Data & Digitization

 These chapters furthered my definition of Digital Humanities by explaining the methods of gaining data for digital humanities projects, as well as explaining the process of actually uploading and using the data. This made the definition of Digital Humanities more specific because it narrows down the types of projects that are considered Digital Humanities projects. I thought the steps for how to use preexisting data were interesting. I assumed this would be similar to a research project where you simply use ideas or images and credit the author. Using data for digital humanities projects seems to be much more of a process than this, where you need to research the author and the rights you have to the work. This makes sense to me because rather than just using ideas from the original author like you would in a research paper, you are actually directly using their work. I thought the digitization chapter was interesting as well because things like HTML I have seen many times using technology, but I never really knew anything about what it actually meant. I also didn't realize how many different ways there were to upload files to the internet, I never really thought about this but I assumed it was all the same and not based on the exact type of file you were using and uploading. 

The project I chose for my presentation was the Exhibition website for The Metropolitan Museum. These ideas apply to this project because while the in person museum has the physical artwork, the Exhibition website has digitized scanned images of this artwork. The uploaded images of the artwork are extremely clear and easy to look at, which implies their use of scanners and other methods used to effectively digitize the artwork. The data collection itself is simpler than many other Digital Humanities projects because it is just the digitized version of exhibits in the museum rather than a separate collection of data.