Notre première impression du site n’était pas très positive. Nous nous demandions de quoi il s’agissait, puisque le site lui-même ne livre aucun matériel pour regarder, lire ou écouter. Après une recherche plus profonde, nous remarquions que ce site se diffère largement des sites analysés précédemment ; c’est un index de recherche qui fait le lien avec d’autres sites numériques offrant des sources primaires. Pour un historien, ce site est donc indispensable pour faire des recherches, puisqu’il donne accès à d’autres sites web qui livrent des sources primaires.
A ce point positif s’ajoute la possibilité d’effectuer ses recherches par cinq différentes rubriques (langue, pays, époque, type de source et sujet). Cela facilite la recherche, si bien il existe aussi une barre de recherche et l’application d’une recherche plus approfondie.
La rubrique « News & Agenda », informe l’utilisateur sur des expositions, des colloques, des réunions et des discussions sur le sujet de l’Europe et les humanités digitales. « Latest Entries », nous informe sur les nouvelles sources qu’a pu intégrer le site. Ces deux applications sont intéressantes pour ceux qui veulent rester informés sur les nouveautés du site et des réunions sur leur sujet préféré.
Chaque site ou lien d’un site est accompagné par une sorte de métadata, informant l’utilisateur sur son « latest update » et les différents mots clés pour pouvoir retrouver le site et pour le classer. En plus, le site donne des recommandations d’autres sites, liés au sujet de recherche (p.ex. « Archim »[3]. Cela donne aux utilisateurs la possibilité de rester dans son sujet, sans se retrouver sur des sites ne traitant pas la même matière.
Que le site soit en langue anglaise, n’est pas nécessairement un bémol, puisque le site est assez facile à manipuler. Toutefois des connaissances en langue anglaise sont recommandées et toute non-connaissance restreigne ainsi l’utilisation du site.
Quelques pays ne sont pas représentés (Monaco et Andorre par exemple) alors que le Lichtenstein et même le Vatican y sont intégrés. Ceci est dû, soit au fait que les pays n’ont pas de sites avec des sources primaires, soit ne veulent pas participer à ce projet. Mais alors se pose la question des critères d’acceptation et sur le fait que la Chypre est représentée, sans avoir un lien vers un site[4].
Le site est très ciblé et ne s’adresse guère à des tiers qui ne veulent que s’informer et ceux ne vont pas rester sur le site. En outre, l’abondance du matériel pourrait être un problème pour toute recherche mal préparée.
En concluant, le site est très bien fait, il donne la possibilité d’avoir de nombreux liens vers d’autres sites, mais il se peut que l’utilisateur ne sache rien faire avec la quantité du matériel.
“European History Primary Sources” est un site qui est né grâce à une collaboration entre la librairie et le département de l’histoire et de la civilisation de l’institut de l’université européenne de Florence en Italie.
Le but du site est d’offrir à son public un index de recherche, qui regroupe toutes les sources primaires de l’histoire Européenne. Comme le nombre d’archives digitales ne cessent d’agrandir sur le web, il devient de plus en plus difficile de faire le bon choix parmi toutes les offres, afin de trouver la bonne source recherchée. EHPS c’est donc mis comme objectif de résoudre ce problème en proposant à son public une liste de collections les plus importantes des sources digitales primaires sur l’histoire européenne et des pays européens.
Ce qui m’a plu sur le site c’est sa structure il est divisé en pays, en langue, en période en sujet puis en type de sources, cela rend une recherche vraiment agréable. Il utilise pas que des sources classiques comme les journaux et des manuscripts mais aussi des sources un peu plus modernes comme les films des vidéos et même des websites.
Malgré ces aspects positifs il faut noter quelques inconvénients. D’abord la page d’accueil du site est en anglais la connaissance de cette langue est donc indispensable pour son utilisateur. Hors pour un site européen il serait peut-être préférable d’ajouter d’autres langues, cela atteindrai certainement aussi un public plus large. Ensuite il est tout a fait remarquable que 42 pays participent au site mais malheureusement il le font de manière divergentes. Alors que la Chypre est un des pays membres, on ne trouve ici aucun lien qui mènerait vers un site d’archives digitales, cela est bien sur totalement différent pour l’Allemagne qui en propose en grand nombre. De plus le site essaye de raconter une histoire de l’Europe alors que la selection des sources ce fait à travers des pays européens. Il faudrait peut-être isolé le drapeau européen du reste pour qu’il ne soit pas oublié. Le but du site est bien sur de mener vers d’autres sites mais on risque alors d’oublier totalement à travers ses recherches. Il reste encore à noter que le site est très accessible et facile à utiliser pour un historien mais il ne s’adresse pas vraiment au grand public qui risque vite à quitter ce site.
According to the description in its ‘About’-section, this website aims to be an archive for European television history, allowing researchers, students and the general public access to an unprecedented amount of material from a wide variety of audiovisual archives across Europe [http://euscreen.eu/about.html]. In the following lines, I would like to comment specifically on two aspects, namely the European ‘scope’ of the website and its definition of “Europe”.
Firstly then, the ‘scope’ of the website: by this, I mean that the immense amount of audiovisual material available is repeatedly labelled as being “European”. On every last page, the letters ‘EU’ or the different varieties of the word ‘European’ are mentioned over and over again. In my opinion, this goes so far as to conceal (especially to the non-academic public) that this particular way of connecting the material is in itself already one possible narrative among many. For instance, I think that the presentation of the material on the website over-stresses the similarities between the individual elements rather than their differences. The side-by-side availability of the material automatically suggests content-related connections between the individual clips where maybe there aren’t any. Of course, the sheer availability of the material means that any researcher (or more generally speaking, every viewer) can also choose to look at the differences. In practice though, I would argue that the visual presentation and virtually every line of text on the website lead the viewer in the opposite direction. A case in point, at least in my opinion, is the image-movie (or trailer) of the website as it is available both in the ‘About’-section on the website itself and on Vimeo [http://vimeo.com/78342872]. In that clip (at 1:33 minutes to be specific), the words “Let us be your guide” are displayed. Although not meant that way, this can also point to the fact that the creators of the website choose one way of interpreting (i.e. a ‘scope’ for) the material over the other(s). Of course, they have to offer some sort of narrative if they want the broader public to be able to make sense of the huge amount of resources available. Thus, I don’t mean to judge their way of proceeding, I would merely like to point out that it comes at a price.
