Category: Bio

Hello! I’m Ana Yanes Martinez, a sophomore at Carleton College and still waiting for my eureka moment to realize what I want to major. In other words: I don’t know. I was introduced to Digital Humanities in a class I took during the fall of my freshman year, and I became really fascinated with the intersection of the humanities and digital world. Apart from my interest in the digital humanities, I have a passion for art, cultures, food and a semi unhealthy obsession with the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I am certain my Hogwarts letter was lost or stolen before it reached me.

I think a very important aspect of digital humanities I learned during training is the thought process given to figuring out what platforms and even software are better suited to specific projects. We looked into three different platforms: Omeka, Reason, and WordPress. I think each have distinctive features suited for specific type of projects. Omeka seems better suited for metadata and archiving, whereas WordPress seems to have more theme availability and design flexibility. Reason on the other hand, seems to be  administrator friendly, and so far the easiest to use. This could be the most comfortable to use for people who want a way to display information without having to learn much HTML and CSS or other programming languages. The downside is that Reason is limited in themes and may leave its users wishing for more. Considering the pros and cons of each platform is necessary at the start of each project as it can prevent the need to migrate between platforms halfway through the project and save time in the long run.

Author: Qimeng Yu

I’m Qimeng, a junior math major at Carleton. As opposed to what you may assume about math majors – was how I wanted to start my second sentence, but I have to confess that I fit pretty much into all the common stereotypes. I like working with data, programming and writing (poking holes in others’) proofs. I also enjoy Hitchcock movies, Stephen King short stories and Sudoku.

It’s my second year working as a Digital Humanities Associate. Last year I worked mainly on two projects – JHNA (formatting articles to be published on Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art) and Image Management (exploring the world of metadata of graphical materials and testing various managing tools). I got the opportunity of working with students from different academic fields, ranging from Computer Science to Studio Art, which opens my mind to new ways of approaching problems.

My favorite part of our DH training is wandering on Lynda.com. Going through lists of tutorials for so many amazing software exhilarates me more than online shopping. Not only a wonderful source of knowledge, Lynda is also a reminder to me of the importance of consistently educating and bettering myself.

Author: Elizabeth Budd

Hello! I’m Elizabeth, a sophomore at Carleton College intending to major in history. I was exposed to digital humanities in a class last winter, and I’ve since become fascinated by the possibilities offered by digital humanities! My other interests include traveling, maps, musicals, and Sudoku.

Prior to this week of training, I had not thought extensively on the necessity of matching a project’s needs to the suitability to a platform, especially content management systems (CMS). During the past week, we have explored three distinct CMS – Omeka, WordPress, and Reason (Carleton’s own website builder).

While all have the same basic goal, each best suit different projects. Reason, which is used for Carleton’s website, is quite easy to edit and requires absolutely no coding experience. However, it does not allow the degree of customization available in Omeka or WordPress. On the other hand, Omeka and WordPress are not as intuitive, and thus harder to learn, and coding experience is helpful for both Omeka and WordPress. Thus, each CMS is better suited to some projects than others; no one platform is always best for all projects. The correct CMS for the job depends on a project’s goal, scope, content, and workers.

Author: Bard Swallow

Hi, I’m Bard, and I hate writing introductions. When I was supposed to introduce myself as a freshman at Carleton on the Facebook page, I got so worried my introduction would sound like every other one that I wrote a sonnet instead. Since then I’ve found outlets for my interests in medieval history and literature, romance languages, early music and folk music, roleplaying games, programming, and theatre. I’m a Computer Science major and a Medieval and Renaissance Studies concentrator. I got excited about digital scholarship as the natural intersection of my disciplines. As a DHA I hope to learn new software and best practices for collaboration in digital scholarship so that I can apply them to research projects in grad school and beyond.

During this week’s training, I was surprised to learn just how much our group of student workers helps build websites. I was used to thinking of 3D printing and modeling or GIS (geographic information systems) as standard digital humanities projects, but at its simplest and most widely useful, our job is about making scholarship digital and widely accessible, and the way to do that is by making (good) websites. Time to actually learn some CSS.