Context | First
Year | Computer Courses
Other Courses | Applications | Resources
Other Courses | Applications | Resources
In this section we describe some of the software and Internet sources that will be required in computer courses or components. Some software packages are already available on campus and entail no further cost; others will require licenses to install additional copies; other software is not yet available.
In the longer term, while some software is being developed for humanities computing, it is unlikely that all the software we might want will become available. Thus we also suggest the need to explore sources of funding that would allow us to develop software ourselves. This might include Internet sites on particular authors or issues, support for writing, or text analysis tools (see note below for details).
In the table below we list some of the existing software and Internet sites. Below we also provide links to several Internet guides and bibliographies.
Applications Links: sources and examples Reading the web Evaluating web sites: Kapoun's guide; Designing Web Interfaces: Kaplan and Heisse Web authoring DreamWeaver. Macromedia site. Currently installed in Rutherford S. labs. Copies will be required in at least one other lab. Dreamweaver provides unfussy code, is nearly wysiwyg, and includes some useful canned Java scripting. Students learn to use it effectively in about 4 hours. WebBoard Online asynchronous discussion. Available by arrangement with TLC (see their information site). WebCT Provides a development environment for an interactive web course, including an online discussion facility. See ATL site. Major etext collections Important online resources: e.g., primary texts: Women Writers, Brown; secondary texts: Orlando Project materials, when these become available Discussions of specific texts, authors Examples: Approaches to Shakespeare (Worrall, Twickenham); Social Sites of Renaissance Lyrics (East Tennessee State); Polwhele, The Unsex'd Females (Virginia); Coleridge poem (Miall); Christina Rossetti and her circle (Nichols, Pittsburg State); War Poets: Owen, Rosenberg (Oxford); William Faulkner (Mississippi); William S. Burroughs Preparing etexts Marc Demarest, The Responsible Preparation of Electronic Literary Texts: on bibliographical principles Hypertext Published fictions: see Eastgate; also vendors of Storyspace, a development tool for hypertext; Hyperizons, Internet bibliography for links to numerous other fictions, criticism
Cyberspace Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies: provides links to courses, books, etc. Concordance Concordance: a Windows-based tool for text analysis: developer's site. Currently installed in Rutherford S. 2-05A. See also online concordance examples output by Concordance, mostly Romantic writers. Another windows concordance: see WordSmith site. For a new Internet-based tool (still under development): HyperPo by Stéfan Sinclair. Electronic texts Sources of texts include: Online Book Page: index to numerous online texts, various in quality; Oxford Text Archive; Project Gutenberg; Internet Public Library (numerous texts in html format). Other links
The Voice of the Shuttle: general humanities guide to online resources
McCarty & Kirschenbaum, Eds., Humanities computing units and institutional resources
Guides to resources: Guide to Digital Resources, UK; Humanities Computing Resources, Toronto
King's College, London: Resource materials for humanities computing
Text analysis: what we need next
The use of electronic texts by literary scholars in teaching and research is still rare. As a research tool, computer-based text analysis has remained a marginal and little known activity. To rectify this situation it would be desirable to develop a set of web-based text analysis tools that will recognize and work with any text containing basic markup, whether the text is provided through the Internet or is available locally on the user's hard drive. Building on the familiar concordance approach, the tools will provide a range of more sophisticated options involving both the graphing of textual patterns and the control of analysis through pattern matching, dictionary lookup, or thesaurus. Output screens will be amenable to annotation, hyperlinking, and export. We expect that such facilities will enable examination of electronic text to take a central place in the classroom, thus enabling literary scholars to take full advantage of the computer. Stéfan Sinclair's HyperPo provides a potential starting point for such an application.
Resource implications:
See Resources section for costings.
