Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela

Data and Metadata, 25/09/2024

During the session of the 25th of September, we discussed briefly the importance of Digital History nowadays and then started the first topic, which was “What are/is data”. Firstly, we discussed about the etymology of the word “data” to give a first definition and explained that Data are digital things which we create, collect or manipulate for example. Secondly, we talked about “metadata”, also called “information about information”. At a certain time, there was a need to historize metadata and so descriptive instruments like catalogs or index cards were invented to facilitate and organize information: research infrastructures or data repository are essential tools to make data accessible, findable, but also reusable. At the end of this session, the professor made a presentation about Tropy, which is a “specialized software to organize and describe photographs of research material” such as photos of documents studied in the archives for example. With Tropy, it is possible to organize and describe files of images of research material, but also to annotate and comment it. In general, the course was theoretical, and the rhythm was very fast, which made it complicated to listen and take good notes at the same time. Also, the presentation of Tropy was very brief and more explanations were needed to understand how to use the application properly.

(217 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-2 authors:

• Bazela - 0210949110 date: 2024-10-10 —

Web Archives, 02/10/2024

During the session of the 7th of October, the program consisted of working in groups of 3, during which we tackled a specific subject related to Web Archives. For our group, the topic was “Publishing family and personal archives on the web”. To complete this exercise, we began by reading a text that dealt with a particular case of personal archives on the web. It was about a site on which a person kept the memory of his grandfather who worked in the mines in the Netherlands: over time and with little activity on the site, the web page was transformed into a public website where anyone could post and write information about miners in the Netherlands. Then, with the help of site called “Wayback machine”, we discovered that it is possible to consult old versions of websites, some of which are more indexed than others depending on the year consulted. The rest of the group’s work consisted of consulting our own archives on the web: the result was not very enriching, but we were able to see that depending on our personal activities, there were traces relating to sport, schooling or even photos posted on social networks. At the end of our research, each group presented its findings to the class, followed by a discussion with the teachers. The class exercise was quite enriching, even if our research did not lead to any significant results. The fact that we were working in groups enabled us to exchange ideas and go into more detail on a subject.

(257 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-3 authors:

• Bazela - 0210949110 date: 2024-10-15 —

Impresso, 09/10/2024

During the session of the 9th of October, we discovered and learned how to use Impresso, a website that consists of a database containing a digitized collection of Swiss and Luxembourg newspapers. The site is currently in its first version, and we were also informed that a second version, with a more powerful search engine and a larger growing corpus of sources, is currently under development. The presentation of Impresso clearly demonstrated its strengths, but also its weaknesses. First and foremost, you must be careful to ask the site the right questions, so as not be misled: the selection of words, as well as the language and items selected in the search bar, must be done with precision, because as we saw during the course, non-exhaustive information can appear. Secondly, in a group work session, we were able to discover for ourselves the various functions of Impresso, by choosing a subject ourselves. The site’s main tool is the search bar, which can be used to carry out a more precise search using several filters such as years of production or newspaper titles. There is also a Ngram, which shows the dates of most publications. Two other functions are very interesting and relevant to a search: a comparator that lets you play with the filters to obtain concrete results, and a system that detects similarities in the writing of different texts. The discovery of Impresso was quite enriching and the way the site works enabled us to see the weaknesses of the site. Even though the site works well, it would be interesting to analyze the second version, which will probably contain more content.

(273 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-4 authors:

• Bazela - 0210949110 date: 2024-11-05 —

Maps & Tool 4 ‘StoryMaps’, 16/10/2024

During the session of the 16th of October, we learnt about the different types of maps, but above all about the importance of maps in historical research. After a brief presentation on the role of maps in general, we worked as a group to produce a StoryMap: this is an online interface that can be used to produce a quick visual presentation of content, in our case the analysis of a map. The map we analyzed was the John Snow Map, produced by the doctor of the same name, which helped to find the source of a cholera epidemic in a district of London in the 19th century. This map mainly showed us the importance of different layers of GIS, each of which can be used to represent other information and connect them together.

