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:
- What are the risks of using artificial intelligence for archival research?
- 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)