Category Archives: Research Method

Digital History at SCSC 2013

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SCSC2013Prog_Page_01The program for the 2013 meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Puerto Rico (October 24-27) has been posted, and it is encouraging to see a variety of panels focusing on digital research methods and topics. Here’s a quick overview:

Friday, October 25, 3:30-5:00pm

114. Early Modern Italy and Pedagogical Practice: From Lay Conservatories to Digital Humanities (Flamingo B)
Organizer: Meredith K. Ray
Chair: Mark Judjevic

  • Educating Rich and Poor Girls in Counter-Reformation Florence
    Jennifer Haraguchi, Brigham Young University
  • Machiavelli and Castiglione: In Service to a Senior Humanities Seminar
    Veena Carlson, Dominican University

120. Digital Maps (1): Mapping the History of Printing and Text Circulation (Tropical A)
Organizer: Colin F. Wilder
Chair: Niall Atkinson

  • “And All the Good Journeymen”: Visualizing the Early Printing Trade
    Greg Prickman, University of Iowa
  • Printing and Text-Transmission Networks in Early Modern Germany
    Colin Wilder, University of South Carolina
  • A cultural Industry on the Digital Highway
    Paul Dijstelberge, University of Amsterdam

Saturday, October 26, 8:30-10:00am

142. Digital Maps (2): Spatial Humanities / New Uses of Digital Mapping (Tropical A)
Organizer: Colin F. Wilder
Chair: Paul Dijstelberge

  • Mapping the Soundscape of Pre-Modern Florence
    Peter Leonard & Niall Atkinson, University of Chicago
  • Envisioning a Historiography: Geospatial and Thematic Connections between Local Social Histories of
    Early Modern Europe
    John Theibault, Richard Stockton College
  • Digital Maps (2): Spatial Humanities / New Uses of Digital Mapping
    Paul Dijstelberge, University of Amsterdam
  • Waves of Empire: Mapping Renaissance Sovereignty at Sea
    Jason Cohen, Berea College

Saturday, October 26, 10:30am-Noon

164. Digital Methods (1): Digitization, Editing and Text Curation (Tropical A)
Organizer: Colin F. Wilder
Chair: John Theibault

  • A comparison of computer-assisted collation techniques
    Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University
  • Standardization and Authenticity: Classroom Use of Archival and Digital Versions of Early Modern
    English Manuscripts
    Marie Baxter, Albion College
  • A Digital Edition of the Business Correspondence of the Venetian printer Giovanni Bartolomeo da
    Gabiano (ca. 1520-1530): Some Technical and Scholarly Considerations
    Giovanni Colavizza, Universitá Ca’Foscari Venezia

Saturday, October 26, 1:30-3:00pm

186. Digital Methods (2): Text Curation, Text Analysis and Network Analysis (Tropical A)
Organizer and Chair: Colin F. Wilder

  • Little Gidding: An Early Modern Digital Humanities Collaboratory
    Whitney Trettien, Duke University
  • Martyrs, Exiles and Dissemblers: The Networking of Protestants during the Marian Persecution (1553-1558)
    Martin Skoeries, University of Leipzig
  • Topic-Modeling the Correspondence of Hugo Grotius
    Matthew Simmermon-Gomes, University of Aberdeen

Saturday, October 26, 3:30-5:00pm
208. Roundtable: Early Modern Digital Humanities (Tropical A)
Organizer and Chair: Colin F. Wilder

Participants:

  • Matthew Simmermon-Gomes, University of Aberdeen
  • Whitney Trettien, Duke University
  • John Theibault, Stockton College
  • Greg Prickman, University of Iowa
  • Paul Dijstelberge, University of Amsterdam
  • Niall Atkinson, University of Chicago

Tropical A certainly looks like the place to be. You can download a PDF of the program here. This will be the first conference I’ve missed in a number of years, and it just happens to be one that is chock-full of sessions related to digital research! This is an encouraging trend, and no doubt one that will continue in the years ahead.

The Mutilation of De Monetae Mutatione

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JuanDeMarianaSome years ago I was working on the publication of a short translation of the Jesuit scholar Juan de Mariana’s De monetae mutatione. Back when the original translation had been commissioned, one of the only readily available domestic copy of this seventeenth-century treatise was held at the Boston public library. The translator, Fr. Patrick T. Brannan, worked off of that manuscript in producing the translation.

As I worked on editing the text for further publication, I needed to consult the original to clear up a few editorial queries. But I did not have a copy of the treatise by Mariana easily at hand to do some comparison. So naturally I went over to the Post-Reformation Digital Library to see if the original was listed among the site’s contents.

