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Progress Report

This week with this project has been difficult. Trying to go through the data that has been collected in GIS is proving to very difficult. I took ArcMap and popped it open, added a base map that has topography and labeled landmarks. I searched through the shapefiles available through Esri online and was able to find one that was the state of Florida and the boundaries of the counties. Using the editor tool, I highlighted individual counties that were not Orange county and deleted them. This just left the boundary of Orange county on the base map. Since the base map was of the world and we only need a small section for this project, I went into the data frame properties for the layers and used the clip tool. I then clipped the base map to only orange county. I did this step to save on processing power required for the project. There is no need to render the world if we are only working in a small portion. Once getting down to a workable area things began to get drastically more difficult. I attempted to take 2 of the .jpegs that have been gathered and then try to upload them into ArcMap. I was getting several errors and when I did not get errors the images would not load. I did get one of the images to load in, but since there is no location metadata on the images the projection was not correct. So I tried to convert them to transverse mercator so that I would be able to superimpose the images. I was not able to get past this step. I was getting several errors.

Talking about these issues with my partner, we discussed further steps for this project. Due to the struggle so far to simply project the image, and not having been able to properly work on the buildings and their location, we have dedicated ourselves to change the scope of our project. We began to look for a different visualization that may fit our ideas. We came across Google MyMaps and we got excited about the possibilities. This still keeps the visual map aspect of our original project, but allows us to go about it in a different manner. 

For the visualization of this project we plan to use Google MyMaps. We plan to use this program to visualize different stories at different geographical locations associated with the Hungerford property. This would show the way that the Hungerford school was able to spread its influence far and wide. We will take a look at several people who passed through the property and where they later ended up. This visualization will help evaluate the potential reach of the Hungerford school and its teachings. Through primary sources provided in this class we will select a handful of influential figures and attempt to show their stories. Through visual analysis we expect to see the far reaching grasp of Hungerford that may not immediately be apparent. Our current working title for this project is “Branching out of Hungerford”. 

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Assert

Using Bill Festers book Interactive Visualization: Insight Through Inquiry, I applied the Assert model to my project. My research project revolves around the visualization of the Hungerford property. The first step is Ask. Asking the proper question is essential to the success of the project. This chapter (chapter 2) pointed out the essentials of structuring the question with the idea of the potential audience in mind, as well as narrowing down the topic to something that is workable. This project will be good for reaching a wider audience. Since it will be a visualization of the modern property with the locations of buildings that no longer exist on the site. A visualization, done correctly, can reach a wide audience. It is something that is easily digested and can be very eye-catching. Narrowing down this question has not really  been an issue, as the scope of this project has been limited to the information available and the skill I have to bring this project to life. For chapter 3, Search is the topic. I personally have not had to do much searching for the information for this project. Most of the images have already been found by others and provided in the class files. These images are from primary sources. The only other images that I need to be able to make this project work are current base maps of how the area looks. I have a wide range of sources to pick from for the best base map. Esri provides good current base maps that are easy to use and a great option. Chapter 4 is on Structure. This chapter points out that quantitative data and qualitative data is important as essential for the visualization. For my project there is a strong importance on quantitative data. Being able to get good and accurate maps that show all of the key points that I want to show is imperative. However, the qualitative data is still important. There are documents that list all of the buildings on the property. There is also the distance between each building that is essential to putting together the perfect map. Chapter 5 is Envision. This chapter I found a bit difficult to apply towards my project. I am having difficulty thinking of the potential further analysis that can be done off of the map of building locations. There has to be something that I am not seeing in this aspect. These maps can maybe be analyzed in relation to other projects as to locations of events and day to day life. Chapter 6 is Represent. This chapter is important to this project. Since my project is producing a map that is easily digestible, the way that the data and information is shown is very important. From the art aspect noted in this chapter such as the colors used in the map, to the way that the information that this map will have, will be perceived. Choosing good colors and a concise legend along with making the building locations clearly will yield the best map possible from the data available to me. Chapter 7 is Tell. This chapter is about the narrative that my project can tell. Being clear with my visual interpretation and making sure that the way that my data is represented has no bias in it is important for the reach of this project. This should not be an issue, as this project is based on the physical locations of the buildings. Adding bias to physical locations strikes me as something difficult to do and I will be sure to omit it from my work.

