Getting Started

Overview

Questions

• What does digitalisation mean for the humanities?
  
• How is digitalisation changing the humanities?

Objectives

After completing this episode, participants should be able to

• providing a basic explanation of the theoretical and methodological implications of working with data.

Introduction

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digitalisation profoundly impacts the humanities by transforming how knowledge is produced, accessed, and interpreted. Almost everything today is reduced to data, interconnected through processes of digitization, visualization, and publication. Culture and history are increasingly manifested in networked forms, a development greatly enhanced by digital technologies. In this context, data and metadata play essential roles. This lesson is developed as an introduction to the meaning of data and metadata in the Humanities. Learners will get familiar with concepts of data and metadata as well as formats such as XML and JSON and metadata standards.

Exploratory Questions

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Take a moment to reflect:

• Where do you get your information?
• How do you write your texts?
• How do you connect with institutions, both academically and professionally?
• Do you rely on paper copies of archival documents, or do you use digital photos of them?
• Have you ever visited an archive to conduct research in person?
• Have you ever explored a museum’s (or library’s) website to access digital resources?

Think about how many aspects of your work and daily life are now digital and how much of this vast digitalisation feels like second nature.

Challenge

Reflect on the last topic you worked on. Look for online resources that could support your research or deepen your understanding. What challenges did you encounter when researching or interpreting information published online?

digitalisation profoundly impacts the humanities by transforming how knowledge is produced, accessed, and interpreted. Almost everything today is reduced to data, interconnected through processes of digitization, visualization, and publication. Culture and history are increasingly manifested in networked forms, a development greatly enhanced by digital technologies.

In this context, data and metadata play an essential roles. Data refers to raw information such as texts, images, or records, while metadata provides context — descriptions, tags, or details about how and when the data was created.

The foundation of digitalisation is the creation of data. Whether it’s text, image, or sound, everything is converted into data that must be described and organized. This is where metadata, i.e. information about the data, becomes crucial.

When working with digital resources, both data and metadata are critical for organizing, searching, and interpreting information. Your challenges with doing research online reflect the complexities of managing these elements. These complexities include ensuring accuracy, maintaining context, and effectively handling large amounts of information. Before moving to the more hands-on parts of the lesson, let’s briefly discuss the areas in which digitization is important for the humanities.

1. Transformation of Research Methods

Digital tools allow researchers to work with large amounts of data, such as scanned texts, images, or historical documents. Techniques like text mining, pattern recognition, and data visualization help uncover new insights that traditional methods can’t easily achieve. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with these methods. Understanding the concepts of data and metadata is the first step into these topics. The digitization of collections in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums provides easy online access to a wealth of historical and cultural materials. This enables researchers to study sources from anywhere in the world, significantly broadening the scope of their work.

2. Changes in Dissemination of Knowledge and Impact on Teaching and Learning

Digital platforms have democratized access to research by enabling open-access publishing, allowing scholars to share their work with a global audience without the barriers of print publication. Digital humanities projects often combine text, audio, video, and interactive elements, creating more dynamic and engaging forms of scholarship. This shifts how research is presented and consumed, moving beyond customary academic articles or monographs. Digital platforms facilitate more interactive and collaborative forms of learning.

3. Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Digitization helps preserve cultural heritage by creating digital copies of physical artefacts, texts, and sites, preserving their digital model despite their physical decay.

4. Philosophical and Ethical Implications

The digital turn in the humanities raises important questions about the nature of knowledge, authorship, and authenticity in the digital age. Scholars critically examine how digital tools shape our understanding of culture, identity, and history. Digital tools can democratize knowledge but also reinforce biases, depending on how they are designed and used.

5. Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Digital humanities are inherently interdisciplinary, bringing together traditional humanities scholars with computer scientists and data analysts. This collaboration leads to new research questions, methods, and forms of knowledge.

Key Points

Areas where digitization is important:

• research methods
• dissemination
• cultural heritage
• collaboration
• preservation