Author: languageinlyrics

By Aleen Leigh Stanton

Bliadhna mhath ùr dhuibh! Happy New Year to you all! We’re back for another #TechTuesday. This is the second half of our detailed look into online Gaelic resources. Just like last time, we’ll investigate how the sites are built, and how each project compares to the needs of Language in Lyrics.

Last week we left off by talking about Gaelic resources in Nova Scotia. Now we are going to shift gears and jump across the pond to explore the resources that are available and based in Scotland (well, there’s one bonus from Ireland, but hopefully that’s ok).

If you have any more suggestions or questions about what we’ve covered so far, feel free to share them with us, and we’ll be sure to feature them in future posts and/or answer them as best we can.

Tobar an Dualchais: Kist-o-riches

What is it? >>>
Tobar an Dualchais: Kist-o-riches is one of the best known online Gaelic resources. The collection focuses on audio recordings spanning songs, stories, and oral history. The sheer number available online is astounding: almost 50,000. The site also has a very detailed search function to help you sift through all those recordings.

What’s behind it? >>>
The Tobar an Dualchais website is built, like most modern websites, on a backend database that is invisible to the visitor, but allows complex search queries, a highly visual interface, and other functions. The site runs on a bespoke database built especially for their purposes. The site was redesigned and modernized in 2018 by EDINA, a “centre for digital expertise and online service delivery” out of the University of Edinburgh.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
Like we discussed last time, having an outside firm design and build a website for a project comes with pros and cons. If you have access to a firm that is somehow connected to your project (through a different department, an affiliated university, etc.), then this could be a very sensible option. But if it would require hiring a completely unconnected outside firm on contract (which is often the case), then careful planning has to be done to ensure that the site can continue to be updated, patched, and secured long into the future. There are so many things to think about when building a website that aren’t immediately obvious, but which can greatly affect the budget and the future of the project.

Digital Archives of Scottish Gaelic, University of Glasgow and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

What is it? >>>
Like Tobar an Dualchais, the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic (DASG) is a pillar of the online Gaelic community. The Archive is a joint effort between the University of Glasgow and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye. DASG is organized into three main categories, or online exhibits, all on the top of the main homepage: Corpus na Gàidhlig (corpus), Faclan bhon t-Sluagh (fieldwork), and Cluas ri Claisneachd (audio archive). Corpus na Gàidhlig is a searchable database of Gaelic texts. Faclan bhon t-Sluagh, their fieldwork database, is a collection of documents and recordings which capture vernacular Gaelic vocabulary. Cluas ri Claisneachd, for its part, brings together five audio collections: the Historical Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic (HDSG), Mòthan, Guthan nan Eilean, Calum MacNìll, and Am Bàrd Bochd.

What’s behind it? >>>
DASG, like Tobar an Dualchais, is a bespoke website based on a backend database. In this case, we actually know a little bit about what is going on behind the frontend curtain. All of the information for the audio recordings on the Cluas ri Claisneachd, for example, is entered into phpMyAdmin, a free software. phpMyAdmin, in turn, tells the database (e.g. MySQL or MariaDB) what to do.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
Databases, like MySQL, MariaDB, and others, power many digital humanities projects that need to organize a large amount of information. Language in Lyrics needs that power – we will likely have thousands of song records by the time we are finished the project. Some database software is commercial (e.g. FileMakerPro, Microsoft Access), while occasionally (e.g. mySQL, MariaDB) they are free and open access. However, you still would need someone on your team who knows how to use the SQL coding language if you decide to go for the more DIY option with a database.

The Pearl Project, University of Edinburgh

What is it? >>>
Established in 1996, The Pearl Project is an initiative from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. What may be of particular interest for you, if you’re already interested in Language in Lyrics is their audio archive, called Tocher (Gaelic for “dowry”). Tocher was first established in 1971. There, they have digitized transcriptions of text, music, and stories held in the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

What’s behind it? >>>
Like the MacEdward Leach Collection we looked at last time, The Pearl Project website is a series of static HTML webpages. We get a hint on the homepage, where it instructs us that the website requires a “frames-capable browser” – frames are a common way to embed content when coding HTML webpages. Another clue is the lack of a search function: the site is based on browsing hyperlinks and clicking around to explore. This is very different than our first two examples, which are structured mainly around a powerful search function on the homepage.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
We talked a little bit about static sites versus database-based sites last time, but here’s a great definition that is clear and in plain language:

“Most of today’s websites use server side programming languages that generate the website on the fly by querying the database. This means that every time someone visits a web page, it is generated on demand. On the other hand, a static website is generated once and exists as a simple set of documents on the server’s hard disk. It’s always there, not just when someone visits the page.”
–“How to Build A Low Tech Website,” Low Tech Magazine

Hopefully that definition makes everything clearer – I know it took me a long time to figure it out. The important take-away for Language in Lyrics that, although static HTML websites are easier on beginner coders and easier on the environment (as we saw last time), they don’t really work for our purposes. Our number one priority at Language in Lyrics is creating a searchable database and a user-friendly interface, which is just too complicated for static HTML pages.