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Project

After going through this weeks readings, there are three critical points that were brought to attention. The first was “The Project as Basic Unit” which delved into who is involved in digital humanities projects, how they’re organized, and several other important highlights. It was interesting to read about funding for these types of digital humanities project as I know it can be very limited in general. Coming from a biology background, there were always opportunities to receive funding through science organizations although it was still a difficult process. The second point is “Institutions and Pragmatics. This section brings up a point that I am not sure has previously been discussed in class, but about scale. How much material are we aiming to produce and how many people are we hoping to reach? Assuming we are on a strict budget and limited on time, will we be sticking with one well formulated and produced digital history visualization? Or will we be trying to create multiple options that have the potential to be expanded upon later? I think going forward it will be important for us to narrow down exactly what this project hopes to convey, how to convey it, and who to convey it to. 

As mentioned in A Short Guide to the Digital Humanities, impact is an important factor in any sort of digital project. The impact of what we are working on with the Hungerford school should be something that we keep in mind. We should work to maximize the impact this project will have. Creating and presenting something with substantial impact is what will lead to change. What is also mentioned in this reading is experimentation. We need to try new things and see if they stick. This is the best way to find something that will provide the most amount of impact. We have to take some risk to be able to get the most out of this project. Bringing GIS into this project, we should be conscious of the data we have on hand and its ability to be applied spatially for the digitization of this project. 

While combing through some of the primary sources, a few things become apparent. There are many different perspectives involved in the Hungerford school. The primary source is the state archives on the situation with the school. These were written in a way that is very sterile in its language. It contains a good bit of very useful information, however, the tone is very formal. Then there are the primary sources that are letters to many people talking about this issue with the Hungerford school and sending letters and newspaper columns. These formats contain language that is more accessible to the public. These formats show how people were really talking to each other at the time about this issue. These differences in tone with these primary sources is something that we feel should be looked at. What tone is being conveyed by the different formats when they talk or mention different things about the Hungerford school, or the situation surrounding it. Taking a look at the tone that was used during different points of time while referring to the Hungerford school is something we feel that is important to discuss and look into. This links to how people were feeling about the school over time as well. Tone is something that we should keep in mind for our own project as well. What words and language are we going to use to present what we know about this situation so that it is accessible to the community who needs this. Making the language accessible will allow this project to be able to get a wider reach and have more of an impact for this community.

To summarize all of the primary sources, we had the thought of creating an informational video that was either hosted by the students or Dr. French. We assume you’re still able to walk around on the Hungerford property? It would be neat to be able to walk the property while talking about its history and reflecting on what used to be in certain locations. We could show a map on the screen of where we are standing in comparison to the original property and also show a pop-up image / visualization of what used to be in a certain location. For example, when discussing the Hungerford school, we could walk around what is currently there and show an image of the original school so there’s a comparison and discuss topics about the school and what has happened over time. This could also turn into a miniature vlog series that is sponsored by the history department where we go chronologically through the history of the Hungerford property while filming it there. The biggest concern with this would be getting enough views or traction with the video(s), however we feel this would still be a good medium to present information.