Secondly, the definition of which countries and regions constitute Europe in the context of this website caught my attention, which is why I would like to comment on it here. The ‘EUscreen’- project combines material from 30 institutions from 21 EU member states. I am not so much interested in the fact that not all current members of the EU are on the list, even though it is still worth asking why. Rather, I have noticed that two Swiss institutions appear on the list of partners (one of them merely as an associate partner) [http://euscreen.eu/partners.html]. At first sight, this seems logical: with Switzerland being situated in the geographical centre of the European continent, why would one not include it? On second thought though, it reveals that the definition of ‘Europe’ in the context of the website isn’t strictly political. While 30 institutions from 21 countries constitute make impressive list, one has to ask whether it would not be beneficial to have, for instance, Turkish or Russian or Belorussian material available as well. Actually, it might be even better to go one step further and ask why none of these countries are on the list as of yet. Personally, I suspect that this goes back directly to the ‘EUscreen’-project being financed mostly by EU-institutions such as the European Commission. As a student or researcher, additional material from outside the ‘EU28’ would doubtlessly add tremendous value to the website. I wonder though whether this would be possible with the given financial background of the project. Thus, the ‘EUscreen’-website points at one of the pitfalls of digital archives, namely that they require a tremendous budget both to be set up and maintained. In my opinion, it is evident that anyone investing on a large scale into such a project would influence it in one way or another. Again, this is supposed to be more of a diagnosis than an allegation.
EUscreen est un site ayant créé, grâce à la collaboration d’une vingtaine d’institutions culturelles européennes, un important dépôt de sources digitalisées, étant de nature audio-visuelles, sonores et y compris quelques documents et photographies. Ces sources sont agrémentés de métadonnées soutenant le matériel et celui-ci est contextualisé à son tour dans une analyse historique, politique, sociale etc.
Le but du projet est de préserver l’héritage culturel, c’est à dire montrer d’un côté l’histoire de la télévision européenne mais aussi de raconter comment certains éléments voir événements européens, bref l’histoire européenne (musique, faits divers, en relation avec l’éducation, l’art, etc.) est représentée à la télévision.
La façon d’utiliser le site est alors intéressante à plusieurs niveaux, d’un côté cela promeut une compréhension et une connaissance plus vaste des autres pays, de l’autre cela permet de voir comment la télévision se situe d’un point de vue technologique, politique, culturel, social dans un contexte national et transnational voir européen. Finalement, l’utilisation permet également de voir comment certains événements clés de l’histoire européenne sont perçus à travers différentes ‘lentilles”(lenses) à un niveau national, tel que par exemple la chute du mur de Berlin- comment celui-ci est-il perçu en Allemagne, en France, en Grande-Bretagne et ainsi de suite. Ce qui est alors une particularité de ce site est qu’il ne propose pas une narration sur l’identité européenne en soi, mais propose à l’utilisateur de se la constituer lui-même à l’aide des sources proposées.
Cela va de pair avec ce que la commission européenne avait déjà quémandée dans son rapport “New renaissance” de 2011 en établissant “In a time when more and more cultural goods are consumed online […] it is crucial to bring culture online (and, in fact, a large part of it is already there). If we don’t pursue this task, we run the risk of progressively eroding and losing what has been the foundation of European countries and civilization in the last centuries.” (source: cité d’après Badenoch Alexander,Harmonized Spaces, Dissonant Objects, Inventing Europe? Mobilizing Digital Heritage in: Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011: 295–315). A cet escient, la Commission européenne avait établi qu’il fallait trouver de nouveaux moyens pour l’utilisateur d’engager avec son héritage culturel. Le pari est alors réussi pour ce site.
Cependant, quelques réserves quant à certains points du site sont à soulever. En premier lieu, le problème est que chaque pays ne contribue pas uniformément tel qu’à l’exemple du Luxembourg, encore le Portugal (avec des sources peu nombreuses) etc. ce qui détermine automatiquement une sorte d'”exclusion” de cette nation de l’histoire européenne telle qu’elle est présentée et avancée dans le site. Si le pays en question ne peut offrir assez de sources digitales, cela induit forcément le lecteur à ne plus accorder trop d’importance à ce pays dans une certaine recherche et le redirige vers autre chose. Dans ce cas cela pourrait induire à une compréhension incomplète, cela soulève également une concentration portée sur un groupe voir un seul pays plutôt que l’Europe en soi. De plus, certains pays ne font que depuis peu usage de l’archivage de matériel audio-visuel et ils doivent donc s’adapter à une vitesse importante aux nouveaux critères de cette digitalisation et toutes les lois et réglementations s’y attachant (problèmes du copyright, lois sur l’internet et le consommateur, terms and use, etc.) afin de pouvoir collaborer de façon égale à la construction d’une mémoire collective européenne.