Am Baile, High Life Highlands

What is it? >>>
High Life Highlands produced Am Baile. The site focuses more on historic material relating to the Highlands, rather than sources about the Gaelic language directly. That being said, it paints a cultural picture that complements the rest of the sites on the list. Their collection of historical photographs and their newspaper index are particularly impressive. The site also has a full Gaelic-language version.

What is behind it? >>>
Am Baile’s website is powered by Capture. Capture builds “digital asset management systems” for its clients. Basically, the company creates bespoke websites. Many of their clients are museums, galleries, and heritage institutions. For Am Baile and others, that also includes websites which can handle organizing a large amount of digital objects (photos, historical documents, recordings, etc.).

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
This raises the same question we’ve been dealing with again and again – the pros and cons of bespoke websites. They are tailor-made, which can solve a lot of the problems that a complicated project like Language in Lyrics brings up. But, if you don’t have in-house expertise, you have to hire someone else to build it. This can be nice at first, but problems arise when it comes to site upkeep, as we’ve discussed already.

Ceòl nan Gàidheal

What is it? >>>
Ceòl nan Gàidheal is a digital resource from the National Library of Scotland. You can find it under the Digital Gallery page. The website draws from the Library’s own holdings to, as they describe on the homepage, “provide an initial insight into Gaelic music, its history, instruments and song, transmission methods and how the tradition is very much alive today.” The website has plenty of historical contextual information, as well as digitized music books, early examples of written Gaelic, and recordings from the Library’s collection. The textual sources are free to download for personal use – you can even download the entire book in some cases.

What is behind it? >>>
As a Digital Gallery within the institution, Ceòl nan Gàidheal was created by the National Library of Scotland. But, as with many institutions, it is not clear how the site is actually built. That being said, it’s safe to assume that an institution as significant at the National Library has the resources to hire web designers and IT professionals to create a site that meets all of their specific needs.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
Again, there is the lesson here of institutional partnerships and how important they are. Institutions often have the resources needed to build and run a complex website. Sometimes building from scratch is necessary, but it can be worth seeking out institutional partnerships if at all possible. With institutional support, a website won’t become a one-off, languishing after the initial push. It will continue to have a life, with continued traffic, security, and updates.

Irish Traditional Music Archive

What is it? >>>
Even though this last one isn’t technically Scottish, it was well-worth a mention. The Irish Traditional Music Archive features music from other related regions, including Scottish Gaelic songs from Scotland and Nova Scotia. Their website is very stream-lined and their search function is clear and easy to use.

What is behind it? >>>
The Irish Traditional Music Archive is very unusual, in that the archive staff explain in detail how the site and database were built on its Digitisation page. ITMA has two sections that make up its online presence: it has an online library catalogue for its physical holdings, and a selection that are digitized and available in the Digital Library section. The library uses SoutronLMS as its OPAC system. On the other hand, the Digital Library runs on Craft Content Management System, which itself grew out of Expression Engine (remember content management systems from the last blogpost? We’ll talk more about them in a later blogpost).

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
The lesson here is one that we’ve touched on before, but there’s a twist. We’ve already discussed the lesson that an archive, by definition, has a different structure than something like the Language in Lyrics project. But, here’s the twist this time: CraftCMS is known for its flexibility. You don’t have to have objects in your database. It doesn’t have to be an archive. Craft is open source, but also has an option for paid support and help with updates. And the best part? You can create your own custom fields. This is absolutely essential for us at Language in Lyrics. This kind of content management system is certainly an avenue for us to explore.

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So, with our survey complete, what are the overarching lessons for us?

Going over the Gaelic resources already available online gives us a good indication of the options available to us. Beyond the specific software we talked about, we can boil down these options to just a few main categories:

First,
There is the (1) content management system option;
there is the (2) static page option;
there is the (3) full database option.

Then,
There is the (1) contractor option;
there is the (2) institutional partner option;
there is the (3) DIY option.

Then, there is the fact that any of these can be used in combination. It’s enough to make your head hurt!

