Robert Darnton’s Distinguished Humanities Lecture @ Cardiff podcast

On 5 December 2011, Professor Robert Darnton (Harvard University) presented his stimulating and thought-provoking paper on the future of books in our emergent digital culture, as part of Cardiff University’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Using the metaphor of Jefferson’s Taper for the exchange of ideas (the transfer of light from one candle to another – a process in which one person gained while the other did not lose), Professor Darnton outlined ways in which digitization initiatives can be co-ordinated in order to provide a truly universal library for the 21st century.

Click on the link to open the videocast in a new window: Robert Darton, Cardiff University Distinguished Lecture, 5 Dec 2011.

Andrew Prescott on the future of digital humanities

Transcript of Prof Andrew Prescott’s excellent and stimulating inaugural lecture on #DigitalHumanities: blogs.cch.kcl.ac.uk/wip/2012/01/26…

— Cardiff Book History (@CardiffBookHist) February 15, 2012

 

DMVI schools workshops

On Thursday 13 October, we held two workshops with local schools to explore the potential use of the Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-Engraved Illustration as a teaching and learning tool. The fact that the database is full of images that illustrate literary texts and contain a wealth of historic detail makes it significant for a range of humanities subjects, including English literature, history and religious studies.

The morning workshop consisted of staff and students from Stanwell Comprehensive School in Penarth. The first exercise involved giving the participants 25 illustrations and asking them to arrange them in order, with the aim of analysing how pictures can create narratives. Anthony had spent a considerable amount of time cutting the images out with great precision and they looked impressive spread along the desks. Some interesting stories emerged, a few of which came near to recreating the actual source text (Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). We then gave out the captions to see if that would help or hinder the creation of the story. The exercise was a very valuable one both for the participants and for us because it made us think about the relation between word and image in illustration and how these Victorian pictures can be ‘read’. The second half of the session involved a demonstration of the database and the new social networking features, which the students seemed to particularly enjoy. They were given the chance to try it out for themselves before a very hearty buffet lunch was served.

We had just about demolished the chocolate éclairs when the next school arrived for the afternoon session: St David’s College, Cardiff. We tried out the same exercises again with similar interesting results. This group were slightly older and managed to work out that the pictures were from Coleridge’s poem. After another demonstration of the database, tea arrived, so we forced ourselves to eat more plates of sandwiches and crisps.

The day provided us with lots of ideas of how to go forward with the education strand of the project and convinced us that this was really something worth doing. The feedback from the students suggested that the workshop had made them think differently about illustration and its value, so our job was done. Now all that was left was to do was to finish off that plate of muffins …

DMVI Phase 2 launch

Lift off!

On 29 September 2011, the enhanced version of the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration was officially launched. A select coterie of dignitaries gathered in Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) to get the first glimpse of the revamped DMVI website and the innovative features that the enhanced version will contain.

The launch went remarkably smoothly – or at least as smoothly as anything involving computers and at least three different academic institutions can. Special thanks go to Mike Pidd and Matt Groves from the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at the University of Sheffield for coming all the way to South Wales to deliver their presentation. The efforts of the HRI team have been fundamental to the reconfiguration of the database. They have done the hard computing work, and produced an open-source back-end structure that allows the search and display capabilities of DMVI to be significantly more flexible and dynamic.

Enhancing the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration

Just a quick update to introduce myself and say I’m glad to be back at Cardiff and looking forward to working as the research associate on the new phase of DMVI. I’m still getting to grips with the project programme and trying to get in touch with all of the various people involved, but things are proceeding apace and we’ve got lots to look forward to in the new year.

As a reminder, the elements of the project are as follows: the database will be converted to open source software and remodelled to facilitate web-based data-entry; the iconographic cataloguing system will be extended to allow multi-lingual searches and will be integrated with another popular visual hierarchy, Iconclass; the iconographic system will be made available as an Open Source Image Curation System; the scope for integrating DMVI’s systems with Web 2.0 social networking technologies will be modelled; and the possibilities for developing DMVI as a teaching resource will be explored.

The aim of all this is to make the innovative technologies and methodologies developed by DMVI accessible to the widest possible audience – in terms of language, location, discipline and user profile. Elements of DMVI have already been deployed in other projects dealing with themes as varied as the history of Manchester and the history of Victorian periodicals. After the completion of this programme of research and enhancements, much more will be possible.