Natalie + Josh 

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Text Mining

In The Historian's Macroscope: Big Historical Data, the idea of a macroscope is discussed.  The macroscope is very important to history and how data is processed and how a story is put together from the information we have available. The macroscope helps us aggregate so much data that we might have on a subject, and then make sense of it. It is taking a look at the bigger picture, and picking specific details in that picture. Taking these specific details, you can string each of these details together into a story that is easier to make sense of. This is a great way to pull an important story from a sea of information and put it in a digestible way. Trying to start with the story and build up could lead to a slew of issues. These issues could lead the researcher to be too focused on the minute details of the story. This could lead them to miss other details, or even the significance of the larger story that this minor story could belong to. However, it is important to be able to do research at the macro level and the micro level. The argument is then made that having the computational skills to be able to process all of this data is slowly becoming a necessity. Through the use of technology, we can pull together so much information that it may become too much. This idea of Big Data is daunting, no matter the field you are in. So having these skills to be able to dig through this data and process it into digestible and workable chunks is a necessity. This leads to the discussion of API’s and why they are important. These allow you to use your programming of choice to dig through data and to be able to sort it in a way that makes the most sense for the project that you are working on. 

In the article The Causes of the Civil War, 2.0, it is brought to the forefront why text mining is so important for historians. This article describes a three thousand page report that was compiled in regards to the Virginia convention. The Virginia General Assembly had met in 1861 and this took weeks. The transcriptions of this occurrence were not fully gathered and edited until 1965. This document has become a treasure trove of information. This transcription is the big data in this case. From here, methods of data mining were implemented to process this data down into manageable chunks. In this instance, the data mining worked to process down how many times and in what contexts certain words were used. From here, the article makes the case for digital data mining. A program on a computer is much better and faster than one person is to scrape through a document, or various documents, to gather this type of data that is not easily seen at the surface. 

I took a look at the selection of tools available for me in this assignment for data mining. TAPoR seems like an interesting tool. I messed around with this tool for a bit and it seems like I could use it for my purposes, but I would have to already have data to infeed into the program. From here I moved onto Google Books Ngram. I was searching for articles that line up with my research projects, and for my GIS needs, books do not hold the wealth of information I might need. From here, I moved onto JSTOR data for research. Through here, I was able to access Constellate. This tool worked for me very well. This tool worked for my research perfectly. I was able to search up keywords, define dates, and define the type of article I was looking for. I have the ability to sort through different types of documents. I had the ability to choose only articles, set the time period of 2022 to 2023. Then I picked english as the language. Then I searched up the term kinase. I only received one article from my search results. I find this extremely helpful for my research purposes because it really helps me find areas that are not getting as much research as they could be. For me, identifying gaps in knowledge, such as with kinases and kinase activity is very helpful and applicable to my needs.

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Visualization

From Bill Fester in Interactive Visualization : Insight Through Inquiry, information visualization can be defined as a visual representation that can be interactive that serves the purpose of better understanding the abstract. He also states in the same breath that information visualization is similar to, if not the same, as informatics. Visualization is valuable for a number of reasons. Visualization helps people to gain a better grasp of the information they are 

consuming. As detailed by Bill Fester, Visualization helps with pattern recognition in data. Pattern recognition is very important because it is the backbone of digesting the data you have. Collecting a large amount of raw data and doing analysis on it is important for any project. However, having the ability to process this data and create a visual representation of what you have collected is great for streamlining the analysis process and figuring out where the holes in your data are located. Once you take your raw data and are able to place it in a visual format, patterns will become more easily apparent. Taking that step will help anyone realize in their project what more analysis can be done. Sometimes having all the data laid out in a visual format brings to life new questions in your project. One key example of history visualization is the case of John Snow. He was the one who was able to figure out where a cholera outbreak in London had originated from. He did this by visualizing the locations of all of the sick people in London. Once he was able to see everything laid out, it became easy to see that this outbreak was from a contaminated water pump. This case is very impactful to the medical field, as it is one of the first steps away from miasma theory. 

Fester also developed the ASSERT model. The ASSERT model encourages the following: to ask a question, search and structure the data, envision the result, represent the visualization, and to tell a story. This framework allows for the use of common data gathering methods to be used to tell a compelling story through visualization. This is a method that combines project based learning with the use of tools to dig deeper into these topics. 

