Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 511.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: Norman Hinton <hinton@springnet1.com> (6)
Subject: Re: 16.509 data modelling for a history of the book?
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (27)
Subject: complex, labour-intensive data models
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:35:36 +0000
From: Norman Hinton <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 16.509 data modelling for a history of the book?
Willard, I'd certainly include 'theme' or 'subject' or 'type' of book -- it
would be very useful to have handy available data on which booksellers
(etc.) tended to handle which sort of books.
As far as color, illustrations, etc.....I think much of this is already in
many bibliographical analyses, isn't it ? I tend to think of that
information as clogging up the db somewhat. But then it depends on what
you want the db for, doesn't it ?
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 07:56:26 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: complex, labour-intensive data models
Thinking further from my question, about modelling the history of the book,
I am wondering along the lines suggested by the remark of a somewhat
annoyed student a couple of years ago. I had been trying to convince her, a
postgraduate in history, that relational database modelling was a Good
Thing. She commented that in her experience databases of historical data
tended to be so profoundly shaped by the interests of the makers that she
found them useless for research. This criticism would, of course, also
apply to any large computing project and, I suppose, points to an
unavoidable problem: the more labour-intensive something like that becomes,
the more monumental (less politely, dinosaur-like) the result. Hence the
importance of prototyping.
Some years back I recall various universities in N America investing in
"rapid prototyping" laboratories, where a person with an idea could see it
take prototypical shape quickly, then use the result to argue for the
support required to build the full thing. Whatever happened to the idea of
rapid prototyping? Is it fair to say that the development of computational
tools has or is inevitably shifting the ability to prototype toward the
ordinary user?
We tell our students here at King's College London to think of their
projects as prototypes -- so that they can consciously engage with genuine
research but at a simpler level within the brief amount of time that they have.
Comments?
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Feb 27 2003 - 03:09:00 EST