Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope - Softcover

Graham, Shawn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783266376 ISBN 13: 9781783266371

Publisher: Icp, 2015

Synopsis

 

The Digital Humanities have arrived at a moment when digital Big Data is becoming more readily available, opening exciting new avenues of inquiry but also new challenges. This pioneering book describes and demonstrates the ways these data can be explored to construct cultural heritage knowledge, for research and in teaching and learning. It helps humanities scholars to grasp Big Data in order to do their work, whether that means understanding the underlying algorithms at work in search engines, or designing and using their own tools to process large amounts of information.

Demonstrating what digital tools have to offer and also what 'digital' does to how we understand the past, the authors introduce the many different tools and developing approaches in Big Data for historical and humanistic scholarship, show how to use them, what to be wary of, and discuss the kinds of questions and new perspectives this new macroscopic perspective opens up. Authored 'live' online with ongoing feedback from the wider digital history community, Exploring Big Historical Data breaks new ground and sets the direction for the conversation into the future. It represents the current state-of-the-art thinking in the field and exemplifies the way that digital work can enhance public engagement in the humanities.

Exploring Big Historical Data should be the go-to resource for undergraduate and graduate students confronted by a vast corpus of data, and researchers encountering these methods for the first time. It will also offer a helping hand to the interested individual seeking to make sense of genealogical data or digitized newspapers, and even the local historical society who are trying to see the value in digitizing their holdings.

About this title

About the Author

Shawn Graham, M.Ed., has extensive career counseling experience, having worked with more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Westminster College. Shawn is currently Associate Director of MBA Career Services at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School. Prior to joining MBA Career Services, Shawn was an Assistant Director with University Career Services at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he presented more than 40 career-related workshops to hundreds of students each year and was selected to teach a career exploration course for graduate students.

Ian Milligan is an assistant professor of Canadian and digital history at the University of Waterloo.

Scott Weingart, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York
Peter Wyer, MD, Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York

From the Back Cover

The Digital Humanities have arrived at a moment when digital Big Data is becoming more readily available, opening exciting new avenues of inquiry but also new challenges. This pioneering book describes and demonstrates the ways these data can be explored to construct cultural heritage knowledge, for research and in teaching and learning. It helps humanities scholars to grasp Big Data in order to do their work, whether that means understanding the underlying algorithms at work in search engines, or designing and using their own tools to process large amounts of information.

Demonstrating what digital tools have to offer and also what 'digital' does to how we understand the past, the authors introduce the many different tools and developing approaches in Big Data for historical and humanistic scholarship, show how to use them, what to be wary of, and discuss the kinds of questions and new perspectives this new macroscopic perspective opens up. Authored 'live' online with ongoing feedback from the wider digital history community, Exploring Big Historical Data breaks new ground and sets the direction for the conversation into the future. It represents the current state-of-the-art thinking in the field and exemplifies the way that digital work can enhance public engagement in the humanities.

Exploring Big Historical Data should be the go-to resource for undergraduate and graduate students confronted by a vast corpus of data, and researchers encountering these methods for the first time. It will also offer a helping hand to the interested individual seeking to make sense of genealogical data or digitized newspapers, and even the local historical society who are trying to see the value in digitizing their holdings.

Edition details

• Publisher: Icp
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783266376
• ISBN 13: 9781783266371
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306