Looking back over the last two blogposts, and actually, the last few months working on Language in Lyrics, there is one lesson that is the biggest of them all. And it was the one I learned the quickest: it can be pretty difficult to figure out how sites we know and love are built. The curtain is thick sometimes – it’s not the kind of information that organizations usually place on their “About Us” page.

But that’s fair enough. Most people probably aren’t there to find out if they’ve used x database or y content management system. If you’re lucky, you might know someone who knows someone who works there who can draw back the curtain a bit. But otherwise, it can be guesswork. Maybe this will change in the coming years as more and more people become tech-literate and get curious about how the projects they care about were put together. For now, the curtain remains drawn. But the ensuing detective work is quite fun.

At Language in Lyrics, we’re hoping that, in sharing our own development process with you (warts and all), we might save others some time and tears if you find yourself involved in similar types of projects. If we share processes, talk with each other, and compare notes, all of our individual projects will only be the better for it.

I hope this jaunt through the Gaelic web has been helpful and useful to you!

Til next time,

Le beannachd,

Aleen

By Aleen Leigh Stanton

Welcome back to #TechTuesday and to our digital kitchen table. This week, we’re going to be exploring the online Gaelic world in a bit more detail.

We’ve talked a lot about context, about Digital Humanities, about philosophy. Now, we finally get to focus in on the intersection between technology and Gaelic specifically. As you probably know, Scottish Gaelic has a pretty extensive presence online. For now, we’re focusing on Nova Scotian resources. Next week, we’ll focus on their counterparts in Scotland.

But, why are we doing this survey? Aren’t there already lots of lists of Gaelic resources out there for speakers and learners? (See, for example, this comprehensive list from Dr. Emily McEwan, which is itself based partly on Gaelic Affairs and Highland Village Museum lists here and here).

Well, this list below is a bit different than the ones above. Basically, it’s an expanded excerpt of a document the team has been busy compiling, comparing, and contrasting behind the scenes as background research for the Language in Lyrics project. Part of preparing our own online database involved exploring what other resources are out there.

Think of it as a big Venn diagram. We did this survey to make sure our mandate didn’t overlap with any other project, but also, more importantly, to figure out what there was in common, and whether we could take away any lessons from how other people had built their databases and websites. As well, for any interested readers out there, this list may help you peek behind the curtain of some of the websites you visit often, and perhaps find inspiration there for your own projects.

This post will break down a selection of existing online Gaelic resources, and where known, explain what’s going on behind the scenes tech-wise. I’ve been inspired by Miriam Posner’s blogpost “How Did They Make That?“, and this post will follow a similar format.

Without further ado, here are some classic examples of digital Gaelic resources from Nova Scotia, and an explanation of the tech behind them.

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An Drochaid Eadarainn / The Bridge Between Us, Highland Village

What is it? >>>
The Highland Village launched An Drochaid Eadarainn (The Bridge Between Us) in May 2012, coinciding with Gaelic Awareness Month. Its approach is innovative – it’s not like the digital humanities projects we talked about last week, which are more straightforward examples of digitization or online archives. It’s more of a portal than a website. It is designed to reflect how Gaelic language and culture is transmitted from generation to generation, and to create that social space and social transmission in the virtual realm. As many of you may know, the title of the site is a nod to the role of bridges as gathering places in traditional Gaelic culture. As the virtual equivalent, the site has a large interactive element. A section of the site, An Drochaid Bheò (The Living Bridge), allows users to upload their own content. The website is primarily Gaelic-language based. While there are English translations for many pages, not all are bilingual. It serves as a valuable resource and gathering place for intermediate and advanced Gaelic speakers.

What is behind it? >>>
An Drochaid Eadarainn is built with Drupal. Drupal is a back-end framework for building websites (WordPress would be an example of an alternate system that does the same job – we’re going to do a whole blogpost on WordPress soon). Basically, Drupal organizes and manages content and controls functionality on websites. Drupal is written in PHP, and it’s free and open source.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
Having a site specifically designed from scratch for Language in Lyrics was certainly an option to consider. But, usually, an outside contractor is required. So even if the code is open source, the labour is certainly not free. And when it comes to upkeep and maintenance, that’s where things get tricky. If your organization doesn’t have the Drupal expertise in-house, for example, then ongoing site upkeep over the years can prove unwieldy, expensive, and difficult. These are all factors to consider.