As part of the group work, another team produced a StoryMap on Atlascine, a project designed to transcribe audiovisual content in map form. As one of the main sources is oral history, the aim of representing it using a map is to support it with a visual representation, in order to reinforce the story and make it easier to contextualize. However, it is important to note that the audiovisual content should remain the focus of attention, while the representation on a map should play a secondary role. Using circles of different colors, it is possible to listen to different stories with similar themes, and above all to see where they took place, but also to link the similar themes together by making a connection between the different towns or cities.

(264 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-5 authors:

• Bazela - 0210949110 date: 2024-11-05 —

Networks & Tool 5 ‘Palladio’/’Vistorian’, 23/10/2024

Due to my absence from the course on the 23rd of October entitled ‘Networks & Tool 5 ‘Palladio’/’Vistorian’, my summary consists of reading Marten Düring’s text entitled ‘From Hermeneutics to Data to Networks: Data extraction and Network Visualization of Historical Sources ’ and carrying out my personal experiment with Palladio.

In his article, the author presents the importance and use of graphs, with the help of which we can, for example, represent constellations of relationships between different entities and bring out complex structures from a text, for example. At the beginning of the text, the author presents the example that he uses throughout the text, which is the case of the Jew Ralph Neumann: the graph produced can therefore be used to represent the network of people who helped him and his sister during their lifetime in Berlin from 1943 to 1945. The text then goes on to present a tutorial to help you understand the basics of Palladio and explains, in several steps, how to create a graph.

Since I wasn’t present at the course, I decided to follow the tutorial and make a simple diagram of a wedding guest list. After listing the different people with their first names and indicating the different relationships between them on an Excel document, I copied it onto Palladio: the resulting graph then represents the different links between the people, which allows you to see how and by whom the links are forged, but also to see that some people establish and group together more links than others.

(257 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-6 authors:

• Bazela - 0210949110 date: 2024-11-05 —

Hands on History: EU Parliament Archives, 30/10/2024

The Archives Unit Dashboard from the historical archives of the European Parliament was launched in December 2021. The platform contains more than two million digitalized documents from the years 1952 to 1994. The aim of this tool is primarily to democratize the history of the European Parlement, but also to give any person or researcher easy access to a multitude of sources. Let’s focus now on the interface itself, analyzing each of its functions in detail.

First, you have the dashboard called “all documents”, where you can see an Overview Dashboard of all the documents provided. On this interface, there are several classifications, represented by bar or circle diagrams: there is a classification by language, a classification by type of document, a category representing the number of documents produced per year and the evolution of document production.

Next, we have the “content analysis dashboard”, which shows a selection of the main terms frequently used in the various documents. On this page, we also have one diagram representing the number of documents grouped by a dominant topic: if we, for example, select the term “European Commission”, a second diagram appears which shows the numbers of documents by year, but also different subtypes to help the research of other documents. On this dashboard, we also have some additional tools, like the section “ask the EP archives”. In this section, you can ask a question to a generative AI, which will give you an answer to your question based on the documents provided by the archives. In addition, the AI will also indicate you from which documents the information are coming from.

Then there is a third interface, called the ‘Archives received requests dashboard’. Firstly, this tool uses a world map to show which countries are making the most requests. A circle diagram also shows which specific organizations the requests come from: a second diagram of the same type shows the number of requests per year.

Finally, a last interface offers two very practical tools, one of which consists of summarizing the content of a document, for example. It is also possible to specify the number of words that the interface should use to produce this summary.

The interface to the European Parliament’s historical archives is initially rather clear and instinctive. However, some tools are easier to use than others. On this subject, some questions could be asked:

1. What are the risks of using artificial intelligence for archival research?
2. What are the limitations of the interface according to the creators and what can or are they improving?

During the course on the 30th of October, the session consisted of a lecture on the presentation of the archives of the European Parliament, as well as an introduction to the Archives Unit Dashboard by two creators of the program. After the lecture, the students could ask some questions about the dashboard and the archives of the European Parliament. The presentation and the discussion were very interesting, however, in my opinion, the subject itself is very technical, and I had some difficulty following the discussion.

