Category Archive: Representing Knowledge Conference

Jul 21

The Power of Amusement: Lessons from the gaming world


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Ireton, Daniel. Assistant Professor/Undergraduate and Community Services Librarian, Kansas State University;
Urton, Ellen. Associate Professor/Visual Literacy Librarian, Kansas State University

Title: The Power of Amusement: Lessons from the gaming world

Abstract: Video games have long been dismissed as an amusing distraction at best and as a direct cause of the decline of civilization at worst. Yet, undergraduate students entering higher education now have never lived in a world in which video games have not existed; indeed they are a ubiquitous aspect of our shared cultural experience. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) reported that as of 2009 video games are played in 67% of all U.S. households and the computer and video game industry made $10.5 billion in revenue (www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp). According to Stephen E. Siwek in “Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report” compiled for the Entertainment Software Association (www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/VideoGames21stCentury_2010.pdf):
• “The U.S. computer and video game software publishing industry directly employs more than 32,000 people in 34 states.”
• “The U.S. computer and video game software industry’s value added to U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $4.9 billion.”
• “The real annual growth rate of the U.S. computer and video game software industry was 10.6% for the period 2005-2009 and 16.7% for the period 2005-2008.”
• “During the same periods, real growth for the U.S. economy as a whole was 1.4% for 2005-09 and 2.8% for 2005-08.”

An educator may create a game intended to impart certain knowledge or skills, but those wishing to do so should be wary of creating games that succeed at delivering content but fail as games. Where video games are discussed or applied in education, the academic community seems to dismiss the broader cultural context of gaming and has yet to harness the cultural application and relevance of video games. The instructive power of video games is not discipline-specific, but rather they are instructive by their very design; problem solving, visual literacy, aesthetic literacy, critical thinking, data driven decision making, and a willingness to iterate are ubiquitous in the games of today. The most successful games are narrative-driven, immersive, experiential, aesthetically pleasing, and enjoyable works of art.

Jul 21

Great Plains Network: Fostering Communities of Interest


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Monaco, Greg. Director for Research and Cyberinfrastructure Initiatives, Great Plains Network

Title: Great Plains Network: Fostering Communities of Interest

Jul 21

Strategic Visions and Tactical Realities on the Frontlines of Digital Humanities: Russia’s Great War & Revolution


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Palmer, Scott. Professor of History, Western Illinois University;
Perkins, Jonathan. Director, Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center, University of Kansas

Title: Strategic Visions and Tactical Realities on the Frontlines of Digital Humanities: Russia’s Great War & Revolution

Abstract: For most of the twentieth century Russia’s involvement in the First World War was a historical afterthought. Overshadowed by the Bolshevik revolution, Civil War, and consolidation of power, Europe’s “Great War” took a back seat within professional scholarship to explanations of the origins and rise of Soviet Communism. In recent years, however, a new generation of researchers has begun to re-examine and re-evaluate the wartime experience. Buttressed by new archival findings, they have begun to analyze and represent Russia’s Great War not as a prelude to “Red October,” but as the first in a chain of events that transformed Eurasia and much of the world.

Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914-1922: The Centennial Re-appraisal (RGWR) is at the forefront of these investigative efforts. A decade-long multinational undertaking involving more than 300 scholars and graduate students from around the globe, RGWR aims to fundamentally transform our understanding of Russia’s “continuum of crisis” during the years 1914-1922. RGWR’s companion website (russiasgreatwar.org) aims to integrate advanced scholarly research with new digitized content and innovative multimedia applications to provide visitors with an interactive environment for exploring the cataclysmic events that gripped Eurasia at the outset of the twentieth century. Developed and housed at the University of Kansas, the ongoing digital humanities initiative is jointly overseen by its Director, Dr. Scott W. Palmer (Professor of History, Western Illinois University), and Project Manager, Dr. Jonathan Perkins (Director of EGARC, University of Kansas).

In their poster, Palmer and Perkins will share with conference participants their experiences in conceiving, designing, and managing russiasgreatwar.org with particular emphasis on the challenges involved in implementing a large digital humanities initiative in light of competing project agendas and limited resources.

Jul 21

Dr. James Naismith: his life and legacy. Three University Archives tell the story of the “Father of Basketball”


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Schulte, Becky. University Archivist, University of Kansas;
Hanrath, Scott. Web Services Manager, University of Kansas Libraries;
Thiel, Sarah. Imaging Librarian, University of Kansas Libraries

Title: Dr. James Naismith: his life and legacy. Three University Archives tell the story of the “Father of Basketball”

Abstract: This project involves an international collaboration between the University Archives of the University of Kansas Libraries and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec and Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts (where Naismith graduated and the game of basketball was invented, respectively).