MemoryNS, Council of Nova Scotia Archives

What is it? >>>
MemoryNS is a hub site for archival collections across the province. It hosts an array of Gaelic archival material from the Nova Scotia Archives, the Beaton Institute, the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre, and many others. You can search the site for holdings, read descriptions, look at finding aids, and in some cases, view images. While obviously its records are not exclusively about Gaelic, MemoryNS could be used a gateway to find other things. For example, the Nova Scotia Archives has uploaded information on the MacLean and Sinclair family papers to MemoryNS, which might then lead you to their virtual exhibit called Goireasan Gàidhlig (Gaelic Resources), which uses the MacLean and Sinclair family papers as its flagship collection. You can find the exhibit on their website under the Virtual tab, the home of all their digitized archival content. They have a lovely introduction providing historical context, and in the right sidebar visitors can navigate to the different subcategories of Gaelic archival material. They’ve got photos, letters, poetry, petitions, government reports, newspapers, historical scholarly articles, sheet music, and more. That’s the great thing about MemoryNS – it can act as a gateway to help you explore other archival collections you otherwise might not have come across.

What is behind it? >>>
MemoryNS is powered by AccesstoMemory (AtoM for short, pronounced like the thing that’s made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons). AtoM is a content management system (we’ll talk more about content management systems in a later blogpost) made especially for description and dissemination of archival collections. AtoM was designed by a Canadian company and has quickly become very popular with Canadian archives. MemoryNS, for example, has 58 institutional members in Nova Scotia.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
AtoM was an option Language in Lyrics seriously considered in the beginning. However, as we discussed at the very beginning of this series in the first blogpost, our database doesn’t have objects. It is designed to organize song information, not historical documents or artifacts. It differs greatly from archival collections in that way. Also, the description categories for the songs in the Language in Lyrics database are very different than how archival objects are described. For us, we need fields like song title, air, first line (chorus), first line (verse), song subject, song structure, place of origin, composer name, composer patronymic, and more. For archives, they need to conform to archival description standards, which include fields like creator, date, physical description, format, language, and more. The categories are right there in the code, and can be very difficult to change (again, probably require outside hired help). One of the strong selling points of AtoM for heritage institutions is that it conforms to archival description standards (e.g. Dublin Core), but that is a stumbling block more than a selling point for Language in Lyrics.

Sruth nan Gàidheal / Gaelstream, St. Francis Xavier University

What is it? >>>
Gaelstream is the digitized collection of audio recordings from the Cape Breton Folklore Collections. Gaelstream is beloved by the Gaelic community in Nova Scotia. After St. FX’s site went down last year, the outpouring from the community was so strong that Gaelstream was quickly recovered and reinstated. The reupload is a temporary interface until a more permanent solution can be found, but all the content is there along with a search function.

What is behind it? >>>
Gaelstream is powered by Islandora. Think of Islandora as a cousin to AtoM. Like AtoM, Islandora is a Canadian, open source content management system. Like AtoM, it is also meant to be used to organize digital assests for archival collections. Islandora was originally built by UPEI’s Robertson Library using Drupal, Fedora, and Solr.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
Islandora is very similar to AtoM, and so the same problems persist. Archival description standards for our custom description fields, and content management for our database with no objects (e.g. the audio recordings tied to each record in Gaelstream).

MacEdward Leach Collection, Memorial University

What is it? >>>
In 2004, the Department of Folklore created the MacEdward Leach Collection’s online home. While the site is centered around the MacEdward Leach Collection, the contextual information spans much more. There are separate categories for communities, songs, and singers in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The site is built to be explored; for visitors to look at each page, follow links, and read all the information. And there are reams and reams of information when you start clicking around.

What is behind it? >>>
The MacEdward Leach Collection’s website was created before any of our other examples in this post. If you click around the site, you can tell it is built very differently than the others. Because it was built in the early 2000s, the website is based on a series of static HTML pages that exist on their own, rather than a content management system that constantly pulls information from a back-end database to create dynamic webpages (they don’t exist if you don’t click on them). The MacEdward Leach Collection was built with Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia, now Adobe), an HTML editor. MUN is currently working on a project that will update and bundle the MacEdward Leach collection with a larger initiative – stay tuned.

Lessons for Language in Lyrics >>>
This one is an interesting case. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in static HTML websites recently, driven by the thought that they are greener than modern alternatives. Most modern websites are based on more resource-hungry content management systems hosted on server farms. (For an example of a “green” modern HTML site, see Low Tech Magazine‘s self-hosted, solar-powered website. They explain how it works on their About page). A static HTML website probably wouldn’t work for Language in Lyrics, because we need a very fulsome database and, most importantly, a powerful, advanced search function. But it’s fun to think of the old-fashioned HTML webpages coming back into fashion, and also having a smaller carbon footprint.

