Digital Literacy Archives - The Gale Review

Digging into Datasets in Gale Digital Scholar Lab

May 9, 2023 by Gale Review Team

│By Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist, Gale│

This dataset post is a follow-up to Working with Datasets, a Primer which discussed text datasets of primary sources and explored how to access and work with them in Gale Digital Scholar Lab. Here, we’ll look at the topics of the first eight datasets in the Lab in more detail, the types of documents included in each set, and consider how a user may work with them for analysis. Our next blog post will showcase classroom-based use of the Lab’s datasets as an introductory pathway into the field of digital humanities.

Taking Your Master’s Dissertation to the Next Level: Using Gale Digital Scholar Lab for Research

April 4, 2023 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Tamar Atkinson, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool│

Primary sources can be a great resource for Master’s dissertation research, providing a deeper understanding of history. Whilst they make handy supportive evidence to back up the points you want to make in an assessment, is there a way to take them further? Within Gale Digital Scholar Lab, you can find a whole range of data-mining visualisation tools and other resources that can allow you to bring elements of Digital Humanities methodologies into your research, through an easy, step-by-step process. This can add great insights to any work!

An Undergraduate’s Companion: Finding Primary Sources Using Gale’s Alternative Search Tools

March 21, 2023 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Georgia Winrow, Gale Ambassador at Lancaster University│

Knowing where to get started with a new undergraduate research project, coursework essay or dissertation can be a daunting task. Whether you are provided with a focus to guide your work or not, getting to grips with collecting your primary source material, reading, analysing, and working out where they fit within your work can seem overwhelming! Luckily, with the Gale Primary Sources digital archives you have a range of search tools at your disposal intended to make the process that bit easier. Through an example research project using Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), this blog post will outline alternative search tools and resources available in Gale’s digital archives, and how they can be used most effectively when carrying out your own undergraduate research.

Birds of a Feather, Work Together – Gale Digital Scholar Lab: Groups

March 7, 2023 by Gale Review Team

│By Dr Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist│

December 2022 saw the release of the new ‘Groups’ feature in Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This blog post will consider the nature and benefits of teamwork in Digital Humanities (DH) and highlight Group workflows in the Lab that support effective collaborative practices.

How Might a Creative Writing Student Use Gale Primary Sources When Working With the Horror Genre?

February 7, 2023 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Holly Kybett Smith, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth│

If you’re currently studying Creative Writing at an undergraduate or Master’s level, you may find yourself wondering what resources are available – and relevant – to you. Every university library has its selection of critical texts on writing, and the internet puts dozens of author interviews and advice columns at your fingertips, so you may pass over primary source archives at first glance. My initial impression of these resources was that they were the domain of more ‘serious’ academics in the humanities; that I somehow wasn’t supposed to use them, even though I found them interesting. It was worth, however, revising my opinion and taking another, better look. In this article, I aim to share the ways in which a Creative Writing student might use Gale Primary Sources to their benefit. I am focusing on the Horror genre, as this is my area of interest, though much of this advice is applicable to students writing in other genres.

Digital Humanities and Data Mining: The Key to Efficient Seminar Preparation

February 2, 2023January 17, 2023 by Gale Ambassadors

Header image - piles of leather bound books with spines facing outwards

│By Becca Leeland, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter│

Anyone that says to a humanities student ‘all you have to do is read a book and have an opinion’ is someone who’s never had to prepare for a seminar! Seminars are the foundation of my degree – they guide me to the crucial works in a given field, they give me the space to explore ideas, and sharpen my skills in argument and writing. But they can also be daunting, especially when you’re presented with the work of the finest minds in history and are expected to make sense of it; you know you’re intelligent, you know you can do this, but sometimes you just need a little push in the right direction…

*Enter Gale Digital Scholar Lab.*

Gale Digital Scholar Lab is designed to make data mining and primary research more efficient with a three-step process of build, clean, and analyse. Utilising some of these techniques, you can gain a solid idea of where the texts are going and what to look out for, something that is really helpful when you start reading the material more closely.

Researching and Teaching Women Writers Using Eighteenth Century Collections Online

November 29, 2022 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull, Senior Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│

The eighteenth century saw an outpouring of writing by women in print. But accessing these important texts, whether it’s for teaching or research, can be difficult. Many survive as unique copies in the rare book collections of institutional libraries, or have not been reprinted since they were originally published. Those that have are often only available in expensive critical editions or affordable anthologies that do not capture the materiality or mise-en-page of the original text. But thanks to Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), many of these texts are now available as digital facsimiles from the comfort of your own desk or classroom.

King Tut and Digital Humanities: A Pedagogical Case Study

November 22, 2022 by Gale Review Team

│By Dr. Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist│

The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) at the University of Washington has a history of supporting work in Digital Humanities (DH) dating back to the 1980s. More recently, the department has offered regular introductory classes in DH, which I have taught since 2015. These are usually topical in nature, i.e., the data we work with in class is related to a particular Middle Eastern theme, often related to travel or archaeology in Egypt, which is my area of research interest. This Spring Quarter 2022, my undergraduates and graduates participated in a class called ‘Digital Media – King Tut and Digital Humanities’ to learn about the theory and processes of building DH projects based on data related to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, one hundred years ago.

Working with Datasets, A Primer

October 25, 2022 by Gale Review Team

│By Dr. Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist, Gale│

This month’s blog post will discuss datasets – what they are, and how they might be used by a researcher or student who plans to use digital tools to generate answers to questions they have about their data. The timing of this post coincides with the release of Gale Digital Scholar Lab’s newest feature: downloadable datasets, pre-curated for use in the classroom or by individual users. We’ll look at some of the options for working with these datasets, and end with some suggestions for sourcing open plain text data for curation and analysis.

A Global Community: Learning and Networking Opportunities for Digital Humanists

October 5, 2022September 20, 2022 by Gale Review Team

│By Dr. Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist, Gale │

If you speak with many Digital Humanists and discuss their route into the field, a large number will reference the training opportunities afforded by annual conferences, institutes, and workshops. These events provide a forum to develop new skills, with opportunities for hands-on practice. At the same time, attendees can learn about current project work, digital tools and methodologies and, importantly, these events provide an opportunity to mingle with peers. Digital Humanities conferences are somewhat unique in that they attract audiences from many academic disciplines, who all share the common interest of incorporating methods of digital scholarship into their research or pedagogical workflow. The Digital Humanities team at Gale is no exception, with many of us attending conferences, since our goal is to continue the ongoing development of Gale Digital Scholar Lab to ensure that it’s a relevant, functional and user-friendly platform. Many of the conferences have continued in an online format over the past couple of years, with a gradual shift back to in-person or hybrid gatherings.

As well as highlighting some of the main conferences and publications to be aware of as a Digital Humanist, this post will provide a range of resources for training, also sharing other useful networks like the Digital Humanities Slack channel. It’s not exhaustive but will provide a good starting point for those who wish to start their DH journey, brush up on existing skills, or learn about current research.