & Links from today’s workshop:
ACLS Website: www.acls.org
Deadlines for ACLS 2007-08 competitions:

• October 3, 2007 (central ACLS Fellowship program, Burkhardt, Ryskamp, Digital Innovation Fellowship)
• November 14, 2007 (pre-doctoral programs, including Luce/ACLS American Art History and Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowship)

For advice on proposal writing:

• Christina Gillis’ handbook, Scholarly Arguments: Strategies for Writing Persuasive Proposals in the Humanities, is available as a PDF on the site of Berkeley’s Townsend Center.
• Adam Przeworksi and Frank Salomon, The Art of Writing Proposals: Some Candid Suggestions for Applicants to Social Science Research Council Competitions, is available on the Social Science Research Council site.

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM - GRADUATE STUDENT PRE-DOCTORAL AND POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS WORKSHOP

Under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, major funders of humanities research in the United States, Christina Gillis will conduct a workshop outlining ACLS pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowship opportunities and offering advice on presenting successful “scholarly arguments” for one’s work. ACLS has exciting dissertation year and early career postdoctoral grants that graduate students in the Humanities should be aware of. ACLS brochures will be available at the workshop. Questions will be welcome.

2:00 PM to 4:00 PM - INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS TO DISCUSS SPECIFIC PROJECTS

Christina Gillis will be available during this time slot to discuss specific projects with individuals or small groups. If you have a proposal you wish to develop, are already in the process of applying for an ACLS fellowship, or have been turned down for an ACLS fellowship and want to seek further guidance on your proposal via a one-on-one session, please contact kroberts@college.ucla.edu for scheduling. We will schedule as many such sessions as time permits, so please only request a session if you are seriously interested and can definitely be available. A specific time window within the 2pm-4pm range will be assigned to you via a confirmation message.

Upcoming deadlines/events.

• April 30th: Applications for Digital Fellowships due.
• May 1: Applications for NEH Digital Humanities Fellowships due.
• May 10: Digital Innovation Day. Activities begin at 4 pm in 1302 Perloff Hall. We have been busy preparing the website, sending out invitations and getting media attention for this event. We have approximately 30 projects to show, and a keynote speech by Willard McCarty—whose work in the field has recently been acknowledged by the Richard Lyman Award from the National Humanities Center. The Lyman Award announcement describes Willard’s work and has a link to biographical information.
• We are hoping to host a TEI workshop on May 14 & 15. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines are an international and interdisciplinary standard that enables libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to represent a variety of literary and linguistic texts for online research, teaching, and preservation. For a remarkable list of the variety of projects that have adopted this standard: see the TEI website’s list of projects. Contact Zoe Borovsky (zoe@ats.ucla.edu ) for more information.
• Announcement: There is a new e-journal called Digital Humanities Quarterly: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/. DHQ is an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities, published online by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.

The Division of Humanities, in collaboration with the UCLA Library, is pleased to announce the creation of a number of Fellowships intended to foster scholarship in Digital Humanities.

The Fellowships will provide flexible support funds, technical assistance, office space, and assistance with extramural grant applications to scholars working on projects that take digital form and use digital technologies to further humanities research and education, broadly conceived. Fellows will work closely with the faculty and staff of the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH), the UCLA Digital Humanities Incubator Group (UDHIG), Academic Technology Services (ATS), and the Digital Library.

Projects might construct innovative databases or digital archives, produce electronic editions of print works, create digital tools for research and teaching, undertake new media representations of data, or use new media to analyze cultural, historical, or social problems. We also welcome proposals that question or reflect upon digital humanities and media studies, including curriculum development projects in these fields. If a curricular project is proposed, the Dean’s office is prepared to “buy-out” a regularly taught course in exchange for teaching an experimental course in new media studies or digital humanities. Please visit the CDH website for a description of the five projects funded in 2006-07.

Fellowships are open to UCLA ladder faculty, lecturers, graduate students, librarians and technology staff. Up to five fellowships will be awarded for each academic year. We are currently soliciting applications for the academic year 2007-08.

More info