About Laboratory

The Digital History Laboratory of the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw, was established by an order of the Dean of the Faculty in January 2023. It carries out projects on different historical eras and different types of sources. The activities of the Laboratory are focused on digital editions, for the preparation of which we use the XML language and the TEI standard of electronic text representation. The developed texts are presented using the TEI Publisher tool. In doing so, we make use of the possibilities offered by data visualisation to show how communication took place in space in the past.

 

Digital editing… or what?

A digital edition is an edition of a source text written in code, which is then displayed, visualised and analysed in a web browser via, for example, the TEI Publisher tool. In addition to displaying the edition, users can download its code and use it for their own research – whether conducted on that particular source or to develop the ‘framework’ of their own digital edition.

Digital editions in a visualised form offer the possibility of close contact with the source materials (i.e. with their facsimiles). This is because such an edition makes it easy to juxtapose the published text with scans of the manuscript. This gives the reader an insight into the handwriting of past eras that is so different from that of the present day. It also allows the user to inspect the edition themselves. This way of presenting the source material allows for a detailed analysis (close reading). The visualisation tools also offer the possibility of referring the user to external resources, other places in the edition or other digital editions at the click of a button. Above all, this interactive form improves the seeking for information related to the edition.

Digital editions are by their very nature non-linear – they offer the reader a certain arrangement of the source material, but also, for example, thanks to filters, the user of e.g. the letters edition can easily select the range of years of interest, the place where the letters were written and the group of addressees, and then present the results in the form of temporal and spatial visualisations (on a map, in a chart, in a table, etc.).

The digital edition also gives users the opportunity to conduct a variety of qualitative and quantitative analyses (distant reading). It can present searchable and downloadable data sets. In this way, users can conduct advanced scientific research on the text of the edition, e.g. using xQuery queries.

A digital edition is by definition an open project, with the possibility of additions (when new knowledge is acquired) and corrections (when errors are spotted). Such a project also allows the scope of the edition to be expanded and/or new features to be added as the work develops. It also reflects a new way of thinking about the edition and its audience. This is because the digital edition offers the possibility of reacting to factual and technical comments made by its readers, thanks to which the recipients of the edition can, to a certain extent, also participate in its creation and change for the better (it is a kind of more extensive errata than those we can find in paper publications). Digital editing in many cases forces broader or completely new thinking about editorial issues. It changes our way of thinking about the layout of the edition, the structure of the text, and the elements it contains. Following the TEI standard, the editor is forced to incorporate the constituent parts of the edition into a specific framework. Those issues are not only technical, but also scientific.

While we see the new opportunities that digital editing offers for research, we draw on the rich heritage of traditional editing in the course of our work. We try to find out how many and which of the developed solutions of paper editions can be adapted digitally and how to face the various challenges posed by this new environment. In preparing the editions, we are trying to develop a ‘set of good practices’ for digital editing, understood as a set of possibly universal guidelines to be used by all interested parties. They could also become a voice in the broader discussion on the theory and practice of digital editing.

 

Activities of the Laboratory and teaching

In addition to preparing digital editions, an important aim of the Laboratory’s activities is to pass on the knowledge gained during research to students so that they can use it in their own work, e.g. in their diploma theses. This includes both the coding of texts in the TEI standard and, for example, the use of Transkribus, a popular tool which supports the reading of manuscripts (both from earlier periods and from the 19th–20th centuries). With the help of Transkribus, once a so-called model has been trained, a text that is difficult to read can be easily and quickly converted into a digital record. On the one hand, the ability to use such a programme for HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) will help to read manuscript texts and may become an additional incentive to use this kind of sources, for example, in annual or diploma theses. On the other hand, the need for each user to train their own model (involving correction of the automatic reading) and the necessity of constant control of the results obtained will deepen the users’ ability to read old writing. Furthermore, we would like to encourage students to take a broad view of historical research through the use of GIS (Geographical Information System), which will allow them to incorporate a spatial perspective into their analyses, as well as to ask new research questions.

In addition, in order to popularise digital editing and encourage users to apply digital technologies in their own research work, the Laboratory organises a series of meetings entitled ‘Digital Thursdays’ with researchers who have carried out or are carrying out various projects in the field of digital humanities. These talks are aimed at students, PhD students, academics and anyone interested in the digital humanities. ‘Digital Thursdays’ provide an opportunity to learn more about digital technologies used in the humanities, to test them by examples and to discuss the possibilities of applying them in other research fields. See also the Digital Thursdays tab.

 

The activities of the Laboratory in 2023–2024 were funded by the ‘Excellence Initiative – Research University’ programme (action I.3.6. ‘Digital Humanities’) in collaboration and with the support of the Digital Competence Centre, University of Warsaw.