Le site internet Inventing Europe, qui se base sur la collaboration novatrice entre historiens et institutions d’heritage culturel à travers l’Europe, à savoir le Deutsches Museum (musée allemand sur la technologie et la science), le Dokumentationzentrum Alltagskultur der DDR (musée allemand spécialisé sur l’histoire quotidienne de la DDR), le Hungarion Museum for Science Technology and Transport (musée hongrois sur la science, la technologie et le transport), le Museum Boerhaave musée néerlandais sur l’histoire de la science et de la médecine), le Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (musée et centre de documentation néerlandais sur le son et la vision) , le Science Center NEMO (plus grand centre de sciences aux Pays-Bas), le Museum Center Vapriikki (Finlande), le Norsk Teknisk Museum (musée national norvégien de la technologie, industrie, science et médecine), The Science Museum London (musée anglais sur l’histoire ayant ses points forts en histoire de la science de l’Ouest, la technologie et la médecine), The Tropical Research Instituteof Portugal (mandataire spécial envers les communautés lusophones ayant pour but, à travers la recherche, le dévelopment des sciences humaines et naturelles) et l’Istituto per la storia dell’età contemporanea (Italie), est d’une part un projet pilote pour API (application programming interface) du portal européen digital Europeana et d’autre part issu de The Foundation of History of Technology, créée en 1988 et animée et supportée par l’Eindhoven University of Technology afin d’initier et supporter la recherche académique à grande échelle (national et international) dans le domaine de l’histoire de la technologie. Elle a pour principal objet l’exploration de l’histoire, la culture et la formation de l’Europe tout en dépassant le cadre national
Etant donné ce large support de la part de divers institutions européenes, il n’est pas étonnant que le site, qui offre 6 expositions (Daily Lives, Infrastructures, Governance, Media, Globalisation, Knowledge) subdivisées en 45 visites (tours) accompagné de metadatas (petite biographie) concernant la/le(s) curateur(s)/trice(s), plus de 1000 objets malheureusement non inventarisés et par conséquent difficilement retrouvables, des informations sur le fondateur, les partenaires et sponsors du site et un espace éducation, s’adresse à trois grandes catégories: le grand public, les institutions d’héritage culturel et le corps académique (professeurs d’universités, étudiants) et scientifique (historiens); les deux derniers pouvant faire requête de participation au site.
Outre The Foundation of History of Technologie (donc aussi l’Eindhoven University of Technology) et SHT Corporate Programme (programme établi par The Foundation of History of Technologie afin de rendre la recherche et sa diffusion possible), le site web compte: SNS REAAL Fonds (fond d’investissement néerlandais supportant les initiatives émanant du domaine artistique & culturel et jeunesse & société), Next Generation Infrastructures (institut de recherche travaillant, en coopération avec des insititutions scientifiques, des acteurs du marché (market players) et organisations gouvernementales, sur l’industrie et la science internationale) et Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, European Science Foundation (fondation qui s’engage à atteindre le plus haut niveau de qualité scientifique en Europe afin de promouvoir la recherche et le progrès), parmi ses sponsors; fait qui renforce la crédibilité envers le corps académique et scientifique.
Notons un problème majeur qui se pose au site, celui du terme Europe. A partir de quand peut-on parler d’Europe? En analysant le site, on remarque que les “débuts” se situent vers le milieu du 19ième siècle, période charnière marqué par la révolution industrielle. Ainsi l’utilisateur du site se voit raconter une histoire basée sur la technologie, qui néglige en quelque sorte d’autres thèmes majeures, tel que la politique par exemple. Néanmoins, ce fait livre à l’utilisateur une autre vue sur l’histoire européenne, histoire qui ne se limite pas qu’au contient mentionné, mais fait aussi le lien avec le colonialisme.
Inventing Europe est le produit d`une collaboration entre historiens et institutions culturelles afin d’établir une histoire transnationale de la culture européenne à travers des images et des objets technologiques.
Le site offre une expérience innovatrice dans sa façon de présenter et d’écrire l’histoire. A travers six grandes expositions, Inventing Europe propose une visite sous forme d’un musée virtuel. Les six expositions traitent de sujets bien spécifiques de l`histoire de la technologie en Europe autour de la vie quotidienne, de l’infrastructure, de la gouvernance, des médias, de la globalisation et des knowledge societies. Organisés en plusieurs rubriques thématiques, chaque sujet est traité par un court article informatif et est accompagné par une source correspondante (photo, texte, carte, vidéo). L’indication de l’auteur de chaque article et les références utilisées attestent la scientificité des textes.
Inventing Europe est également un espace qui fournit une riche collection de sources primaires. Il s`agit avant tout de photos et d’images qui témoignent de l`histoire de la technologie en Europe. Alors que la plupart des sources sont contextualisées par une courte description historique et que le site livre toutes les informations nécessaires sur la source digitalisée, il est regrettable de ne pas retrouver une subdivision thématiques de ces sources. Par contre, la fiabilité de toutes les ressources du site peut être approuvée grâce à leur métadonnées respectives.
Un des objectifs du site est également son utilisation en tant qu`outil d`enseignement. Ainsi, les ressources et les articles proposés par le site ont été intégrés par des professeurs dans différents cours universitaires à travers toute l`Europe.
Pour conclure, Inventing Europe s`adresse à toute personne partageant un intérêt particulier à la construction et à l`évolution de l`Europe à travers la technologie. La subdivision thématique de chaque sujet dans plusieurs dossiers, permet une navigation et une lecture agréable qui ne nécessite pas de pré-requis grâce à une contextualisation historique systématique de chaque thème abordé. Inventing Europe représente ainsi une approche réussie de lecture historique non linéaire mettant l`histoire en rapport direct avec ses propres sources.
This article was established by students of the Master in European Contemporary History at the University of Luxembourg in the context of the course Digital Humanities and has the objective to present a wide range of Digital Humanities projects. By presenting these projects the article will furthermore help to explain what Digital Humanities are.
Contents
1. Introduction
Finally an easy definition of Digital Humanities
Since this article tries to reach every interested reader, from digital humanists to those who are completely new to this emerging discipline, we want to start with a basic definition:
“The Digital Humanities are an area of research, teaching, and creation concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. […] Digital humanities (often abbreviated DH) currently incorporate both digitized and born-digital materials and combine the methodologies from traditional humanities disciplines (such as history, philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, archaeology, music, and cultural studies) and social sciences with tools provided by computing (such as data visualisation, information retrieval, data mining, statistics, text mining) and digital publishing.”
This definition provided by wikipedia explains in a clear way what Digital Humanities are. If this definition doesn’t seem clear to everybody, we are sure that the examples in this article will give the reader a clear idea of the discipline. Since we have started with a basic definition, we now take a brief look back, yes we are historians, how humanities and computer technology came together.
The love story of humanities and digital technology
Frédéric Clavert and Serge Noiret, both historians and experts in Digital Humanities and Digital History, insist that there have been two main stages in the history of computer technology which “have changed the ways they are used in humanities”. ((Cf. Frédéric CLAVERT / Serge NOIRET: Introduction. Digital Humanities and History. A New Field for Historians in the Digital Age. [in:] Frédéric CLAVERT / Serge NOIRET (eds.): L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique. Contemporary History in the Digital Age. Brussels 2013, p. 15-29, esp. p. 18. Hereafter referred to as CLAVERT / NOIRET: Digital Humanities and History.))