The ASSERT model is something that we can apply to the Hungerford School. Asking a question on the topic of the school to get the blood flowing into new searches for data is possible. Using the model on the Hungerford School we can pull together new questions from the data available, or see how the data valuable may suit the new questions we may have. This model could lead us to ask meaningful questions about segregated education in the American south in relation to the Hungerford School. A question that can be asked from here is what quality of education in terms of classes available was offered at the Hungerford School compared to other non black schools. The project resource bank has a wealth of information already available that can help with questions such as this. This bank provides information from different time periods that the school was open. This is a wealth of information on its own. Having different snapshots in time of the Hungerford School allows for the ability to peek through time at how things changed. The different things that were happening at each snapshot in time of the school is great information. If there was only information from one still in time, it would provide a small piece of a bigger picture. Having small pieces of information across time has this benefit. In the other direction, it would also be beneficial to have plenty of information from one snapshot in time. Both cases bring different attributes to the table. The information available now lets us gain some sort of grasp on the Hungerford School through the years. The snapshots available to us through time are also a good help to better grasp what was going on at the time in the area. This is another aspect that works multi directionally. The snapshots of the Hungerford School will give a better grasp of what not just Eatonville was like at the time, but may also allow for speculation of other areas where even less information is available. In the breath, the information from other close geographic areas may lend some added insight to the Hungerford School. The best anyone can do is work with the information they have and to make the best of it.

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Itineraries

In Itinerating Europe: Early Modern Spatial Networks in Printed Itineraries, the Itinerary is explained. The Itinerary is explained to have been a list of cities and the distances that it would take to arrive to those cities. From there it grew to be more of a travel guide, and some innovate even further and included fold out maps. The term grew to include other things such as charts and maps. These itineraries made information on travel to many different places knowledge that was easily accessible. These itineraries were responsible for defining mental maps early on in Europe. There is a case described here that the Dutch did not create itineraries for Spain for a while. The result of this was the populus feeling like they were more distant from Spain than they actually were. This is due to less itineraries, being able to read about the routes to Spain less. One would not think that reading about a place less would make it feel further away, but spatial memory is a very fickle thing. The itineraries had a magic of their own. They existed alongside maps, not opposed to them. They worked together hand in hand. The map showed physical distance and the topography of the region. The itinerary showed the abstract of the landscape, it captured the nuances of the trail and the significance of every landmark. What was most important about these itineraries was that they were accessible to the masses. They were easy to get a hold of.

One can tie these ideas back to Arguing with Digital History:Patterns of Historical Interpretation, as this article talks about digital history and digital humanities and the ways that these topics should be approached. Getting a project seen is all about the level of inclusivity you build into the project. First off, the range of a project to reach common people (and plenty of them) is tied to how accessible the project is. This ties into the Itineraries mentioned previously. Both subjects show the importance of keeping information at the forefront of people's minds by keeping them very accessible. Digital history/digital humanities shows a modern version of what was experienced long ago with itineraries. This article also makes a good case for being careful with the way a project is presented. It is better to introduce a digital project as a map analysis or textual analysis rather than pointing out the specifics of the project first. If you lead with the project being in a certain area of the world, then you may find that you have unknowingly excluded people and diminished interest in this project.The way one introduces a project to the public is very important in the digital humanities to get the appropriate reach that is desired. 

A pattern arises when looking at What, Where, When and Sometimes Why: Data Mining Two Decades of Women’s History Abstracts. This article takes a look at women's history abstracts. A passage in this article notes that in attention to male and female subjects, female subjects were only noted and expressly mentioned by using “her” 14% of the time in these articles. This speaks to the trends that have been discussed with the prior two articles. The use of a word in this case, would make it more familiar. The more the reader has a familiarity with the word, the less the concept may feel foreign to the reader. In this case, something like a more common use of the word “her” could lead readers to not feel as removed from female experiences and female authors in any space. Applying the idea of familiarity to this space will make it something that is less easy to be forgotten. 

