photo from http://www.huygensinstituut.knaw.nl
Our last lecture here in the Netherlands was given by Karina van Dalen-Oskam, head of the department of ICT Texts at the Huygens Instituut. She gave a fascinating introduction to digital and computational humanities and how she uses textual analysis to find and present new information about medieval texts. Another project — a very cool one — she has been involved in is the transcription, annotation and translation of Vincent van Gogh’s letters. The website, vangoghletters.org, is an amazing example of how digital resources can be used in literary studies.
Today we had another chance to marvel at the brilliance of Andrea Scharnhorst. Her lecture was about visual interfaces to knowledge, which she said have taken on more importance in information sciences. The reason, she said, is that with the flood of information available to the public now, visualizations can help people see patterns and important points more easily. The problem becomes finding the right visualization to present the information. Some good examples of information visualizations can be found on the Places & Spaces website.
Maarten Marx, an information systems professor at the University of Amsterdam, gave our guest lecture today about using technology to do automatic quantitative analysis of publicly available records. He talked mainly about his Political Mashup project, which aims to use data from newspapers and online sources to connect political topics and entities. As more and more text becomes available for analysis, having a way to automatically process and analyze it will be increasingly important. Text will be the main data of the future, Maarten said, and there will be new opportunities for research and quantitative analysis.
Another mind-blowing lecture by a super smartypants today — this time by Marieke van Erp. She talked about how tough, and how valuable, it is to get machines to learn how to use everyday speech. Really “smart” computers are still a long way off, but programming computers to be “lazy learners” (like humans — most of what we learn is not through intentional study) using techniques such as the k-nearest neighbor classifier. When computers are smart enough to infer meanings, they can take over some really tedious entry work, freeing researchers’ time and money for more important things. Marieke explained it much more elegantly, but that’s the general gist.
Before our guest lecture today, program director Trent Hill told us that last year’s group referred to our lecturer as “that really smart woman.” It’s an incredibly apt description. Andrea Scharnhorst gave a fascinating lecture about her research into article citations as a measure of journal quality. I’m sure it would have been even more fascinating if I had actually been able to understand more than half of what she was saying. It was not a language problem; her English was nearly perfect, as all of our lecturers’ English has been. Continue reading ‘Guest lecture: Andrea Scharnhorst’
The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum is amazing. The building in which the archives are housed is itself a marvel of Dutch design. Every detail was planned and executed to fit with the purpose and vision of the institute. The building is 96 meters from top to bottom; it stands 26 meters above ground and descends 70 meters underground. Part of the reason for building so much of the structure below ground level is because of building height restrictions in Hilversum. In addition, the underground temperature is a fairly constant 17 degrees Centigrade, making it easier to regulate the temperature of sensitive archived materials.
The building clearly is built for function, but it’s aesthetically brilliant, too. Continue reading ‘NISV Hilversum’
Paul Wouters, director of the Virtual Knowledge Studio in Amsterdam, was our inspiring guest lecturer today. He talked about a lot of really fascinating things, but one thing that really struck me was at the very beginning of the lecture. Paul mentioned how in the U.S., we use the term “information technology,” while Nederlanders use the term “information and communication technology” (ICT). Americans’ omission of “communication” in connection with technology seems pretty significant to me. After all, if it were not for communication, it would be nearly impossible for people to get information using the technology we currently have. (I could go off on the meaning of information here, but that’s best left for MLIS classes.)
Technology does, in fact, change the ways we communicate. Continue reading ‘Guest lecture: Paul Wouters’
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