CNI Podcast: Digital Humanities Centers- An Interview with Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX

gbayne — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:24:56 -0500

This 21 minute podcast features an inteview with Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX and Professor of History at Michigan State University. Our conversation was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota where Mark co-presented the session, "Digital Humanities Centers: Models, Missions, and Challenges".

MATRIX: The Center for Humane, Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University seeks to advance critical understanding and promote access to knowledge through world-class research in humanities technology. Humanities technology brings together the humanist's quest for deeper understanding of human nature, thought, expression, and behavior with the tools, methods and applications of computer science, engineering, and information and library sciences. MATRIX researchers use networked technologies to advance, mediate, and inform the humanist disciplines of history, literature, language, philosophy, as well as disciplines within the arts, social sciences, and education. At MSU, MATRIX partners in music, speech and audiology, history, education, international studies, museum studies, and libraries are building new, global, networked resources and services that give life to the metaphor of "matrix" as the multiple intersections and applications of interdisciplinary research. MATRIX therefore applies humanities technology to all the elements of MSU's mission: research, education, outreach, and service to multiple public and professional communities. Guided by basic scholarly and humanist values of excellence, education, access, and inclusiveness, and conducted according to proven, collaborative, scientific methods and principles, MATRIX aims to be one of the top humanities technology centers in the world.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Rio @ EDUCAUSE--Time, Space & History

Riosalado — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:30:30 -0500

Session presented by Edward L. Ayers, Dean of Grad School of Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Virginia and
William G. Thomas, II, Professor of Humanities, Dept. of History, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Earnestine Harrison attended this session with me.

Rating: Excellent.
This session was superior to the opening Keynote—and could have been a Keynote that would have been very informative.

How can we show history? Here is one of the best representations according to many:

http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/1812/1812.htm

It may be like a weather map. Climate is what we expect--weather is what we get--Mark Twain
How do we show the weather?

History lets us use time to “retrodict” why things happened. Just like the scientific data after a hurricane, history can help explain other things. History helps us to map time. We can map space--but we have not been so good at mapping time. These are ideas, prototypes, wire-frames of how to map time and space.

History may be a shattered mirror of time. Can we put the mirror back together and understand individual, family, and community experiences?
The Emancipation Project and the Southern History Database (Southern Mosaic) Team Assignments are examples of these displays of data:

http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/EP2/matrix.html
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/SHD/assignments.html

The goal is to add visuals and graphics to throw things off-balance--to create more creative tension--to mix things up.

How do we create a four dimensional historical atlas?
Railroads "annihilated space and time" in the 1800s--people moved faster than they could view or perceive--things moved faster.
We have a networked information system that has the potential of integrating representations—railroads can be related to migration of slaves, migration of the blues, movement of labor, purchase of slave labor by railroads, etc.
http://railroads.unl.edu/

Project Aurora—is a tool that is an attempt at an integrated, digital archive that connects views or digital representations across collections, etc.—that displays in four dimensions. The model is based on weather forecasting and drought prediction across the Great Plains. Those technologies can be applied to Railroad events that have been entered by students into a database that have accompanying historical documents that have are available in full-text. Drag the magnifying glass across the page to see the progression of railroads at this link: http://railroads.unl.edu/tools/eventsmap/

There has not been a concern for capturing time over the web. The web is two dimensional—but could be four dimensional. The tools are not perfect, but they are the best we have so far. The past can be seen in new ways.

Here is the answer to my question:

Students enter data into a pre-created database—each student goes to the special collections library and archives—to find, transcribe and then create 10 word documents, following a style sheet, and are entered and mediated into the database. That data is then used for the final papers—so students depend upon each others data collection and quality. Students develop a new set of skills—that they describe as the hardest thing they have ever done, but that they would recommend it to others. It creates a “productive anxiety” on the part of students.

These new data points make us look at history in a different light.
Rio Application/Brainstorming:

This is a type of instructional design based upon active research—that produces a product. This helps the research efforts of the university professors who are rewarded for research. Community College faculty are not typically rewarded for research—but the notion and ideas of active research that is entered into a relational database that grows over time and creates new knowledge is fascinating.

Could there be research grants or money for Rio to do this?

This was cool!

We need to share this the Development Team—and specifically with Dr. Janine Adkins (the birthday girl) and Dr. Barry Wukash.

EDUCAUSE | Computers and Humanities

CNI Podcast: Digital Humanities Centers- An Interview with Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX

Rio @ EDUCAUSE--Time, Space & History