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Geographies of the Holocaust

The book, Geographies of the Holocaust takes a spatial look at the atrocities of the holocaust during the second world war. From the first chapter in this book, it is discussed that this book takes a look at the happenings during this time period. This look aggregates information from maps and other physical location based resources and mashes them together with testimonials of the people who lived through these experiences and were able to tell their tales. This chapter states that place is a value from feeling, as described by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. This adds more meaning and a different perspective into the work of GIS on this matter. GIS is described in this chapter as being fundamental to blend together the physical location data with the testimonial, or story side, to create a better representation of these occurrences. This blend opens the door to new questions that can be asked once the data is analyzed. The note that place is the value of feeling adds a value of feeling to the work that otherwise would consist more of data analysis. It brings a real human element to the table. This chapter also takes a look at GIS as part of the spatial humanities. This is evident from the blend of the previously mentioned ideals. A very important takeaway from this chapter that will be reflected through the rest of this work is the fact that the authors did not want to make maps that were visually striking or conventionally good. They wanted to produce maps that told the real story, without the fancy gimmicks of digital cartography that can often blind the viewer to the real data that is being shown. 

The second chapter of this book was on mapping SS concentration camps. This chapter describes some of the difficulties with working on GIS with all of these details of the past. They describe the process of trying to make sense of dates. Such as something that occurred in late spring, where could that be placed. While working with data in GIS, it has to be made into a form that will be able to be processed by the software. In this case, something being described as late spring needs to have a numerical value of a date attached to it so that the data point can be converted over into GIS to be used appropriately. This was a prolific issue as specific dates were not found consistently in the source data. Another issue covered in this chapter is what is a concentration camp? Data from these locations do not make it easy to categorize any of these in a specific way that would help place each camp in a box. They all have such different qualities that just creating a definition in this manner to properly label data presents an issue. This is evident with Auschwitz, since it filled many different definitions of camp types at different points in its existence. Another issue was properly coding the work that each inmate had to perform and getting this information out of the source. This chapter also covered some findings. One very interesting one to me was that the maps that were created showed the reception and perceived need over occupied and Allied territories in this time. The results showed that across the board in the chronology shown, the support was always varied.

The seventh chapter of this book is about the evacuations from Auschwitz. This chapter starts off with a description of the people as they are leaving the camp as the Allies push into the occupied territory and Germany. It describes the few things people had to take with them, or that they could manage to take with them. This chapter put together a project that took a look at experiences of prisoners between Jan 17-22 in 1945. There is information on the guidelines that were available at the time for moving the prisoners. There is information such as not moving people at night because they could escape, even if these types of rules were not consistently followed. The death march itself produced data for a GIS map that is quantifiable. Another point made in this chapter is that when people gave their testimonials after the war, they were not always used for this type of data mapping. The type of data previously used to make these sorts of maps is described as forensic. It is a detailed account of what happened, yes, but it is more sterile information. Information that was free of the nuances of the people who lived through the awful experience. This chapter does a good job in illustrating the amount of quantifiable data that was left off the table by these previous practices.

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Roy Rosenzweig

Roy Rosenzweig was a historian that made many moves to make information available in the digital age. As noted in ROY ROSENZWEIG AND THE FUTURE OF THE PAST he was someone who was a genuine visionary in the field. He created so much to give back to the field. He spent time creating tools that people could use to build their projects with, and they came with no attached cost. Roy always focused on democratizing history. He wanted to make history available to everyone. Through both of these ideas the RRCHNM (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media). 