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That’s all for this week. Next week, we’ll be looking at Gaelic resources across the pond, and exploring their approach to building their online content.

Le beannachd,

Aleen

By Aleen Leigh Stanton

And just like that, it’s #TechTuesday again. If you’re new here, welcome; if you’re visiting again, welcome back. This is the third post in the Kitchen Table series, and the second half of our discussion about Digital Humanities.

Last week we introduced the field of digital humanities, and talked about the various ways to define it. We looked at crowd-sourced definitions, definitions from academia, classic “textbook” definitions, and more. In the end, we decided the simplest definition was the best. Digital humanities does exactly what the humanities do: using technology, it tries to understand, explain, and shed light on the human experience of the world and our collective place within it.

We stopped last time on the edge of a precipice, right before jumping headfirst into some of the debate surrounding digital humanities. Now, let’s pick up right where we left off.

The Digital Humanities Debate

When the digital humanities create projects in order to understand the human experience, they strive to focus on openness and accessibility – which is exactly what we are trying to do at Language in Lyrics. However, not everyone agrees with how successful this approach has been in the past or will be in the future.

Even though the 2010s could be dubbed the ‘digital humanities decade,’ some scholars take issue with the field. We hinted at this tumult in the last blogpost. Honestly, before I started doing the research for these blogposts, I had no real sense of the debate within digital humanities. I had no idea that some scholars debated the effectiveness of digital humanities for solving real-world problems, or thought big data could solve it all just by its very nature, or argued that not enough was being done to restructure the field to welcome everyone, or considered some digital humanities projects as hokey, fad-ish, superficial, and not critically rigorous.

If you read some of the sources I linked in the last post, you might have run across some of the dissent. Now, it’s time we gather round and gather all these threads together to discuss them.

Critiquing Digital Humanities: MadLibs Edition

Criticisms are complicated. But let’s play a little fill-in-the-blank game to sum them all up (call it nerdy MadLibs if you’d like). It’s a fun, succinct way to show the ways in which digital humanities can be sometimes negatively seen.

Digital Humanities is . . .

. . . a fad.
. . . a gadget.
. . . a QR code.
. . . superficial.
. . . not rigorously researched.
. . . not critically argued.
. . . “a handmaiden to STEM.” (see Adeline Koh’s article)
. . . structured to impede diversity (Posner’s article and Bailey’s article)
. . . data-mining like “browsing in a store.” (see Stanley Fish’s article)
. . . “tinkering” without ultimate meaning. (see Leon Wieseltier’s article)
. . . a “cult of data” and arrogant scientism. (again, Wieseltier’s article)
. . . alienated from real world problems.
. . . a bandwagon for the technologically illiterate.
. . . just plain hokey.

The tide of criticism seems to have been at the high water mark in the early 2010s, just as Digital Humanities was itself experiencing exponential growth in tandem with technology’s growing grip on our everyday lives – especially mobile technology, apps, and Web 2.0. (Side note: Web 2.0 essentially means the social, interactive way we use the web now).

Although the harshest criticisms have faded a bit, the core issues of utility, diversity, and purpose remain. As with any academic field, it’s a constant balancing act of approaches, attitudes, and priorities. And as with any new field, there are growing pains.

The full debate over Digital Humanities (and there’s even debate over whether to call it that anymore) is too complex to tackle in these blogposts, but, again, reading the linked articles in these last two blogposts or the articles in Debates in the Digital Humanities will give you a fuller sense of the contrasting views that are out there.

All this back-and-forth disagreement could easily make you start singing the chorus of a familiar 1970s classic:

But We Can Agree on Some Things…

You’ll probably be relieved to know that there is some agreement, especially now. Despite the debate, most scholars can agree that digital humanities is an umbrella term. It remains faithful to its humanities roots by approaching problems and questions that affect all facets of our human experience. But in its approach, it uses the “digital” (in whatever form that takes) to help make sense of our world and our collective lives. Not replace it, as some have feared, but just to help understand it.

Most importantly, the underlying philosophy of digital humanities has also emerged from the noise as a clear chorus: openness. Open source, open access, open approaches, accessibility, public engagement, etc.

What a relief, to have that clear chorus! It’s a song we all can sing.

The underlying philosophy of digital humanities has also emerged from the noise as a clear chorus: openness. Open source, open access, open approaches, etc.

Types of Digital Humanities Projects

By now you’re probably tired of exploring an esoteric academic field’s mysterious identity, so let’s move on to some more concrete examples of DH projects. This is only meant as a quick survey, but if you’re interested in more detail and more examples, the Topics page of The Digital Humanities Literacy Guidebook has lots of information on digital humanities projects divided into similar categories.

