Digital Humanities

Islamic Solidarity Games – A Brief History

by

By Vicky Pavlicic, Senior Strategic Marketing Manager, Gale International EMEA

©Reuben Mosley | Aerial Flying Manager at Baku 2017, 4th Islamic Solidarity Games | London, United Kingdom

I first became aware that the Islamic Solidarity Games was a major sporting event last year, when a friend announced he was moving to Baku for 8 months to help plan the ceremony. His official job title for the event is ‘Aerial Flying Manager’ – remember the flying Mary Poppins’ in the opening of the London Olympics? That’s the kind of thing he does. He has spent 8 months preparing for the opening and closing ceremonies. “What are the Islamic Solidarity Games?” I asked, unable to hide my ignorance…” A bit like the Olympics for the Middle East” he replied…Well if this is the case, why hadn’t I heard about them before?

Read more

Digital Humanities at the British Society for 18th Century Studies (BSECS) Conference

by

By Seth Cayley, Gale Vice President, Gale Primary Sources. Seth collaborates with our US product teams to direct Gale’s international archive programme.

In January, I had the pleasure of attending the annual British Society for 18th Century Studies (BSECS) Conference. This is one of the liveliest academic conferences that I attend, and always features a diverse array of sessions. Amongst my personal highlights from this year’s conference were a thought-provoking panel on Black Georgians, and a plenary lecture on the culture of letter-writing between women.

Read more

Supporting Your Local Data Miner

by
Data Mining Image

By: Dr. Dallas Liddle, Associate Professor and Chair of English, Augsburg College

Marshall McLuhan is supposed to have said that “the content of a new medium is always an old medium.” He intended the observation as wry cultural criticism, but as a literary historian I am grateful every day that so many new research media are now brimming with the contents of great past media: newsstands, theatres, libraries, music halls, stereopticons, and magic lantern shows. Lately I have started to hope that the benefits of these research tools may go far beyond the convenience of having so many original texts, images, and artifacts instantly available. New methods of “data-mining” using database archives, if we do them creatively and well, may help researchers better understand how the old media forms themselves worked and developed.
The hope grows from recent experience. I started “data mining” the Gale Times Digital Archive not long ago, after struggling for nearly twenty years with questions about Victorian newspapers that traditional archival research had been unable to answer.

Read more