Digital Humanities Lab Department of English

The Digital Humanities Lab was founded in 2012 with the mission of bringing digital humanities resources to the humanities research community at Texas Tech. The Digital Humanities Lab is a resource for students and faculty to explore research topics, develop skills, and create projects. The DH Lab is located in Humanities 102.

Values Statement

The Digital Humanities Lab in the Department of English at Texas Tech University seeks to support digital scholarship and intellectual work grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration, open-minded inquiry, transparent working practices, and care. We support the development and use of digital methods, tools, and projects that foster new pathways for engagement for members of the campus community and the community at large. We offer a collaborative space with a variety of hardware and software to help bring our Lab partners' vision to life.

Credit Statement

If your project or publication was assisted by the Digital Humanities Lab (for example, if you consulted with DH Lab staff, used DH Lab resources, or if DH Lab staff did work for you), we ask that you include the following statement in your acknowledgements or citations. Similar statements with greater specificity about the work or people involved are also welcome.

Project supported by the Digital Humanities Lab in the Department of English at Texas Tech University.

Project Proposals

If you are interested in having access to the Digital Humanities Lab to work on a Digital Humanities project, please fill out the proposal form. The director will review your project proposal to see if it fits our current resources and provide each project with additional information.

Resources

Hardware

• Dell PCs running Windows 10
• Mac running macOS Sequoia
• Flatbed Scanners
• Color Printer
• Document Camera

Software

• R
• Rstudio
• Python
• Notepad++
• QGIS
• OpenRefine
• Omeka Classic
• MariaDB
• Other open source or University Licensed software upon request

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you want to clean or analyze text?

For data cleaning, the lab has OpenRefine which can help you organize data in spreadsheet format by faceting, clustering, and reformatting information. For one type of quantitative text analysis, the programming language R for statistical computing and the programming environment Rstudio can be used to break down and quantify a corpus of texts.

Do you want to map data or events?

Each lab computer has the most up-to-date version of QGIS. This is a mapping program which uses a relational database to incorporate metadata with each point placed. Texas Tech has available licenses for ArcGIS as well. If you would like to use ArcGIS, please contact the assistant director about setting up a license.

Do you want to make a database?

The lab computers are equipped with MariaDB to create relational databases or data recorded in tables of metadata related to a particular category or header. The database structure makes it easy to search for information or present pieces of information. Other database structure or software can be added upon request.

Do you want to create a digital scholarly edition?

The eXtensible Mark-Up Language (XML) is one of the most widely used markup languages for creating digital scholarly editions. It is typically used following the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) guidelines. Lab computers are equipped with Notepad++ which can be used for editing XML. Contact the assistant director if you are interested in licenses for the editor Oxygen for your project.

Do you want to make a searchable scan?

Optical character recognition (OCR) uses machine learning to recognize letter forms and produce a file of the text it has recognized. This text file can then be mapped onto an image or PDF file to have a searchable scan. For high-quality, easy-to-read scans, Adobe Acrobat’s OCR function can quickly and easily make a searchable scan. For lower-quality or image scans, the command line program Tesseract can OCR images and map the text onto a PDF. For very low-quality scans, contact the assistant director for assistance with pre-processing techniques.

Do you want to make a digital exhibit?

The digital exhibit platform Omeka is a powerful way to both catalog digital artifacts with extensive metadata and to present artifacts in engaging pathways with additional information.

Do you want to build a website?

For a simple website, the lab computers are equipped with Notepad++ to edit Hypertext MarkUp Language (HTML) documents which can be customized with content, links, and images. For a sleek, static site, the program Jekyll can transform a plain text page into a web page. There are a variety of pre-designed templates for personal websites, digital scholarly editions, digital exhibits, teaching sites, and more.