Textual Analysis

The very first digital humanities project was actually an index, just like our project – indexing every word of the works of Thomas Aquinas, led by Father Roberto Busa with IBM in 1949. As John Simpson, the Humanities and Social Sciences Specialist at Compute Canada, explains in an interview: “The Digital Humanities is often said to have come into existence when the production of the Index Thomisticus (a tool for searching the entire works of Thomas Aquinas) began in the late 1940’s through a 30+ year collaboration between Fr. Roberto Busa, a Jesuit Priest, and IBM, who provided the computing resources to make the project possible.”

(For more on digital humanities history, see Duke University’s chronology here; and Cambridge University’s detailed history here).

With its own song index, Language in Lyrics is following a good tradition.

But textual analysis in the digital humanities can be more than indexes. Literary projects often run large datasets of text through software in order to find patterns that otherwise would be missed. Or, they publish new editions with long-lost marginalia. Or, they use technology to salvage books that otherwise would be lost. For the latter, good examples are the scanning and virtual unfurling of fragile Biblical scrolls, or an initiative by Omeka to virtually repair Broken Books.

Digitization and Online Archives

In digitization and online archives projects, museums, archives, and galleries come alive. They are online exhibits that let you interact with the artifacts, or they make primary sources like historical texts and photos available to view. Like we talked about a couple blogposts ago, these kinds of projects would be similar the British Library’s Flickr (by the way, the British Library also has a great blog about digital humanities) or the Association of Nova Scotia Museum’s NovaMuse.

This is one of the most popular categories of Digital Humanities activity, and like textual analysis, has been around since the nascent days of the field. Increasingly, full exhibitions are hosted online after they begin their life as a digitization project. Some award-winning project examples include Medieval Swansea and Mapping Hiroshima. I bet you can find many more on your own, too.

Cultural Analysis

Digital humanities projects in the cultural analysis category are a little more complex to explain than digitization projects or online archives. They are often based on large datasets, and use online maps, graphs, and other interactive elements to convey their findings with the public.

And those findings, in turn, often shed light on underlying cultural phenomena that we might not notice or be able to illustrate without the big datasets. Of all the categories, this is the one aside from textual analysis that “crunches the numbers” the most. A good example is Linked Jazz, which uses the open source software Linked Open Data to illustrate interpersonal connections between jazz musicians. This then shows how ‘loose networks’ play a large role in both history and our experience of the world around us.

Online Publishing

We’ve actually already talked about some of the best examples of online publishing projects. As previously mentioned, Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Humanities is free to read online. And it’s more than a digitized PDF; it’s a structured website based on the book. The other example we’ve mentioned is Debates in the Digital Humanities. Debates is powered by an open source publishing platform called Manifold. This enables the authors of the series to interact with their readers by allowing them to add highlights to passages and add terms to a crowdsourced index. As an additional plus, the interface is one of the cleanest, easiest-on-the-eyes online reading experiences out there.

Online Networks and Directories

You might have heard of HNet, a well-known example of digital humanities in the networking realm. Then there’s the Humanist Discussion Group, which has been going strong since 1987. Other major DH initiatives and organizations include University of Victoria Digital Humanities Summer Institute and centerNet. Another chance to learn and connect comes through The Programming Historian, where you can find tutorials on how to do pretty much anything related to digital humanities, and brush up on tech skills. There are also annual Digital Humanities Awards – you can explore past years to find other great examples of projects.

But Why Are We Talking About This?

By now, you may asking why all of this context matters. You’re probably wondering why we’ve spent so much time going through the ins and outs of an unfamiliar academic subfield. Why are we talking about this?

That, at least, is a fairly easy question to answer. Language in Lyrics owes its philosophy and methodology to the digital humanities. It has inherited digital humanities’ goal of public engagement, openness, and accessibility. Our song index won’t be data for data’s sake – it’s meant to be used as a tool by our Gaelic cultural community. And this is completely in keeping with the spirit of digital humanities.

Language in Lyrics . . . has inherited digital humanities’ goal of public engagement, openness, and accessibility.

Our song index won’t be data for data’s sake – it’s meant to be used as a tool by our Gaelic cultural community.

Now that we’ve explored where these digital humanities ideas come from, we can move on to explore other digital humanities projects within the online Gaelic world. Over the next two blogposts, we’ll be exploring what other digital resources are out there for Gaelic, especially music, both here in Nova Scotia and in Scotland, concentrating on how they harness technology. We’ll be comparing their approach and databases to the Language in Lyrics project.

See you next time for more kitchen table technology conversation.

