Reading Assignment: The .textual Condition - Qingyu Cai
The born-digital data and texts are different in scale and complexity, posing enormous challenges for digital archivists and digital humanities researchers. As mentioned in the reading, accessibility to born-digital collections, for instance, is necessary for digital humanities researchers. Since the born-digital data is changing fast every day and even every second, it is essential for them to timely get access to the dataset. In the final project, we have two questions while trying to find collections of Dutch art in the US. The first is access to online digital collections, and the second is the continuously changing dataset of Dutch art collections in the US when new pieces are found, or new donors emerge. The digital dataset, compared to the non-digital one, should incorporate the technology to accustom the features of timely change. Besides, digital archivists and digital humanists both need hands-on retro-tech know-how. Utilizing the tools and technologies learned from the mini-projects in our final project is helpful. And the tools we have learned and used contain various aspects and functions, including web scraping, interactive mapping, data visualization, etc. Without a broader knowledge of tools and hands-on experiences, it is hard for digital humanists to apply theoretical methods into practices and realize the project. However, the emergence of new-generation technologies also brings a variety of complexities and challenges to archival frameworks. Since these technologies are also emerging, some might have limitations and bugs. So, it is also critical to gain the attention of technologists to help improve the stability and features of tools. All in all, we still need to have confidence that new technologies also bring new opportunities for research and experimentation, not just questions and problems.