(511 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-7 authors:

• BAZELA - 0210949110 date: 2025-01-22 —

DH Theory, 06/11/2024

During the session on 6 November 2024, we began the course with a discussion on the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. After giving each student, the chance to speak, our teacher made a link between the content of the course and the way in which Donald Trump spreads Fake News, particularly in the case of his presidential companions. The Digital History Theory course therefore focuses on the question of true and false information, specifically from the historian’s point of view. The internet is full of information of all kinds, to which anyone can have access: this implies certain difficulties when it comes to the veracity of this information. What’s more, in the context of historical research, there are also certain examples of the manipulation and falsification of information. One such example is the case of the British writer David Irving, who falsified the number of witnesses to the destruction of Dresden in 1963, but who also questioned the fact that Hitler directed the Holocaust. We might therefore assume that it is simple to prove bad historical research, but this is not necessarily the case, especially where data-based sources are concerned. However, it is possible to carry out a 5-step process, which consists of selecting, modelling, normalizing, linking and then classifying the data. Finally, we also find the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), which are fundamental principles governing the use of data in the scientific field in general.

(243 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-8 authors:

• BAZELA - 0210949110 date: 2025-01-22 —

Scalable Reading & ‘Voyant Tools’, 04/12/2024

We examined Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech with Voyant Tools, using various visualizations and ‘lists’ to analyze the text. Word cloud (Cirrus): The most frequent terms such as ‘world’, ‘war’, ‘united’, ‘states’ show the central themes of the speech. These words indicate Churchill’s international focus and political message, particularly the relationship between Britain, the United States and the Great War. The lack of mention of the Soviets could indicate their role as antagonists or that they were left out for other reasons. The visualized frequency of the terms helps to gain an initial overview of the main themes of the text and could be used in a school context to identify important or unfamiliar words before reading. The Terms Berry visualized the importance of different terms in relation to each other. Collocations and contexts: Visualizing collocations revealed how certain words are used together in the text. This makes it possible to better understand Churchill’s intentions and nuances. It provides a quick orientation and helps to find relevant passages, like a search function, but with a more general and interactive visualization.

By deconstructing the text, patterns and recurring themes become visible, which enables a different perspective on the speech. This method can be used in one’s own work, for example when analyzing historical texts, legal documents or literature, to quickly grasp central themes and structures.

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-9 authors:

• BAZELA - 0210949110 date: 2025-01-22 —

Dissemination (Part I) & Case Studies, 11/12/2024

The course on 11 December 2024 was a presentation of the Historesch gesinn website by the project manager herself, Joëlla van Donkersgoed. The course was also part of a reflection on the concept of Public History, of which the site also seems to be an object. In fact, the site makes it possible to consult several Public History projects, i.e. history made and partly created by a non-academic public. As stated on the site, it is a ‘bridge between historians and the public, communicating the past in the present’. In addition to these various projects, a feature of the site is that it encourages everyone to contribute, in one way or another, to each project, by allowing documents to be sent, which will then be analyzed by experts in the various subjects. Through these initiatives, the site’s aim is to encourage anyone interested and willing to learn about history to consult the site, and to understand that anyone’s own past can become, in this sense, History. Maintained by a team of researchers from the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), the aim of the site is to give the public access to academic historical research, but also to help them understand that everyone’s past is part of the great temporality of History.

(214 words)

title: Session Summaries by Guillaume-Bazela abstract: Summary-10 authors:

• BAZELA - 0210949110 date: 2025-01-22 —

Dissemination (Part II) & Case Studies, 18/12/2024

In the last session of the ‘Introduction to Digital History’ course, we looked at the publication of scientific works in the context of academic research, where the aim of publication is to contribute to research on a subject and make it accessible for future research. In order for an academic work to be published, it must comply with certain rules and standards, and then finally undergo a ‘peer review’ process, which involves having the work reviewed by experts in the field, in order to guarantee the quality of the work and its information. The publication of scientific works is therefore a sub-sector of the publishing industry, whose origins date back to the development of the various scientific disciplines in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, there are also ‘open access’ publications, the aim of which is to democratize information by giving everyone access to it via the Internet, with the only rule being that the authors must be correctly cited. In addition, scientific publishing is evolving towards new formats, among which the data document (and data journals) plays a crucial role. A data document is a form of accessible metadata describing a set or group of data sets, published as a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal. Unlike traditional research articles, these documents aim primarily to detail the data collected and the conditions under which it was collected, without focusing on the hypotheses and conclusions. The aim is to provide an exhaustive description of the data and its context.

(251 words)