Category: Features

TEI and Libraries: New Avenues for Digital Literacy?

In this post, Harriett Green looks at how libraries can use TEI to advance digital literacy. For further reading, the author has also provided a list of recommended resources.

A prominent theme of the TEI 2012 Annual Members Meeting and Conference was how to make TEI an even more viable tool for scholarly discourse and analysis. This theme was quite fortuitous, because this was the focus on my paper presentation at the conference: I am exploring how libraries should expand their involvement in TEI beyond applying it in their digitized collections, and I proposed that libraries can approach the TEI as a method of promoting digital literacy.

The Text Encoding Initiative, better known as TEI, is one of the longest enduring and core sub-specialties of digital humanities scholarship, and was first developed in 1987 by scholars who sought to make their digitized texts more flexible for computational analysis and mining.[1] Since the mid-1990s, the presence of TEI in academic libraries has largely been found in digital collections. There is a long and complex history of libraries creating rich digital collections with extensive TEI mark-up, contributing to research initiatives, and developing best practices on the use of TEI.[2]

But I believe that the current and future potential for the TEI in humanities research and scholarship can only be fully realized if TEI mark-up skills are continually taught in order to build a growing base of users. As such, I presented a paper at the TEI Annual Meeting that explored the questions: How have libraries and information professionals helped to sustain the TEI user community, and what are the possibilities for the future?

For the initial study presented in the paper, I interviewed five librarians from research libraries at the University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, and Indiana University who have been extensively involved in supporting and teaching the TEI at their libraries.  From their responses, I outlined three particular facets of library support of the TEI: Teaching, tutorials, and tools. In the interviews, I learned that librarians teach TEI encoding and XML to their campus faculty and students in environments ranging from graduate seminars to campus-wide workshops. Other librarians have created online tutorials that provide widely-accessible portals to self-directed learning of the TEI for their campus community and the larger scholarly community. And other libraries are developing databases and tools that facilitate text mining with TEI.

[pullquote]The teaching of XML and TEI can be a crucial way for libraries to make new inroads with their constituents in digital and information literacies.[/pullquote]In my analysis, these interviews began to reveal that through these research services for the TEI, libraries can promote digital literacy: The dissemination of TEI through instruction and research services can be critically linked to concepts of digital literacy. The librarian interviewed from Virginia strongly felt that “I feel that TEI is still an important thing for faculty and students to know, and I still continue to support it.” The librarian from Indiana University also noted that in the English graduate course she taught on applying TEI for the Victorian Women Writers Project, the way that students read texts was transformed: “It changed the way they read,” she said. “You could see it when they were encoding that they were reading every single word and noting every punctuation mark, and that they were reading in a way they hadn’t before.”  As such, faculty and students’ ability to translate texts into a format for digital use could be construed as a skill falling within the tenets of digital literacy.

Two definitions for digital literacy, drawn from among several working definitions, are most appropriate for this discussion. Education researchers Aharon Aviram and Yoram Eshet-Alkalai created a now widely-adopted 5-part holistic frame for digital literacy that contains the sub-areas of photo-visual literacy, reproduction literacy, information literacy, branching literacy, and socio-emotional literacy.[3] The other definition is a comprehensive framework proposed by the DigEuLit Project, which defines digital literacy as:

The awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital tools and facilities to identify, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, analyse and synthesize digital resources, construct new knowledge, create media expressions, and communicate with others, in the context of specific life situations, in order to enable constructive social action; and to reflect upon this process.

In this light, the TEI is well positioned to be considered as a partner in outcomes for digital literacy. As more and more texts are digitized, TEI is a critical tool for digital publishing initiatives and facilitating the text mining research and distant reading of a corpus of thousands of digitized texts.  The teaching initiatives, learning objects, and educational tools for TEI profiled in this paper as well as other existing ones, all empower students and faculty to build digital literacy skills in creating, analyzing, and preserving digital manifestations of texts and textual data they study in their research.  As Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan articulate in an EduCAUSE Quarterly editorial, “Using the same skills used for centuries—analysis, synthesis and evaluation—we must look at digital literacy as another realm within which to apply elements of critical thinking”[4].

SGML, the initial mark-up language used for the TEI, was recognized early on as a critical tool for education and an 1996 Computers in Libraries article notes that “TEI gives students in today’s educational system access to historical and current information.” TEI, the article states, was among the types of SGML mark-up that “provide steppingstones to address issues of information access and reuse in education and research”[5]. Digital literacy strives to create learners who are critically thinking about the ways in which they engage and manipulate digital resources.