I was not disappointed. There were in fact multiple copies of the collection of treatises which included De monetae. Mariana’s treatise, De monetae mutatione, was the fourth of seven treatises published together in 1609 in Cologne. Via the PRDL I quickly downloaded a version.
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The DPLA, PRDL, and Digital Pointer Services

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dpla-logoLast week marked the launch of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). As Joseph Esposito over at the Scholarly Kitchen notes,

The most impressive aspect of DPLA is that it is not a library at all, but an intelligently constructed catalogue to many libraries, which are contributing their collections. DPLA, in other words, is a “pointer” service, which is, I think, exactly what the world wants. So a search on DPLA fetches documents from all over the place. I was just looking at something from the holdings of the University of Illinois, then I clicked a bit and was taken to Brewster’s Kahle’s Archive.org. Ten minutes on the home page and you can “visit” many libraries. If this is not cool, I don’t know what is.

This idea of a “pointer” service and the need for some kind of curated metasearch option is precisely what drove the creation of the Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL). The PRDL and DPLA are in this respect similar, despite differences in scope, size, scale, support, and (perhaps) significance. We might think of them as “pointer” sisters!

Today the DPLA announced a partnership with the David Rumsey Map Collection, which has a truly impressive array of maps in various formats. Be sure to check out Rumsey’s collection of early modern maps. The oldest map I found thus far was a facsimile of a map of America by one Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (1534).

Come to think of it, “pointer” services like PRDL and DPLA are also “maps” of a kind, pointing us toward heretofore hidden treasure troves of digital source material. Given the overlap in purposes between the two, no doubt our PRDL team will have to take note of the “openness” of the DPLA code and partnership setup that Lincoln Mullen highlights in his intro to DPLA.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

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Dissertations are often a rich source for specialized research. Recent dissertations may provide a useful survey of secondary literature and typically contain an up-to-date bibliography. Sometimes the focus of the dissertation requires sustained attention to a particular text, in which case the author may include a translation of a primary source unavailable elsewhere.

However, dissertations are also among the more neglected sources. In the past there were good reasons for this. One reason was simply a lack of easy access. Dissertations were difficult to obtain until they became available on microfilm. Twenty years ago, due to the impact of University Microfilms International on the availability of microfilm dissertations, Bradley and Muller observed:

We are in the midst of a bibliographical revolution that has as much to do with unpublished as with published materials. Those of us who went through graduate school in the early 1970s used many scholarly books that failed to refer to a single dissertation. But because of the publication program of University Microfilms International, this is becoming less and less true. Good books and good contemporary dissertations will almost always refer to at least a half dozen dissertations.1

Now, as educational institutions make digitized dissertations available in PDF format, many dissertations—recent dissertations in particular—are instantly accessible. Today the scholar has no excuse for ignoring unpublished dissertations.

A variety of services provide access to downloadable PDFs of dissertations. Of course the most complete commercial service is ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, which contains full-text for dissertations published since 1997 as well as many published earlier, but it is only available at subscribing institutions. Many dissertations are also freely available. Some of the best databases for finding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) include:

A number of libraries contain detailed lists of these repositories. There are helpful lists at Indiana University Bloomington (“Finding Dissertations: a Research Guide”) and the Library of Congress.

Dissertations do not always appear in databases. Sometimes they are available for direct download at library websites. The Hekman Library of Calvin College makes available dissertations from Calvin Theological Seminary. Many European institutions, including Swiss universities, are e-publishing their dissertations. The University of St Andrews has divinity theses available in PDF from as early as 1952. Among these is a 1979 thesis on Franciscus Junius by Douglas Judisch, “A translation and edition of the Sacrorum Parallelorum Liber Primus of Franciscus Junius: a study in sixteenth century hermeneutics.” This three volume work contains a 50-page biography of Junius, an analysis of Junius’s exegetical principles, and a full translation of the preface and first book of Junius’s Sacrorum Parallelorum (1607).

For Further Reading

Footnotes

  1. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 79. [↩]

Digital Research Is Not Optional

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Church History

“We believe that the newer technology, understood broadly, is no longer optional. The scholar who neglects current technological advances in the manipulation and accessing of sources puts himself or herself in the position of the student who refuses to adopt the methodological advances of the Enlightenment; they become, by definition, precritical. The areas in which students can safely ignore the new methods and source mediums are becoming fewer, and even those scholars working in areas as yet untouched by this technology can still benefit from an exposure to the conceptual elegance of unimpeded research, and exhaustive, near-perfect bibliographies.”

–James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 74.