Rosenweig has some writings on the impact of technology on historical research between 1995 and 2006. One of these is focused on Wikipedia. Rosenweig seemed very hopeful about the technology and community behind this website. This is because Wikipedia relies on the collaborative effort to put together articles. He notes that this is not common or easy to do in the field of history. The fact that total strangers were able to come together and work on so many articles gave him hope for the future of digital historical research and digital humanities. In another article written by Rosenweig, he discusses Scantrons and the issues that are associated with them. The struggle and annoyance that highschool and college kids face every time they go to take a test and are met with a scantron. He discussed the use of cellphones, and how he saw them as a gateway to a new way of teaching. The ability to get on your phone and ask it any question you could possibly have and have it give you the appropriate answer. He had hope that as time went on, and the technology matured, that this would be the direction that learning would head in. That using technology in the classroom would slowly become the norm and would be incorporated into the learning. He had hope that the internet would grow to a point where it could self police itself to limit misinformation. These two articles show how hopeful Rosenweig was towards the future of the digital humanities. Towards the future of technology as a whole. To an extent, some of his hopes seem to have come true. Technology is something that is much more integrated into learning in today's age. However, there is still the issue of rampant misinformation at large that he may have found quite disappointing. Rosenweig also points out some of his concerns for history in the digital age in his writing “Scarcity or Abundance”. In the digital age, there is so much information available at an instant. However, the quality of the information available as well as the permanence of this information is questionable. His concern lay in how to properly preserve this information. In the digital age, we are all so used to looking for anything and having a wealth of information to pick from. However, much of that information is subject to disappearing at any moment. A website shuts down, a server goes off line, and other issues may affect the information available. For digital humanities and history as a whole, something has to be found to save this information long term. The permanence of the internet is volatile, and not many pay attention to this issue until the information has already been scrubbed from the internet. Preserving for the long term things that are the most important is sometimes a very difficult decision as to what should be or can be saved. The loss of flash and all the projects that crashed as a result of this would have probably brought him much sadness. 

I think that the digital tools of Datascribe and Tropy would have the most use to me as a scholar in the digital age. Datascribe allows information to be transcribed and then prepares this information to be digitally analyzed. This tool works great with numbers and tables. Tropy is a tool that uses digital photos and labels them individually or in bulk. These two seem like good tools to label and sort through large amounts of data. These would make finding a needle in the hay stack of knowledge a bit easier thanks to this sorting. 

The project I find the most compelling that was created by RRCHNM is the Death by Numbers project. This project took a look at the plague (as well as other illnesses) in London. This project used Datascribe to digitize this data so that it could be analyzed. This project really reflects what can be done between STEM and history. There is room for both disciplines to play together, and this project is a great example of this.

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Accessibility

Delving into the Reframing History podcast by Dr. Julian Chambliss, episode 3, I was left with many questions on the accessibility of not only the digital humanities, but also of physical media for marginalized groups. In this episode, there is an issue of a newspaper that is discussed. The newspaper was a physical copy that had not yet been archived, and few local people knew of its existence. This certainly creates a hurdle for the accessibility of this type of media for those who wish to study it. This leads me to ask, what is being done to index and make more accessible (digitally and physically) these sorts of media? In the case of this newspaper, while it was in the hands of a historical society, they seem to not have tried to make it more accessible physically or digitally. Mentioned later in this episode, the idea of looking at history and resources from the people's point of view was brought up. This seems not only important for inclusion and deeper understanding of the source material, but also key for accessibility. If people feel like their point of view is being discussed, or a point of view that is easier for them to identify with, then they may be more likely to become part of the discussion and want to interact with the material. In Debates in Digital Humanities, technology of recovery is introduced. The ability for marginalized people to use digital platforms in a way they see fit to become involved in the humanities. This is a very important step for marginalized groups to feel a better connection to their own history. A step towards making this happen is the further digitalization of materials and properly indexing these materials so that they can be found. As mentioned in the podcast, Reframing History, properly indexing and sorting through materials so that they are available in a more user friendly fashion is necessary. Making these materials more accessible can help the marginalized become part of the discussion when it comes to these materials. This can contribute to politics of recovery and DIY recovery projects, as mentioned in Debates in Digital Humanities. The recovery of these difficult to find texts and indexing them properly are important steps towards DIY recovery projects. This process towards accessibility for communities, such as the black community, is at a slower pace. This is because in the black community there is less emphasis on text mining, which would work on the accessibility of this information for everyone in the digital space. This may be attributed to the racial framework of the text mining that places less emphasis on black communities and stories. This can be changed with more people of the community joining the cause and starting their own projects towards the digitalization of this information. This can be achieved by including people in earlier stages of data collection. If people from the community are involved in the collection of this data, along with indexing this data, this can help bring more people from the community to contribute further in the digitization of these documents. If effort is made to be inclusive or for people to begin their own projects and start at square one and bring this all together, subtle twinges of racism in the work can be avoided and better inclusivity can be attained. This will lead to the bettering of the accessibility of these materials. If the people in these communities make these projects, they may be more inclined to pull their peers in the community into the project. This increases the reach of the project. As always, more eyes and involvement in a project will increase the accessibility of the project. If people are more involved from the ground up, they might be more likely to want to spend more time learning about this project, as opposed to a project that has already been constructed for them without the needs of the community in mind.