The first main stage was the spread of the Personal Computer at the end of the 1970s. Clavert and Noiret say that especially with the development of graphic interfaces like the commonly known Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows and associated softwares like spreadsheets and databases the computer usage became easier and thereby was more and more used in humanities. ((Ibid., esp. p. 18f.)) Peter Haber, historian and expert in Digital Humanities and Digital History, gives the development of the first Personal Computer’s a similar importance. He adds that computer technology thereby slowly established itself and overtook the good old typewriter and that it became a more common “tool” for historians. ((Cf. Peter HABER: Digital Past. Geschichtswissenschaft im digitalen Zeitalter. Munich 2011, p. 25.))
The second stage goes back to the end of the 1980s, with the development of the Internet and in the mid- 1990s with the development of the World Wide Web (WWW). Clavert and Noiret insist that the usage of computer technology in humanities really started to emerge around the 2000s with “the expansion of the possibilities of the web”. ((Cf. CLAVERT / NOIRET: Digital Humanities and History, esp. p. 19.))
What to find in this article?
In the major part of our article we will present some of the projects which have been done in recent years in the context of Digital Humanities. We have chosen 8 projects which we think are interesting: European History Online, Serendip-o-matic, Mapping Luxembourg, Corpus Corporum, Our Marathon, Voyant Tools, the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe and Orbis. We have analyzed a wide range of projects, not only scientific one’s but also fun projects, in order to make our article interesting and not to repeat ourselves. Lastly, we have decided not to go into too much detail since this article shall only be a basic introduction into specific projects. Nevertheless, we think that with the basic information we give, the reader will be able to understand the general concepts and functions of the respective project and will in a next step be able to discover it himself.
2. Projects
European History Online
European History Online (EHO) bases on a cooperation between the Institute of European History in Mainz, the Center for Digital Humanities in Trier and the Bavarian State Library in the year 2010. The project itself is an open-access Web page and has the objective to present the modern History of Europe in a transnational or global perspective, while connecting an interdisciplinary approach (using e.g. Geography, Law studies) with different historical methods (e.g. comparative history, transnational history). ((European History Online Wikipedia « http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_History_Online » (accessed on 21 April 2014)) The chosen time-period of this project reinforces this idea, because European History Online starts in the mid 15th century and ends in 1950. European History Online surpasses thereby the classique narrative of Europe’s History, which often is presented as a History of the European integration. The webpage is bilingual (English, German) and features digitized (e.g. Documents, maps) as well as born-digital (e.g. Texts, documents) sources. Regarding this, the installation of a “language choice” button allows the reader to either read the specific articles in German or in English.
Framed “Language choice” button
Since its creation, European History Online has until now published about 200 born-digital articles, which focus on several topics concerning European History. To the articles are added footnotes which contain among others primary sources such as maps, pictures, statistics and audio as well as video links. In some cases European History Online offers a description of these sources. This type of footnote information is an interesting addition to digital-born articles which isn’t possible in books. For example, in the article “Censorship and Freedom of the Press” by Jürgen Wilke we clicked on the footnote “the Congress Vienna of 1815” and received the following map with a brief description of the Congress of Vienna.
Framed text and footnote “the Congress of Vienna of 1815”
Footnote information “Europe after the Congress of Vienna of 1815”
Furthermore, European History Online uses a Twitter account @ieg_ego, in order to inform readers about new article publications. In conlusion, European History Online is an interesting example because the project shows how Digital Humanities can create new history writing as well as possibilites for publication and can add new aspects to research such as the footnote information.
Serendip-o-matic
Serendip-o-matic is the outcome of the One Week | One Tool project which was held at the University of George Mason in 2013. For one week several digital humanists from different disciplines came together in order to work on one project. In general, Serendip-o-matic is a research engine which combines several online archives in one. The user can copy paste single words or a full text in the research box and Serendip-o-matic identifies the keywords and looks where it can find digitized material in online libraries or archives such as Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America and Flickr Commons. This can allow users to find documents, maps and other digitized sources which stand in the context of his text. The autonomous function can give the research a new look by presenting sources which the user in the first case might not have considered. As an example, we used the wikipedia entry on “World War I”.
Keywords results using the wikipedia text “World War I”Search results using the wikipedia text “World War I”
After the research the user can collect the exact link adresses of the found documents in order to save them. ((Franziska Heimburger: Vos sources vous surpennent avec le Serendip-o-matic. Boîte à outils (published on 2 August 2013) « http://www.boiteaoutils.info/2013/08/vos-sources-vous-surprennent-avec-le.html » (accessed on 18 April 2014)) Furthermore, since Serendip-o-matic is linked to Zotero the user can establish a research, which browses his zotero bibliography. However the uselfulness of Serendip-o-matic is restricted, because only a few online libraries or archives are part of the project. Nevertheless the idea of the tool is interesting because it gives the researcher a different look at the research field which he probably hadn’t envisionned and thereby can lead to new source material.
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Mapping-Luxembourg
“Mapping–Luxembourg” is a cooperation between the National Archives of Luxembourg and the Musée d’histoire de la ville de Luxembourg and has been online since the beginning of March 2014. The project itself allows the user to see a variety of historical maps of the city of Luxembourg. The time span of these maps extends from the 17th to the 21th century. In this sense, the user is able to browse between fifty historical buildings and thirteen regions of the city. In order to access information about a certain building or region, you only need to click on one of the tags you are interested in. By doing so, a brief text about the historical background and the development of the designated building pops up. In addition to this text, depending on the resources, historical maps and pictures over the course of a few centuries appear. Furthermore, it is important to add that this tool is using Google Maps as a basic operator for the project.