Melissa Terras notes in her study of the TEI By Example tutorials that “It is understood that much intellectual and temporal effort goes into marking up textual material with suitable granularity to facilitate in depth analysis and manipulation of textual material”[6]. Libraries are institutions that are committed to the promotion and teaching of information literacy, and the teaching of XML and TEI can be a crucial way for libraries to make new inroads with their constituents in digital and information literacies. Ultimately, I see libraries do have a role in helping educate users in the digital tools used for DH research, and ultimately, I believe we can help more and more scholars revise their research methodologies to adapt to digital scholarship.

[1] Richard Giordano, “The Documentation of Electronic Texts Using Text Encoding Initiative Headers: An Introduction,” Library Resources & Technical Services 38, no. 4 (1994): 389-402.

[2] See the recently-updated “Best Practices for TEI in Libraries,” Version 3.0, October 2011.

[3] Aharon Aviram and Yoram Eshet-Alkalai, “Towards a Theory of Digital Literacy: Three Scenarios for Next Steps.” European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning (2006).

[4] Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan, “Connecting the Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century,” EduCAUSE Quarterly 2 (2006): 8-10.

[5] SGML Open Staff, “SGML in Education: the TEI and ICADD Initiatives,” Computers in Libraries 16, no. 3 (1996): 26-28.

[6] Melissa Terras, Ron Van den Branden, and Edward Vanhoutte, “Teaching TEI: The Need for TEI by Example,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 24, no. 3 (2009): 297-306.

Digital Humanities & Cultural Heritage, or, The Opposite of Argumentation

An attempt to storify the Twitter feed from the DH Topic Modeling Workshop (at least the second half of it)

Back in August, Miriam Posner’s post “What are some challenges to doing DH in the library?” initiated a wide-ranging conversation in the blogosphere examining the relationship between DH and libraries. As the dh+lib blog gets a’rolling, it seems useful both to revisit Miriam’s post, but also remind ourselves of the potential DH holds to enable new modes of discovery, knowledge, and interpretation, both for those in the academy and those in the broader field of cultural heritage.

Miriam cited a host of challenges to doing DH in libraries, including insufficient training, lack of authority, organizational stasis, overcautiousness, and lack of professional incentive. Along with a wealth of comments, the post also elicited responses by Michael Furlough, The Library Loon, and by Trevor Muñoz. As the Loon noted, many of the challenges described in these posts and the comments are issues applicable to any creative or forward-looking initiative within a library. Many readers here can no doubt attest to that truth.

The post that resonated most with me, however, was Trevor Muñoz’s assertion that DH is not just something librarians support through instruction or as liaisons or project managers, but is something that librarians themselves should be actively undertaking. As Trevor acknowledges, he has a unique occupational role straddling both a traditional academic library and a DH center; and as DH becomes more prevalent within academia, I imagine we will see more of his type of dual-appointment roles.

At the same time, I think Trevor’s point can be extrapolated even further to encompass how DH tools, methods, and technologies have the potential to help enhance and evolve a wealth of professional practices beyond academia and across all of cultural heritage. It is this ability to reinvigorate the work of non-academics, such as librarians, archivists, and collection managers, that has many of us in cultural heritage excited about DH as an emerging idiom within memory institutions. As the work of DH centers like CHNM and MITH gain more exposure outside the confines of academia, the broader cultural heritage community will better understand how DH can, as the recent book Digital_Humanities asserts, “open up important new spaces for exploring humanity’s cultural heritage and for imagining future possibilities using the transmeta methods and genres of the digital present.”

But that’s the gauzy version — some examples please! The attendance of a number of librarians, archivists, and other cultural heritage workers at the recent Topic Modeling workshop at MITH (#dhtopic for the twitterati; GDoc of notes) was a good example of this community’s interest in the promise of topic modeling as a tool to enhance discovery and rethink many fundamental practices around collection management and accessibility.  As one of the non-academics in attendance, I was there to better understand how the enviable work of the talented DHers in the crowd can be adapted or transplanted (or, hell, brick-through-window’ed) into everyday practices in libraries, archives, and museums.

What galvanizes many of us working in cultural heritage is how DH tools and practices will enable us to move beyond the traditional methodologies of description of, and access to, archival or cultural collections. These traditional practices, holdovers from a world of physical materials and all the attendant requirements of arrangement, bulk, and storage, have also been fundamentally subjective. Catalogs, finding aids, LCSH — all are products of interpretive biases. That inherent subjectivity engendered a minor, if ongoing, crisis of conscience once contemporary criticism called into question the façade of objectivity in the management of cultural and historical materials (see, for instance, in archival studies, the work of Terry Cook, Heather MacNeil, and David Bearman). But tools like topic modeling, text mining, data visualization, and other methods of distant reading have the power to obviate (or at least largely reduce) the interpretive imposition of the cultural heritage professional at the point of access. They will allow collection stewards to refocus their efforts on providing the tools necessary for users to interpret and understand materials instead of focusing on the descriptions and classifications that group or arrange them.

