Editors’ Summary: This post considers how historians can make use of LLMs and NLP without flattening the individual stories that make up history. In the author’s words: “the challenge is how to do that without losing sensitivity to individual lives, how to move from large-scale datasets to arguments about trends like the rise of nonviolence […]
Editors’ Summary: In this post, the author considers a recent train advertisement in Norway as an example of the problem of floating motifs in LLM generated writing. She defines a floating motif as a motif appearing in AI-generated content that is out of place and detached from its original context. The new ad in Norway […]
Editors’ Summary: This paper analyzes AI-generated citations through a focus on the recurring non-existent citation “Education Governance and Datafication” attributed to Ben Williamson and Nelli Piattoeva and identified in Williamson’s post Tracing the half life of a zombie citation. The author demonstrates that these hallucinated citations are not random inventions, but rather a combination of […]
Editors’ Summary: This post argues that digital reconstructions are not neutral or objective, but rather are shaped by “ghosts” or underlying patterns and assumptions in the data, which can often reinforce dominant narratives. Instead of accepting these reconstructions at face value, the author encourages using them critically and creatively to explore alternative possibilities. In doing […]
Editors’ Summary: In this post, the author provides a detailed overview of the functions of the new tool, LLMbench. Berry points to Google PAIR’s LLM Comparator as a useful tool for side-by-side evaluation of models from the perspective of model developers, but the tool lacked the ability to do comparative close reading. LLMbench is a […]
Editors’ Summary: This article highlights the process of turning the Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes, c.800–c.1800 into a TEI dataset. The authors demonstrate how the process of encoding the print manuscript, and of converting any print volume to a TEI dataset, involves close reading of the material. The Repertory, originally published in 2022, is […]
Editors’ Summary: This post responds to a Scholars’ Lab post (“Breadth and Depth, a Self-Centered Dialectic”) that discussed breadth and depth as two approaches to digital humanities professional development. This framing places DH careers on two axes, one where the expectation is to know little about a lot of things and the other where the […]
Editors’ Summary: This post from the Data-Sitters Club provides a helpful orientation to corpus building for newcomers to DH. This is a part of their spinoff series: Data-Sitters Little TL;DR, where they offer key ideas and takeaways for people interested in digital humanities. The post details the legality of using text as data under Fair […]
Editors’ Summary: This paper introduces a new mobile app named “Booksnake” that takes a unique approach toward using immersive technology in the humanities. It allows users to display archival materials virtually through projecting a piece of archival document to the user’s surrounding environment via a phone camera. The authors both present theoretical engagement on how […]
Editors’ Summary: This working paper from the Open Maps Meeting in 2024 showcases the various methodologies and research frameworks adopted by projects involving GIS, spatial mapping, and other technologies. The paper points out that “the digital turn has fostered a spatial one,” which is an important reminder for the DH community to critically engage with […]