Satellite view of Luxembourg with framed “Cercle Municipal”
In total three Luxembourgish institutions helped to gather the document material “Mapping-Luxembourg”: The National Archives, the Musée d’histoire de la ville de Luxembourg and the Photothèque. ((Musée d’histoire de la ville de Luxembourg / Archives nationales de Luxembourg: “Mapping Luxembourg” Historische Karten und Ansichten der Stadt Luxemburg online. « http://www.gouvernement.lu/3578168/Mapping-2014-Communique-D.PDF » (accessed 25 March 2014))) Users can chose between three languages: English/ German/ French, and two viewing formats: Satellite and a Map. ((Cf. Stadtgeschichte aus der Vogelperspektive. Wort.lu (published 19 March 2014) « http://www.wort.lu/de/view/stadtgeschichte-aus-der-vogelperspektive-53296150e4b0b484f80871b8 » (accessed 17 April 2014)))
Slideshow of the “Cercle municipal”, here 1907
To conclude it can be said that this tool is first of all useful for tourists who would like to get some information about the history of the city of Luxembourg. Secondly, residents of Luxembourg and people of Luxembourgish origins might also be interested in having a look at the historical backgrounds of the capital.
Corpus Corporum: Repositorium operum Latinorum apud universitatem Turicensem
Corpus Corporum is a project which was developed at the University of Zürich. In general, Corpus Corporum is a Latin text repository. At the moment users can find 5,785 works in Latin from 2,013 different authors. The corpora covers a huge time span, which includes for example the Old and New Testament of the Bible, Latin texts from antiquity and medieval times (e.g. Aristotle’s Physica, digitalisation of the Patrologia Latina, works of scientific authors, etc…), works from renaissance authors as well as Neo-Latin texts. The Corpus Corporum is a digital text archive which works together with other text repository projects but is also open to private text entries.
Corpus Corporum front page
While the user goes through a text, he can click on a word and thereby receives information on the word form and a translation into English and German. However at this point we insist, that this function isn’t working for every word yet.
Chapter I of Julius Caesars “De Bello Civili”
Word form and translation of “impetratum”
Furthermore the Corporus Corporum features a search engine which allows the user to browse through the uploaded texts and search for specific words, persons or events…
The Corpus Corporum search engine
In conclusion, we think that Corpus Corporum is an interesting tool for students and researchers who work with Latin texts. The platform allows to use a wide range of Latin texts without having to browse the whole web or look up books. We think that especially with the word form and translation function the Corpus Corporum can be helpful in order to make research easier and thereby quicker. If the project manages to overcome function problems and steadily adds new text corpora it could become an important part of scientific research.
Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archives and Wbur Oral History Project
“OurMarathon” is a project which has been established by the Northeastern University of Boston. Our Marathon is an online platform that collects videos, pictures and stories in relation to the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15th 2013. It is a crowd-sourced archive, which means that anyone who has relevant material is able to share it in this online archive. In this sense the user of Our Marathon can browse through the different visual and oral experiences of people that endured the bombings.
Interview with Jimmy Plourde, a Boston fireman, part of the WBUR Oral History Project
It is important for the creators of the project to underline that it´s not merely about what happened during the bombings. Instead, it is much more an attempt to compile a public record of how this tragic incident has affected the lifes of the witnesses. The main goal of this tool is to serve as a long-term memorial of the events that shocked the United States on April 15th 2013. ((Cf. About the Our Marathon Archive. Our Marathon « http://marathon.neu.edu/about » (accessed 26 March 2014)))
Digital image of a poster left at the Boston Marathon memorial in Copley Square (Source: Collection 0247.004 Boston Marathon Temporary Memorial collection)“Our Marathon” submission by Bruce Mendelsohn
From a methodological standpoint Our Marathon a typical Digital Humanities project. This is mainly due to the fact that the creators of this tool combined methods that are used in scientific research, such as “oral history”, with a digital approach.
Voyant Tools
Voyant Tools is a project which is led by Stéfan Sinclair, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at the Mc Gill University and Geoffrey Rockwell, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta. In general, Voyant Tools is a text analysis tool which allows to receive information on the word count and word frequency. The user has the possibility to click on the most frequent words which allows him to directly search for interesting passages. In order to start, the user can copy-paste a text or he can simply upload a document in the tool. As an example, we used the Wikipedia entry on “Digital Humanities”.
Voyant Tools Test: Wikipedia article “Digital Humanities”
In order to see which words appear most in the text the user can click on the “words in the corpus box” function. Furthermore the researcher has the possibility to exclude common language words to make the word frequency analysis more effective.
Words which appeared the most in the text
Moreover, the user has the ability to see in which parts in the text a word was used most with the “word trend” feature by simply clicking on a word in the “cirrus” field or in the “corpus reader”. In addition to this the user can use the function “keywords in context” in order to receive a quick overview in which context the word is used.
“Keywords in Context” function
Voyant Tools is an interesting project example because it shows that Digital Humanities go further than creating archives and born-digital material. Digital Humanities also create new tools which add to scientific working, in this case in critical text analysis. In this sense, the word count of Voyant Tools can be helpful in order to analyse a writer’s narrative. For example, if a historian publishes an article on the history of the world and Voyant Tools displays that the word “Europe” appears much more in his narrative than other continents, then it is probable that the historian writes in a eurocentric way.
Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe
TheCentre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe (CVCE)is a research and documentation center, situated in Sanem (Luxembourg), which treates the European integration process. Hence, the CVCE treats the time-period from 1945 until the present time. The CVCE Team regroups scientists from different disciplines such as economics, contemporary history, european law and political science. Furthermore the CVCE has set up a Digital Humanities Lab (DH Lab) in order to develop new tools which can facilate research as well as the teaching of European Integration studies. Through the medium of Digital Humanities, digitized (e.g. Texts, documents) and born-digital (e.g. Oral history) sources, are being used to create a historial narrative. The website can be read in English as well as in French. In principe, it is divided into three parts: Publications, Oral history, Research and Education. ((Cf. Jeff Koehler: Homepage Review CVCE. h-europe (uploaded 2 July 2012) « http://h-europe.uni.lu/?p=635 » (accessed 16 April 2014)))
CVCE Frontpage
Until now the CVCE has published 28 born-digital articles and projects online. In order to fulfill their slogan: “Knowing the past to build the future”, historical processes, such as the “Origins of the Rome treaties (1955-1958)”, are thematized. Furthermore, the CVCE has published several born-digital interactive maps on the topics: “Europe divisée (1945-1990)”, “Crises et conflits”, “Colonisations et décolonisations”, which have the objective to “create the geopolitical context of the european integration process”. ((CVCE: Interactive maps. The geopolitical context of European integration. « http://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/2013/7/15/667b05cc-0f90-4796-bafd-1f9849cb83a7/publishable_en.pdf » (accessed 19 April 2014))) In the context of “E-Learning”, these interactive maps can be especially helpful for educational purposes, because they allow teachers to demonstrate the development of a crisis or a war much more easily.