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Humanities in the Digital Age

The switch from physical media to that of digital media is an important one. Some have been hesitant to embrace this change, as noted in The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars by Eileen Gardiner. However, as pointed out in this same text, all new methods still hold onto some structure from the past. This should be a solace for humanists to reach out and embrace the digital age we are in. To grow in the digital age, the community has to come together and outline what it will look like as it continues to grow in this direction, as mentioned in Debates in the Digital Humanities. Growing to embrace the internet may prove to have a steep learning curve. There is always the issue of the changing dynamic of the internet. Digital humanities need to be able to quickly adapt to the environment that they are growing into. Digital humanities will encounter growing pains on the internet. Any major change is never free from them. To keep this information open to the public, work needs to be done to keep information free from issues like paywalls and bias. An open environment like the internet will certainly allow for growth of the field, as it will be easier to access and intermingle with disciplines outside of the scope of digital humanities. However, this is where some sort of checks and balances are needed to help digital humanities maintain its integrity on this ever changing platform. One topic that may aid in maintaining this integrity in the field, is some sort of agreement on the definition of digital humanities. As seen through the quotes available on https://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/ people in the field all have very different answers to what digital humanities are. Unity in the community may come from something as simple as a definition. However, this is not a new issue. Work has already been done in digital humanities to unify the field and make use and accessibility possible. This has been done through TEI. The Text Encoding Initiative, as outlined in A Companion to the Digital Humanities, was put together to standardize making up different texts and sources. This is a tool that begins to shape and unify the field of Digital Humanities, and make the change from physical to digital more enticing as there is already a system in place for marking up and searching works. Having a standardized method to work with makes this change in format easier. It will give a sense of comfort and reassurance that the old ways of physical media are not entirely being cast away, and that there is a standardization that translates between physical and digital media. This is merely a beginning for digital humanities in its growth in the vastness of the internet. For the continued growth of the humanities, there needs to be more outreach and collaboration with other disciplines. There is more to learn from the way other disciplines shape themselves and grow through digital mediums. Having something like TEI is a good way to give the field shape and a way to discern it from other communities. The next step is to grow other parameters of the community online. This is where more input should be drawn from other communities and disciplines. However, this step towards unification with the use of TEI in digital humanities has not been taken too well. As seen in Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age, this step actually went and divided historians from the digital humanities. The historians were turned away from being able to actively participate in the digital space. They felt, and still feel like, the digital space was constructed without them in mind. This is a blow to the unification of the digital humanities. To create a good foothold for itself in the digital age and to grow, there needs to be communication and collaboration between these different areas of expertise. Having an important and impactful community, like what has been seen with the historical community, feeling left out and upset because of the lack of communication is not a good sign of community growth. Continued positive growth in the community will mean taking more steps towards the unification of the digital humanities.