University Archivists from each institution will select and digitize items from their collections concerning James Naismith. The KU project team will build a permanent and public digital collection using Naismith image files from each participating institution. Images and metadata will then be made accessible through the KU image management system (Luna Imaging). The team will also create a virtual exhibition of selected Naismith image files using Omeka as the web publishing platform. Both a temporal and spatial timeline will be developed to show the relationships between the three institutions throughout Naismith’s personal and professional life.

This international collaboration will allow one-stop access to a unique archival collection representing James Naismith’s life and varied achievements spanning both time and space. Speakers will share best practices, workflows and project management decisions and results in their presentation of this rich and complex collaborative effort.

Jul 21

Tracking Audiences: How Mapping Forces a Rethinking of the ‘Mass’ in Mass Media


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Ward, Doug. Associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas

Title: Tracking Audiences: How Mapping Forces a Rethinking of the ‘Mass’ in Mass Media

Abstract: Traditional methods of media history favor qualitative analysis, and a focus on individual lives, organizations, and social and institutional norms. That focus often leaves the role of location largely unexplored. This presentation will explain how the concept of where can be combined with the analysis of media audiences, another little-explored area of media history. It will show how a combination of geographical information systems and statistical analysis of census data can lead to new questions about audiences. It will argue that the term “mass magazines” is a misnomer, and that geographic patterns of readership suggest a deeper, more complex relationship between magazines and audiences than analysis of editorial content can explain.

Jul 21

Digitizing Kansas Sanborn Maps


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Poster Session

Williams, Sheryl. Curator of Collections, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas;
Garrison, Wade. Assistant Librarian, Center for Digital Scholarship, University of Kansas

Title: Digitizing Kansas Sanborn Maps

Abstract: The Kansas Collection is home to a significant collection of Kansas Sanborn fire insurance maps that provide detailed information about the built environment, especially the business districts, for many Kansas towns (some 220) over a period from roughly the 1880s – 1920s. A recent grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission provided funds for their digitization. The grant project, completed in March 2011, has allowed the Libraries to provide access to these unique sources through LUNA to a much broader audience virtually. Presenters Williams and Garrison (the project Director and Manager) will discuss the maps and project, detailing the history of the maps, their research use that supports the humanities, and specifics of carrying out the project, including selection of vendor for outsourcing the digital work, mounting of records in LUNA, and reaction to the project thus far. The presentation will also provide discussion with attendees of options for additional digital projects, building from the basic data provided up to this point. Presenters will include a Sanborn map in original form, and a demo of the digitized maps as part of the presentation.

Jul 21

Making the most of free, unrestricted texts–a first look at the promise of the Text Creation Partnership


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Welzenbach, Rebecca. Text Creation Partnership Project Outreach Librarian, MPublishing, University of Michigan Library

Title: Making the most of free, unrestricted texts–a first look at the promise of the Text Creation Partnership

Abstract: In April 2011, the Text Creation Partnership announced that 2,231 transcribed and SGML/XML encoded texts from the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) corpus were freely available to the public, with no restrictions on their use or distribution. This is the first set of TCP texts to have all restrictions lifted. We have already seen significant interest in studying, manipulating, and publishing these texts, which has given us a peek at what might happen in a few years, when the much larger EEBO-TCP also archive becomes available to the public. The release was met with enthusiasm by power users who were eager to work directly with the XML files, but frustration by those who expected a full-service platform to interact with the texts. This presentation will discuss the mixed reactions to the release of the ECCO-TCP texts; offer examples of how people are starting to work with them; and highlight some of the questions, challenges, and opportunities that have arisen for the TCP as a result.

Jul 21

From Uncertainty to Virtual Reality: Knowledge Representation in Rome Reborn


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Stinson, Philip. Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, University of Kansas

Title: From Uncertainty to Virtual Reality: Knowledge Representation in Rome Reborn