In the Oral History category the user can find several audio and videos interviews with 71 “key-players” and “eyewitnesses” in the european integration process as well as their biographies. The interviews can sometimes be watched in full length.
Interview with Georges Berthoin, e. a. Principal Private Secretary to Jean Monnet and Deputy Chief Representative of the ECSC (source: trilateral.org) Part of the Oral History archive
In the last category the user receives information on old and current research and educations projects of the CVCE. Furthermore the CVCE uses a Twitter account @CVCE in order to inform readers about news, calls and publications.
We used the CVCE project first and foremost because it is related to our university but nevertheless we think it is a good example in order to show how Digital Humanities projects create new archives, new publication possibilities as well as teaching material.
Orbis
Orbis is a project which was developped at the University of Stanford through the collaboration of historians and information technology specialists. Mainly, Orbis is a interactive map project which allows the user to calculate how much time and financial cost a transport of people and goods in the Roman Empire around 200 AD took. ((Cf. Curt Hopkins: Travel across the Roman Empire in real time with ORBIS. Google maps for the ancient world. Ars technica (published 18 May 2014) « http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/how-across-the-roman-empire-in-real-time-with-orbis/ » (accessed 14 April 2014))) The historian Walter Scheidel, who is directing the project, has collected several historical sources in order to establish the route calculations. In total 751 sites, which includes urban settlements, promontorys and mountain passes, can be selected. Orbis presents a realistic view because it takes into account month changes, wind changes and sea conditions which effect sea travel. The user can select a point of departure, a destination and several options (network mode, aquatic options, road options, price options). Furthermore, the user has the possibility to calculate the fastest, cheapest or shortest route.
Route calculation: Augusta Treverorum to Roma
Afterwards the user can compare different travel routes in the “results grid”. We compared the fastest travel routes for a foot traveler from Rome (Roma) to Rouen (Rotomagus) in January and July. In our case the user sees that for ancient people the route in winter took longer (in this case 26 days in July and 35 days in January) and was much more expensive (higher costs for donkey, wagon as well as passenger transport) than in summer because the travellers were obliged to take the road over land and couldn’t take the quicker road over sea along the coasts of modern-day France because of different wind patterns and sea conditions. ((Cf. Elijah Meeks: ORBIS Demo: Calculating Routes. Youtube (uploaded 1 Mai 2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwoshD3esdc (accessed 14 April 2014)))
Route calculation: Augusta Treverorum to Roma
The objective of Orbis is helping to understand how the Roman Empire was connected and how the empire was able to control its inhabitants although the different settlements where separated by large distances over land and sea. ((Cf. Understanding Orbis. Orbis « http://orbis.stanford.edu/#understanding » (accessed 14 April 2014))) Furthermore, we think that this project, although it can be criticized for being anachronistic, is useful in order to explain travel in ancient society especially for education purposes by visualising ideas.
3. Conclusion
What do we learn from the analyzed projects? The main characteristics of the analyzed Digital Humanities projects are that they allow to “archive”, “visualize” and “publish”.
By “archiving” we mean establishing new archives or regrouping sources (e.g. Documents, interviews), like in the projects European History Online, Corpus Corporum, Our Marathon and CVCE. Furthermore one major addition, in our opinion, which Digital Humanities projects add to research is “crowd-sourcing”, which means that people from everywhere can add material to the respective archives by submitting sources out of their private archives like in the projects Our Marathon and Corpus Corporum. Although this source method isn’t present in history projects such as European History Online and CVCE, it could enlarge the source field by “giving” researchers access to private collections. However as Frédéric Clavert insists, researchers still have to be sceptical regarding crowd-sourcing material and question its credibility. ((Cf. Frédéric CLAVERT:Conclusion. [in:] Frédéric CLAVERT / Serge NOIRET (eds.): L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique. Contemporary History in the Digital Age. Brussels 2013, p. 347-355, esp. 353.))
By “visualizing” we mean displaying primary sources, such as pictures and videos, and demonstrating events or developments. European History Online, Mapping-Luxembourg, CVCE and Our Marathon all allow the user to discover primary sources without having to hold them in hand. This element brings a new dimension to research and makes it much quicker. Furthermore European History Online, CVCE and Orbis allow to demonstrate for example by using interactive maps. This possibility can be useful in order to explain for example political changes and war developments to students by visualizing otherwise theoretical stuff.
By “publishing” we mean establishing born-digital material and creating new publication possibilites other than in book format, like in the projects European History Online and CVCE. In the context of “publishing on the web” we want to point out that Digital Humanities however still face several challenges which need to be resolved (i.a. authorship rights, retracing sources back to their origins, text stability, financial compensation of authors). ((Cf. Frédéric CLAVERT:Conclusion. [in:] Frédéric CLAVERT / Serge NOIRET (eds.): L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique. Contemporary History in the Digital Age. Brussels 2013, p. 347-355, esp. 353.))
Next to these major characteristics, Digital Humanities projects such as the text analysis tool Voyant Tools create new features which can help to develop scientific work. However, the user has to keep in mind that these tools are often limited and can lead to misinterpretation. Lastly, we find it quite interesting that even fun projects such as Serendip-o-matic can be useful for research since it changes the researcher’s selection of sources.
Looking back at this conclusion, we think there is no doubt that Digital Humanities will be an important part of scientific research and teaching in the future. What do you think? Finally, we hope that this article has helped the reader to receive a clear idea of the notion “Digital Humanities”.