Le beannachd,

Aleen

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Nonrequired further reading:

Association of Nova Scotia Museums. NovaMuse. https://www.novamuse.ca.

Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Southampton, King’s College London Digital Lab, Queen’s University of Belfast. City Witness: Place and Perspective in Medieval Swansea. http://www.medievalswansea.ac.uk/en/.

British Library. Digital Scholarship blog. https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/.

Cambridge University. “Defining Digital Humanities.” Cambridge Digital Humanities. https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/cdh/what-is-dh.

Carnegie Mellon University. The Digital Humanities Literacy Guidebook. https://cmu-lib.github.io/dhlg/.

Cashion, Debra Taylor. Broken Books. Saint Louis University. https://brokenbooks.omeka.net/.

CenterNet (An international network of digital humanities centers). https://dhcenternet.org/.

Compute Canada. “Q & A with John Simpson.” Humanities and Social Sciences Research Portal. https://www.computecanada.ca/research-portal/humanities-and-social-sciences/.

Digital Humanities Awards. Highlighting Resources in Digital Humanities. http://dhawards.org/.

Fish, Stanley. “Mind your P’s and B’s: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation.” The New York Times. 23 January 2012. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/mind-your-ps-and-bs-the-digital-humanities-and-interpretation/.

Gold, Matthew K. and Lauren F. Klein. Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019). https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/debates-in-the-digital-humanities-2019.

Hiroshima Archive Production Committee. Hiroshima Archive. http://hiroshima.mapping.jp/index_en.html.

HNet (Humanities and Social Sciences Online). Michigan State University. https://networks.h-net.org/.

King’s College London. Humanist (Journal and Discussion Group). https://dhhumanist.org/

Koh, Adeline. “A Letter to the Humanities: DH Will Not Save You.” Hybrid Pedagogy. 19 April 2015. https://hybridpedagogy.org/a-letter-to-the-humanities-dh-will-not-save-you/.

Manifold (affiliated with University of Minnesota Press and funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). https://manifoldapp.org/.

Pratt Institute Semantic Lab. Linked Jazz. https://linkedjazz.org/.

The Programming Historian. https://programminghistorian.org/.

Schreibman, Susan, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, eds. A Companion to Digital Humanities (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/.

University of Victoria. Digital Humanities Summer Institute. http://dhsi.org/.

Wieseltier, Leon. “Perhaps the Culture is Now the Counterculture.” The New Republic. 28 May 2013. https://newrepublic.com/article/113299/leon-wieseltier-commencement-speech-brandeis-university-2013.

Sgrìobh mi ‘s a’ bhlog mu dheireadh agam gu robh mi ‘dol a dh’innse dhuibh beagan mun teicneòlas a tha sinn a’ cur gu feum. Seo agaibh e, agus tha mi an dòchas gum bidh e feumail dhuibh. I wrote in my last blog post that I was going to tell you a bit about some of the technology that we put to use when transcribing. Here it is, I hope it will be of interest!

I find one of the most useful pieces of technology, when I’m transcribing, is having the ability to slow down a recording. Here are a some programs and a website for varying playback speed, and transcribing, that I have tried:

Express Scribe: This is a program that I purchased (there is a free version) that allows you to upload an audio file and type into a screen that is part of the program. I liked the speed control and a very nice feature is that when you press play after pausing the audio it rewinds a few seconds which saves a lot of time.  BUT you can’t adjust the font and the type is quite small if you are working on a laptop. Also, if you have the free version it constantly asks you to download other programs. I think there are better options.

oTranscribe: This is a web-based application that we tried at a “transcription céilidh” experiment at Baile nan Gàidheal / Highland Village Museum (more on that in a future post!). It is open source software created by the MuckRock foundation that funds free tools to help journalists, researchers and citizens, and that pleases me greatly!

This is a very clear platform which also nicely slows down audio and rewinds a few seconds when you hit “play” after pausing the audio. (I don’t think I can transcribe without that feature now!)

Pros:

• It’s quite simple to upload audio from your computer to the website.
• The website will save your text every five minutes to your web browser and will keep up to 100 copies (You just have to push the history button on the right side of your transcript)
• You can use “command” J to insert a ‘timestamp’…this is useful if you just want to move on and come back later to something you didn’t understand.

Cons:  

• When you exit the page and return you often have to upload the audio again.
• You have to be careful to copy and paste your work to an offline location on your computer in order to save and share.
• Initially we found the the keyboard shortcuts were not ideal, for example the stop/start command was the ‘escape’ button at the top left of the keyboard. But since then we realized that you can customize your shortcut keys by going to the settings page

Working with offline on your computer Quicktime and Windows Media Player will also give you the option to slow down audio:

Quicktime (for Mac):

Open Quicktime and open the file you need to alter;
Click on the Window menu and open Show A/V controls;
Use the controls at the bottom of the A/V window to alter the speed.