Because of this, when discussing topic modeling and its promise for cultural heritage at the workshop, I was less fretful of the fallibility of the algorithmic presumptions of Latent Dirichlet allocation and more interested in what I’ll call DH’s confrontational potential — something similar to Mark Sample’s declaration of “an insurgent humanities.” Trevor Owens, in his cogent post about the tweets from #dhtopic, captured something of this seeming divide, noting the assumed disjunction between the exploratory and the evidentiary and how DH dialogues often run on two parallel tracks, one focusing on the freewheeling use of DH tools for discovery and the other on the use of DH tools to validate a specific argument. Here, the “generative discovery” possible with computational tools (akin to Stephen Ramsay’s “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around“) is merely prologue to the overall process of building an evidence-based defense “against alternative explanations.”

But for librarians, archivists, and collection managers, there is no need to take that next step — enabling alternative explanations is entirely the goal of supporting accessibility and building or providing discovery tools. Argumentation or justification, while essential to scholarly knowledge production, is counter to the goals of the collection manager in describing and making available records. Our traditional methods of making materials available (taxonomic, ontological — the finding aid, the OPAC) are complicated by all sorts of logical or illogical interpretations and subjectivity. Tools like topic modeling offer the ability to bypass that interpolation, that annotative interruption, and hand users and researchers the tools to construct their own topics, queries, pathways, and meanings.

While subjectivity may be inescapable when it comes to archival appraisal and collection acquisition policies, librarians and archivists strive for anonymity and objectivity when creating systems of discovery. We strive for something beyond the influence of the idiographic. But even more than that it is the ability to enable simultaneous and, especially, contradictory means of discovery and interpretation. The more context we can provide the better; the more contradiction and interpretation we can enable, the stronger are our discovery tools. This is the opposite of argumentation. DH tools and methods offer, then, if not an antidote to the immutability of traditional descriptive and discovery methods, then at least a confrontational alternative and a substantive corrective.

That one collection of resources can give different users different outcomes and support contradictory arguments may sound too post-structuralist or relativist for some. But I think it signals a healthy reassessment for cultural heritage institutions who for too long have placed the collection manager — the librarian, the archivist, the collection manager — at the gate of discovery and access. The digital humanities have the potential to change the nature of that equation, to upset established methods of description and access, and to reaffirm the role of the cultural heritage professional as essential to preservation, accessibility, and usability of information and the cultural record. Here’s to making this blog and the dh+lib discussion group a place to explore how that affirmation is happening.

Evaluating DH Work: Guidelines for Librarians

In this post, Zach Coble explores the benefits of creating guidelines for the evaluation of librarians’ digital humanities work for the purposes of hiring, appointment, tenure, and promotion, and offers a basic framework for what those guidelines might look like.

This post was published in the Journal of Digital Humanities, volume 1, issue 4.

Digital humanities (DH), as well as related fields such digital media studies and digital libraries, have presented many opportunities for libraries. These include the establishment of DH centers, the development of new data standards, new forms of scholarly communication, the creation of new resources (and novel ways of asking questions of those resources), and the development of new tools for scholarship and accessing collections.[1] However, traditional modes of evaluation do not address many of the key aspects of DH work. As librarians become more involved in DH and begin to take on the title of “Digital Humanities Librarian,” how can we ensure that their work will be appropriately reviewed? While some librarians work individually on personal DH projects or scholarship, most collaborate with faculty, fellow librarians, and information technologists across campus and across institutions. The collaborative nature of DH work often blurs the lines when it comes to defining individual’s responsibilities and contributions. Similarly, new forms of scholarly output, such as a website rather than a paper or presentation, present additional challenges for those tasked with evaluating DH work.

Written guidelines for evaluation ensure that projects are reviewed fairly and provide a clear path for job hiring and advancement. Libraries clearly understand the importance of assessment and evaluation. The ACRL has guidelines for the evaluation of tenure track librarians and for those without faculty status. In 2010, Megan Oakleaf made waves with her Value of Academic Libraries report, which utilized existing assessment measures, such as college students’ information literacy skills, to demonstrate the positive impact of libraries. As the field of DH continues to grow, libraries will increasingly be called upon to dedicate time and resources to supporting this work. In order to encourage more libraries to support DH, to provide a framework that will encourage individual librarians to participate in DH, and to acknowledge and reward excellent work, libraries should develop guidelines for evaluation of librarians engaging in DH work.