Abstract: Graphic representations of ancient Rome have become more visually powerful in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries with the innovations afforded by digital technologies, but the use value of these images is under debate today. This paper explores the interplay among different types of knowledge representation, an under-theorized area of research in the digital humanities, in the acclaimed Rome Reborn project, now also known as Ancient Rome 3D in Google Earth. Rome Reborn is perhaps the largest and most complex visualization endeavor in the digital humanities to date. The author of this paper belonged to the original project team (UCLA 1999-2001) and is on the Scientific Committee of the current iteration (UVA). Rome Reborn incorporates distinct classes of knowledge—historical sources, archaeological remains, and deductive logic or inference—as a basis to reconstruct the appearance of ancient Rome’s monuments (mainly temples, public buildings and residential structures), urban infrastructure (streets, aqueducts), and topography (hills of Rome, Tiber River). All forms of knowledge utilized in the making of Rome Reborn are represented by the medium of an interactive virtual reality model consisting of millions of polygonal surfaces with applied colors, textures and simulations of light and shadow effects. This paper will perform autopsy on Rome Reborn and expose its interwoven visual representations of historical, archaeological, and conjectural knowledge. The relationships of secure knowledge representations, which are sparse in the model, to the more prevalent conjectural or speculative knowledge representations will be clarified with the aim of identifying Rome Reborn’s underlying epistemological structure. Analysis of Rome Reborn in this manner holds the potential to advance the methodological discourse in the digital humanities for the visual representation of knowledge when multiple forms of knowledge require systemization and when levels of uncertainty are high.

Jul 21

The hermeneutics of data representation


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Plenary Session
Sperberg-McQueen, Michael. Black Mesa Technologies (www.blackmesatech.com)

Title: The hermeneutics of data representation

When we consult a file on disk, or receive a data stream on a network port, we see a sequence of bits. What does it mean? And can we tell the difference between a meaningful sequence of bits and garbage? Any work involving the machine-readable representation of knowledge must consider both how to validate the representation mechanically (to detect and possibly recover from transmission or storage errors) and how to verify the information semantically and reason about it systematically. The talk will survey some possible approaches to each of these problems and point to current technologies that seem promising in addressing them. At another level, however, data representation has another kind of meaning. Like any cultural artifact, a data representation tells a story about the culture that made it. What do our choices of data representation say about our culture? And what does XML have to do with Kant’s definition of enlightenment?ls a story about
the culture that made it. What do our choices of data representation say about our culture? And what does XML have to do with Kant’s definition of enlightenment?

Jul 21

Breaking the Historian’s Code: Finding Patterns of Historical Representation


Representing Knowledge in the Digital Humanities (Saturday, September 24, 2011)
Conference Schedule


Shaw, Ryan. Assistant Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Title: Breaking the Historian’s Code: Finding Patterns of Historical Representation

Abstract: Historical narrative is a rich and complex form of knowledge representation. In The Savage Mind Lévi-Strauss described what he called “the historian’s code” (p. 259): the recursive conceptual structure that enables historians to represent the past as broadly or as narrowly as they wish. This structure fades into the background when we fall under the spell of a good historical narrative, and we feel that we are experiencing the past “as it happened” rather than a representation of it. This can blind us to the possibility of other representations of the past. The traditional remedy for this blindness has been to study more history: reading multiple overlapping narratives is what enables us to locate the specific point of view in each one (Ankersmit, 1983, p. 219). By comparing narratives that select different sets of events at different levels of specificity, the historian’s code can be made visible. New techniques for “distant reading” of digitized texts promise to offer new ways of seeing the contours of difference in perspective that distinguish historical narratives. I am currently exploring the use of natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify events in historical narratives and group them into narrative chains at different levels of specificity. The goal is to help readers understand historical discourse by deriving alternative representations that can be more easily manipulated, visualized and compared than the original narratives. In this initial stage the project is focused on two sets of documents related to the civil rights movement: 300 interview transcripts from the Southern Oral History Program1 and the full text of 87 books on the civil rights movement published by the UNC Press.2 The specific NLP techniques being employed are named entity recognition, event extraction, and event chain mining. Named entity recognition involves identifying named entities (people, organizations, events) in texts and linking them to authoritative identifiers in databases containing additional facts about those entities. Event extraction involves identifying sentences that communicate some event, e.g. a strike, a protest, or a legislative act. Specifically, event extraction involves training a classifier to match sentences to a semantic frame, a conceptual structure that describes a particular type of event along with its participants and setting. To identify passages narrating more complex events we must extract not just individual events, but chains of events from texts. The procedure of identifying commonly occurring event chains from a global set of extracted event frames is known as event chain mining. The identified event chains can then be used as schemas or story templates for exploring the corpus, or event chains drawn from different parts of the corpus can be compared and contrasted (e.g. those drawn from oral histories versus those drawn from scholarly monographs).

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Ankersmit, Frank R. Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1983. 1 www.sohp.org/ 2 lcrm.lib.unc.edu/voice/

Older posts «

Skip to toolbar