You can rewind a few seconds by pulling back the “Jog Shuttle” toggle (bottom left).

Windows Media Player (for PC): (I work on a Mac laptop so don’t have access to this program so I can’t tell you if it has a similar function to “Jog Shuttle”…maybe someone can let us know?)

Open Windows Media Player and open the file you need to slow down;
Click on the view menu and go down to Play Speed Settings;
Click on this and the setting open at the bottom of the screen allowing you to speed up or slow down the music.

The nice part about working offline on your computer is that you will always have access to the files and it is easy to share your work-in-progress with friends by sharing it in a Google Doc. We’ll be exploring this idea further in a future post exploring the concept of the ‘transcription céilidh’ and ways you can use technology to facilitate group transcription. After all, as I like to say, it takes a village to transcribe a song…

Le Màiri Sìne NicLaomuinn

By Mary Jane Lamond

Feasgar math dhuibh uile. Tha fios aig an fheadhainn a tha eòlach orm gu bheil mi gu math measail air rannsachadh agus a’ fuasgladh thòimhseachain. Tha na beachdan a leanas a’ dol a bhith ro shìmplidh do chuid agaibh ach tha mi ‘n dòchas gum bi ‘ad feumail do chàch…

Those who know me know that I’m very fond of research and untangling puzzles. Today I invite you to join me on a trip ‘down the rabbit hole’ (my preferred sort of journey). In other words… searching for Gaelic song texts on the internet.

I’ve was so fortunate that I was often able to learn songs from tradition bearers and my peers ‘air chèilidh’, through visiting. I’m also aware that experience isn’t readily available to everyone. But, we have the good fortune to have a wealth of recorded material from which to learn.

I was a student at St. F.X. when I first started to work on learning Gaelic songs. I didn’t have the means to go and visit my elders often, but I did have access to recordings. This was back in the era of cassettes, and just a bare bones internet, so I found it helpful to go The Father Brewer Celtic Collection at St. Francis Xavier University and go through published song collections to see if I could find a setting of the song that would give me a base from which to begin transcribing the version I had on tape.

Although it doesn’t replace the valuable experience of meandering through books in the library, the internet is now an extremely useful tool for searching for song texts as so many Gaelic publications have been uploaded to the internet in the form of searchable PDF’s. It’s amazing, really, what you can find!

Transcribing a song is an extremely useful exercise in building language skills and intimately getting to know a song and a singer. However, you can sometimes give yourself a head start on the transcription process by searching for a song online before you start.

(Clicking on any gold coloured text in the following example will give you a link to follow)

For example, I went to Gael Stream, the online platform for Dr. John Shaw’s Cape Breton Folklore and Folk Song Collection, housed at St. Francis Xavier University, and looked for a song I wasn’t familiar with (and there are plenty). I chose An t-Òigear Uallach, sung by Dan Joe MacNeil of Deepdale, Inverness County.

I suggest that if you can make out an unusual line from the song, searching for that line is the best way to narrow your search results.  Those of you familiar with Gaelic song will know that searching for “O gur mise tha fo mhulad” [Oh, I am miserable] is going to give you too many results. (I tried it and got 2,600!)

Sure enough, there was An t-Òigear Uallach, with just a few variations in the text as it was sung by Dan Joe MacNeil on Gael Stream.

I have to say, it isn’t always this easy to find such a close text and quite often you will have to do lot more transcribing. We’ll be posting more about some tips for that process in future blog posts.

As that went so swimmingly, and I hadn’t hardly even broken sod, I decided to see what I could find out about Seumas Munro. I searched his name (also in quotation marks) and found a short biography of a Seumas Munro in this jewel of a book :

As the song featured in MacLean Sinclair’s book is not An t-Òigear Uallach, I wasn’t sure if we were talking about the same Seumas Munro, SO (I did warn you this was going to be a trip down a rabbit hole, but I promise to stop soon…truly) I went to the National Library of Scotland, which is a complete wonder, and I did a search for Munro’s book “Am Filidh” and got this search result:

So you can see that “my” Seumas Munro also published a Gaelic primer, so it might be the Seumas Munro that A. MacLean Sinclair describes? If anybody has more information on the author of “Am Filidh” do let us know.

Time to come up for air. Hope you enjoyed the trip and that someone decides to start singing this song!