Although librarians are often cited as important collaborators in DH projects, librarianship as a profession lacks a coordinated approach to DH. There are many reasons for this, such as the broad interdisciplinarity and rapidly evolving nature of DH, which makes it difficult to articulate a large-scale response. Yet it also stems from the fact that library involvement in DH varies across institutions: some libraries at large research-intensive universities host active DH centers while many small schools (as well as public libraries, special libraries, and so forth) are only vaguely aware of DH, if at all. [pullquote]A framework for evaluating DH work performed by librarians would ideally be one piece of a program to address DH from libraries.[/pullquote]In a recent survey by the Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Humanities Discussion Group, most of the librarians who responded did not have DH in their job title or description. Equally diverse are the types of work that librarians contribute to DH projects. A 2011 report on DH in libraries by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) noted that DH projects often call upon librarians for consultation and project management, technical and metadata support, instructional services, and resource identification.

A framework for evaluating DH work performed by librarians would ideally be one piece of a program to address DH from libraries. Such a program, possibly from the Association of College and Research Libraries, might also include criteria for undertaking digital projects and best practices for doing DH work. As the 2011 ARL report notes, “The general lack of policies, protocols, and procedures has resulted in a slow and, at times, frustrating experience for both library staff and scholars. This points toward the need for libraries to coordinate their efforts as demand for such collaborative projects increases.” Without an organized response, librarians lack the incentives, resource support, institutional backing, and network of colleagues necessary to be successful.[2] On the other hand, a coordinated approach could encourage more librarians to get involved in DH, motivate individual libraries to adopt related policies specific to their local needs, foster greater participation among libraries in the DH community, and create the demand for increased training opportunities–both as continuing education for professionals and in library schools.

Other organizations, such as the Modern Language Association, NINES, and 18thConnect, have recognized the distinct nature of DH work and adopted separate guidelines for the evaluation of digital projects.[3] Libraries would benefit from having a similar set of guidelines. Of course, every institution is different and no one set of guidelines will work for everyone. Also, the context and scope of a librarian’s contribution should be taken into account–a librarian asked to consult on metadata standards should not be faulted if the project fails to follow web design best practices. While acknowledging such nuances, there are certain baseline ideas that should be addressed. The following list draws upon existing guidelines for the evaluation of DH work and incorporates additional elements specific to libraries. It is intended to help generate conversation and is not meant to be comprehensive.

Peer Review
  • Traditional concepts of peer review still apply: review projects for impact, intended audience, originality, and excellence based on content, form, interpretation.
  • There are peer review groups specifically for DH projects (e.g. NINES, 18thConnect, MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions); qualified librarians could seek to join these groups or possibly to create a similar group comprised of librarians.
Nature of Digital Projects
  • How does the digital component contribute something that couldn’t otherwise be communicated?
  • The project should be evaluated in the medium in which it was created.
  • Reviewers should acknowledge the ongoing nature of digital projects (i.e. lack of a “finished product”).
Collaboration
  • Did the project consult outside experts to assess the project’s content and technical structure?
  • How does the project relate with other digital scholarship projects?
Usability
  • Is there an intentional and appropriate organization of information?
  • Does the project use accepted standards for web design, metadata, and encoding?
  • Is there interoperability with other sites, such as OAI-PMH?
  • Is there a thoughtful balance between design, content, and medium?
Sustainability
  • How does the project address issues of digital preservation?
  • Is there documentation or is the site code made available?
Other Considerations
  • Was the project grant funded?
  • Did the project result in any conference presentations or print publications?
References and Further Reading

[1]      See Association of Research Libraries, Digital Humanities, SPEC Kit 326; Micah Vandegrift, “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in the Library?“; Miriam Posner, “Digital Humanities and the Library: A Bibliography“; Matthew Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities.
[2]     For a discussion of barriers to DH in libraries, see Miriam Posner, “What are some challenges to doing DH in the library?” ; Trevor Munoz, “Digital humanities in the library isn’t a service“; Mike Furlough, “Some Institutional Challenges to Supporting DH in the Library“; The Library Loon, “Additional hurdles to novel library services.”
[3]     See also University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, Facilitated Peer Review Committee; Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Zotero | Groups > Digital Humanities > Library > Assessment and Evaluation; Modern Language Association, Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions; University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, Promotion & Tenure Criteria for Assessing Digital Research in the Humanities.