This article aims to give a synthesis of the works done by the students of the Master in European Contemporary History (MAHEC) for the preparation of the course “WW1 goes Twitter”. The students were asked to analyse and offer a list of websites on which they could find digital sources about World War One.
Logo of the project World War One goes Twitter
Contents
Our project
We will try to offer here a list of resources exploitable by others. The sources are meant to be used for our Twitter account renacting World War One (@RealTimeWW1) and this leads our analysis, because what is relevant in our perspective could be different for a more traditional historical work. First of all we should notice that these websites were found through the use of different search engines, depending on the nationality of the students (5 from Luxembourg, 3 from Belgium, 1 from France) and the languages they master. This fact highlights the absence of an unique platform where every digitalized sources could be found and reveals the great number of online resources: we are dealing with 40 different links, and only a few numbers of websites were analysed in two different students’ works. All these websites are not equal in quality, and some are clearly off-topic, so we also have to comment them in order to offer a guide through the online jungle of websites dealing with the matter of World War One.
Classification of the sources
We have decided at first to organize the different websites with the main language used. The links in French are dominant, followed by the English and the German ones. There is no real surprise in it as these languages are the ones used at the university, whereas the presence of Portuguese links is more surprising and add some originality to the list. The lack of multilingual links reveals the importance of a national perspective when it comes to offer online sources.
The study of the different works and analyses made by the students encouraged us to provide a ranking of the websites, through the use of the different aspects:
– Quality: Are the pictures in a good quality ? Are the articles well digitalized ? How are the meta-data ?
– Quantity: How many pictures, articles, newspapers can we find ? How many “tweets” can we make by using this website ? On how many different subjects ?
– Reliability: Can we “trust” the author of the website ? Is it an institutional website or an amateur one ?
– Relevance: Are the sources online useful for our purpose: feeding a Twitter account ?
– Originality: Can we find original sources ? A different perspective ? Or is it a database of the most iconic pictures of World War One ?
Links in French (18 websites)
The most useful links
Fonds Première Guerre mondiale sur le site de l’ECPAD: This website is based on the French Ministry of Defense Archives and offers sources of a great quality and reliability. Nevertheless, it is mainly French pictures or videos or about the situation in France during the war.
La Médiathèque du Patrimoine français: This part of the “Patrimoine français” website is dedicated to the Balkan Wars and offers pictures which are most of the time unknown and used, especially when it comes to non-historian students. We can find these original pictures in a great number and with lots of meta-data.
Anovi – La Première Guerre mondiale (1902-1932): This website offers a bigger look over the period, beyond the geographical limits and usual subjects. It is divided into several parts with scientific articles, a geographical section, a complete chronology and a statistical part. The most interesting section relates to the detailed analysis of official and diplomatic documents.
CRID: The “Collectif de Recherche International et de Débat sur la Guerre de 1914-1918” is a website proposing a lot of testimonies and scientific or instructive texts. Testimonies are classified according to the publication date or the type of witness. This great quantity of sources makes possible to work on various interesting and original subjects like on civilians, art or prisoners.
Interesting links
Bibliotheca Andana: This link deals with the role of the small town of Andenne in Belgium during the Great War. We can find lots of interesting sources, such as texts or pictures, but only on a very specific topic.
La Première Guerre mondiale sur l’Encyclopédie Larousse: This link is actually an article from the online encyclopedia Larousse which presents the Great War especially from a French perspective. Some pictures highlight the main points of the topic.
Site amateur sur les parcours de régiments: We can find an interesting gallery of pictures on this website, but only on French army corpses. If the website is an amateur one, the construction and classification are clear and well done. However, this link is only useful for someone working on this specific topic.
Mémoire des hommes: Here there is a large quantity of individual papers for soldiers who died during the conflict with also the administrative newspaper of their unit.
Ansen’s blog: It’s just a rewritten page of a specific diary. The perspective is limited.
Etienne Jacqueau’s website: Like previously this website is limited on a letter of a specific soldier to his wife.
Histoire-image: There is just pics, paintings and sketch regarding the period.
Other links
Collection amateur de photos sur la guerre 14-18: Even if one can find many pictures on this amateur website, the meta-data are only a quick description. There is a serious lack of elements such as date, author or origin. We can also add that we need to explore the website entirely if we are looking for something specific. The website is not useful for a historical work.
La Chambre du Parlement belge: This is the official website of the Belgian Parliament. Its presence of this site in this work is still a mystery.
Musée de la Grande Guerre de Ypres: The website of Ypres’ Museum in Belgium is an interesting one but when it comes to online sources, it is not a relevant one.
Histoire à la carte: The website contains only stylized cards with no sources.
Hérodote 14-18: There are no sources but only a chronology.
Blog Histoire 67: The site doesn’t show any sources and is full of anachronisms.
Commémorer 14-18: This link is a commemorative website without utility for the project.
Links in English (8 websites)
The most useful links
The Great War Archive of Oxford University: This is probably one the most useful website found by the students. Here the sources are well classified, in a great number and with many key-words. The meta-data are often complete and the reliability of the University of Oxford is not to be proved.
BBC – History: World War One: Here we have an interesting link with many sources especially audio ones which is quite original. The fact it is a part of the BBC website shows quality and reliability.
Interesting links
FirstWorldWar.com: Here again a very interesting link but with a lack of online sources. There is only a few of them.
World War One Document Archive: If we can find many sources on this website, the main issue is that they are only transcriptions and the lack of meta-data is also problematic. To use with caution.
Turkey in the First World War: This website deals with the question of “Turkey” during the Great War. If it informs us on many unknown aspects and offers several original sources, we have to be careful with some positions taken by the author. For example, can we talk about Turkey ? Shouldn’t it be about the Ottoman Empire ?
J-F. MacDonald and World War One: Many sources are available on this website but they are only transcriptions. Unfortunately, we can not use them for our project on Twitter.
Encyclopaedia Britannica: World War One: This website is actually an article of the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica dealing with WW1. There is a few pictures or videos concerning our subject, but even if they have some meta-data, they are really “classical” items.
