Interface Design

multipaper session
Authorship
  1. 1. Stan Ruecker

    University of Alberta

  2. 2. Stephen Ramsay

    University of Georgia

  3. 3. Milena Radzikowska

    Mount Royal University (Mount Royal College)

  4. 4. Alan Galey

    Western University (University of Western Ontario)

  5. 5. Stéfan Sinclair

    McMaster University

Work text
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Unsworth suggests that humanities computing has progressed
during the last thirty years through three phases, beginning with
the design of text analysis tools, moving to the design of online
digital collections, and now returning to the development of a
new generation of tools for working with online materials. While
many of the first generation of text analysis tools focused on
the analysis of a single text, the emphasis in many of the new
tools is on data mining and visualization of results across sets
of documents or even entire collections.

There are several distinct research agendas involved, including
interest in making digital materials more accessible (Lyman),
in providing new affordances for doing synthetic research at
the level of the interface (Ruecker), and in using visualizations
of digital information not only for analysis but also for further
access to subsequent information (Flanders).

This session brings together three papers on visualization and
interface design. First is Ruecker, Sinclair, and Radzikowska's
The Aesthetic Function: The role of visual communication
design in interface research, which examines the role of graphic
design in interfaces to digital collections and visualization
interface research. Their conclusion is that "Careful attention to the details of graphic presentation can have a
significant impact on the perceived value of a digital collection,
the function of a visualization system, the research results available
from analysis of visualizations, and the dissemination of findings
both within the academic community and for the larger public
audience."

Second is Alan Galey’s 'Alms for Oblivion': Bringing an Electronic New
Variorum Shakespeare to the Screen. Galey emphasizes the importance of W3C
advanced standards compliance for the delivery of academic collections online. Interfaces to
collections like the eNVS call for digital adaptations that can make traditional scholarly apparatus more
manageable: "The value of the eNVS interface lies in reinventing such fundamental scholarly
mechanisms as the textual collation line, the commentary
footnote, and the annotated page — three structures from which
the variorum derives both its archival power and, for many print
users, its aura of cognitive overload."

The third paper is Ramsay's Mining Shakespeare, which
discusses the results and the implications of using the
StageGraph and D2K software systems for semi-automatically
mapping scene changes in Shakespeare's plays. Ramsay
comments not only on the results of this study, but also on the
implications of data mining in humanities scholarship: "Though
it may be used to support or refute hypotheses, data mining is
far more useful in the service of the broad humanistic mandate
to find new and insightful ways of looking at textual artifacts."

These presentations provide a cross-section of current
research on visualization in the humanities, moving, as does the
research itself, between intricate detail and broad theoretical
principles.

Bibliography

Flanders, Julia
Text analysis and the problem of pedantry
Paper delivered at CaSTA 2004: The Face of Text. 3rd conference of the Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. November 19-21 2004
2004

Lyman, Eugene W.
In pursuit of radiance: Report on an interface developed for the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive
Paper delivered at CaSTA 2004: The Face of Text. 3rd conference of the Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. November 19-21 2004
2004

Ruecker, Stan
Affordances of Prospect for Academic Users of Interpretively-tagged Text Collections
PhD. Dissertation, Edmonton: University of Alberta
2003

Unsworth, John
Forms of Attention: Digital Humanities Beyond Representation
Paper delivered at CaSTA 2004: The Face of Text. 3rd conference of the Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. November 19-21 2004
2004

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Conference Info

In review

ACH/ALLC / ACH/ICCH / ALLC/EADH - 2005

Hosted at University of Victoria

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

June 15, 2005 - June 18, 2005

139 works by 236 authors indexed

Affiliations need to be double checked.

Conference website: http://web.archive.org/web/20071215042001/http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/achallc2005/

Series: ACH/ICCH (25), ALLC/EADH (32), ACH/ALLC (17)

Organizers: ACH, ALLC

Tags
  • Keywords: None
  • Language: English
  • Topics: None