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Digital Humanities: Technology development

An introduction to digital humanities

What is technology development?

In some cases, you may find that there are no existing tools that will allow you achieve your research goal, or maybe you have an idea for a tool that would be useful to others working in the digital humanities. In these instances you may consider developing your own technology to create a new tool. This can include:

  • Software development – using a programming language to create a new software tool 
  • Hardware development – designing and engineering a new piece of equipment

Tools and techniques used in technology development

Tools:

  • GitHub
  • Python
    • An open-source programming language with a large, active community and many useful libraries and modules.
    • Used by researcher Tim Sherratt for many of his projects, including Redacted, which samples redactions from ASIO files from the National Archives of Australia.

Techniques:

  • Commercial partnerships
    • Hardware development is likely to require financial investment and partnership with engineering or manufacturing experts.

Relevant guidelines and standards

Examples of technology development

  • Stylo R package
    • A suite of stylometric tools provided as a package for use with the software R.
  • TXM
    • Textometry software for textual analysis.
  • Emotive
    • A project to prototype tools and applications for heritage professionals and visitors that produce interactive, personalised, emotionally resonant digital stories for museums and cultural sites.

Support available at the University

Training

The Sydney Informatics Hub have a training schedule for learning programming and computational tools.

Commercial partnerships

Resources to assist staff in developing industry and commercial partnerships.

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