University of Heideberg: Even if this sub-section of the homepage of the University of Heidelberg concentrates exclusively on the archives of newspapers from the First World War period there is a big quantity of primary sources of good quality.
University of Osnabrück: The website of the Osnabrück university offers an original way of thinking the First World War by proposing a collection with more than 1200 German postcards.
Erster-weltkrieg: The website contains only pics with no references on it.
Area militar: The website presents only diplomatic texts between Germany and Portugal with no references or sources in it.
Multilingual links (5 websites)
Europeana 1914-1918: The homepage of this website is presented like an online archive. The particularity in this one is the fact that the sources are posted by random people. Everybody can post primary sources like pics, diaries, letters or other items which will then be available for everyone. These primary sources are commented by the person who posted them. The project was initiated by the University of Oxford which grants the website a certain reliability.
Musée de la Guerre du Canada: Here we have a very interesting website when it comes to online sources. The authors offer plenty of these sources, about daily life, soldiers or even simple objects. The role of Canada during the Great War is still an original point of view and the fact that this website is both in French and in English is really useful for our project.
The Heritage of the Great War: This is also an interesting website which offers many pictures taken during World War One. It is not always easy to find what we are looking for but the galleries offer a great number and a great variety of pictures.
On the occasion of the First World War commemorations, Masters of Modern European History students at the University of Luxembourg are using Twitter to recount, day after day, the twists and turns of the conflict via the @RealTimeWW1 account.
A conflict in 140 characters; an entire peace treaty in two lines; history written in tweets… and at university, what’s more…This is the wild gamble attempted by the teaching staff on the Masters in Modern European History at the University of Luxembourg, to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Each tweet is published one hundred years day for day — or even hour for hour — after the event it recounts. Almost 200 tweets have already been published and more than 1,500 others are in the pipeline, repainting the sweeping canvas of a destructive conflict that cost 9 million lives and left 8 million with terrible injuries!
Consequently, on 24th January 2014, a tweet announced the warning from the French War Ministry of the risk of a conflict that could threaten stocks of food for the inhabitants or Paris. The next day, another tweet announced that the Paris city council had decided to purchase 400,000 euros worth of flour stocks. For Benoît Majerus, a researcher and lecturer in history, as well as the director of Masters studies, behind this initiative, the Twitter account @RealTimeWW1 makes it possible to follow “day after day, hour after hour, the sequence of minor or major events that make up an international conflict”… and which seem so similar to news that is currently reaching us from certain hot spots on the planet, such as the tweet on 11th March announcing the vote by the Russian parliament of significant credits to arm the infantry and navy.
Four classes of students involved
The Masters in Modern European History is well placed to run this project: the lectures are given in three languages (French, English and German) to students of 8 different nationalities in a country (Luxembourg) which paid a heavy tribute to the conflict and is a particular embodiment of bridges between European countries. The four classes of students involved in the project are able to consult a large range of documents from the era, in many different languages: English, French, German, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croat, Romanian, Greek and Italian.
This project is part of the “digital humanities” movement, which involves human and social sciences filtered through the prism of information technology. Digital humanities draw on the use of digitised historical sources. As a result, all the tweets on @RealTimeWW1 are accompanied by a link to a document from the era that can be consulted on line. Similarly, using an everyday social network to revive major historical occurrences is an experiment ideally designed for the discipline of digital humanities. It also makes it possible to explore means of knowledge production and broadcasting specific to the 21st century.
The social network Twitter has already been used for historic “live-tweets” of varying magnitude. The @RealTimeWWII account run by Allwin Collinson paved the way with more than 7,300 tweets published since 2012, recounting the Second World War 70 years afterwards. The University of Oxford also ran the @Arras95 account for one and a half months, covering the battle of Arras 95 years later (from 9th April to 16th May 1917/2012).
The first tweets from the @RealTimeWW1 account focused on the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), attempts by the peoples of Europe under the domination of the Ottoman Empire to emancipate themselves. These conflicts provoked the Balkan crisis of 1914 and are etched in history as the “prelude to the First World War”. After having covered the entire Great War, the account will stay live until 2018 to describe the first years of the post-war period.
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Find out more
Masters in Modern European History: a historical perspective is of paramount importance for tomorrow’s professionals working in the political, academic and business worlds in being able to tackle future socio-political matters. The Masters in Modern European History allows the students to develop the necessary expertise to explore modern European issues. With its many links to European and cultural institutions as well as multi-national companies located in Luxembourg, this course of study offers an enriching and stimulating environment. The Masters aims to develop a first-rate course of study in European history by offering lectures based on critical appreciation and theoretical thinking. The programme is focused on questions and issues that make up European history, such as the process of European integration and construction in all its political and socio-economic aspects, social and cultural construction of identities, intra- and extra-European migration, as well as European relations with other regions of the world.
The programme of studies places particular emphasis on training experts in Digital Humanities and Public History, combining historical theory and its practical application.
The University of Luxembourg, founded in 2003, is a multilingual, international research university with 6200 students and staff from all over the globe. Its research focuses on international finance, ICT security, systems biomedicine, European law, business law and educational sciences.
Contact for media: Associate Professor Benoît Majerus, benoit.majerus@uni.lu, T. + 352 46 66 44 6744
Contemporary history in the digital age book cover
Co-directed by Frédéric Clavert (Paris Sorbonne) and Serge Noiret (European University Institute), L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique / Contemporary history in the digital age is the result of a 2009 symposium held in Luxembourg and organised by the Master histoire européenne contemporaine from the University of Luxembourg and the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe, where Frédéric Clavert was researcher at that time.
Digital practices in the field of history have become more and more widespread in recent decades, but contemporary historians have often tended to remain on the sidelines of this trend. This book, which covers a wide range of digital practices, tools and methods, will serve both as a solid grounding for historians keen to learn how information technology can be applied to contemporary history, and as a useful tool for researchers and lecturers who already have a degree of experience in this area. It will enable scholars to compare and further their practices in the area of digital humanities, providing a comprehensive vision of the emerging field of digital history.
