Google Tools for Digital Humanities Scholars

Using Google Tools for Digital Humanities Scholarship

“A Panoply of Stable or Quirky Opportunities”

Shawn Day - 23 March 2015

Objectives‣ To appreciate the breadth of Google Tools available to

support scholarly endeavour; ‣ To find a tool or two that you may not have been aware of; ‣ To identify a way or two that you may not have

considered using tools that you already were aware of; ‣ Most of all: Inspire and Imagine.

Disclaimer‣ I am not actually a shill for Google; ‣ I actually prefer Open Source Tools; ‣ But I also use the best tool for the task at hand.

‣ Major Caveat: Tools come, Tools Go. They change constantly.

GoogleX/Solve for X

GoogleX/Solve for X

Looking for a Tool Pattern‣ Making Google Data Available ‣ Mining Google Data with Google Tools ‣ Applying Google Tools to Your Own Data

‣ What Google Tools Do People Use Today?

The Tour‣ Google Scholar ‣ Google Keep ‣ Google Fusion Tables ‣ Google Public Data

Explorer ‣ Google NGram Viewer ‣ Google Trends ‣ Google Correlate ‣ Google Docs +

‣ Google Developer ‣ Google Cultural Institute ‣ Google Big Picture Group ‣ Google Apps for Higher Ed ‣ Google Sites

Schematic of Tools‣ Complex - Simple ‣ General - Specific ‣ Abstract - Fun

Google Scholar

Who Uses Google Scholar?‣ You can use it as your own dashboard and manage your

own scholarly citations ‣ Similar in that to ResearchGate or academia.edu ‣ Not as geared towards the social graph ‣ Mines the spidering capabilities of Google

Competitors

Google Keep‣ A Personal/Professional Data Manager ‣ Based on collections of snippets with limited metadata

‣ Collecting random - or quite intentional bits of data

‣ Tied to Google Infrastructure ‣ Lack of Import/Export/Capture

Google Keep

Google Keep versus Evernote

Google Public Data Explorer‣ Access Public Data Sets Aggregated and Presented by

Google

‣ Mine massive ordered datasets for related data, matching trends, etc.

‣ Are contributed to/solicited by Google - Limited ‣ Currently: UN, EU, US Census Bureau, Iceland, Ireland CSO

but growing

Google Public Data Explorer

Google Fusion Tables

Google Fusion Tables‣ A Powerful Data Munging and Visualisation Environment

‣ Search both Google and User Contributed Datasets ‣ Parse and Format Web Accessible data

‣ What are the limitations? ‣ What are the dangers?

Vida.io

Open Refine aka Google Refine

Google Ancient Places Visualisation

http://gap.alexandriaarchive.org/gapvis

Google NGram Viewer‣ 2004 - 2008 Google digitised in cooperation with libraries

and publishers and continues to do so at a reduced rate ‣ +30 Million manuscripts ‣ In 2010 Google estimated that there are 130M unique

titles in the world ‣ Initial Partners: ‣ Harvard University, Harvard University Library ‣ University of Michigan, University of Michigan Library ‣ New York Public Library ‣ University of Oxford, Bodleian Library ‣ Stanford University, Stanford University Libraries (SULAIR)

GoogleBooks Advanced Search

Google NGram Viewer

Google Trends‣ A friendly face to expose what the most popular searches

are returning

‣ A a cultural mirror provides a heuristic means to look at the social life of data

‣ Have to appreciate what is being ‣ What are the dangers?

Google Trends

Google Correlate‣ Kind of a Reverse Google Trends ‣ Looks for terms or concepts matching the search pattern

demonstrated by the one you enter.

‣ The potential is to correlate related phenomenon

‣ Based only on what Google Indexes and related user interaction

Google Correlate

GapMinder

Google Docs Secrets

Google Docs Secrets‣ Collaboration ‣ Extensibility

Google Developers

Google Developer‣ What it is? ‣ How it is useful? ‣ What are the limitations? ‣ What are the dangers?

Google Cultural Institute

Google Cultural Institute‣ As part of its mission to organize the world’s information,

Google partnered with hundreds of institutions with a view to hosting the world’s "cultural treasures" online. The Institute aims to preserve the world's cultural creations and make them accessible online now and for future generations.

‣ Context ‣ Partnerships

Google Cultural Institute

Google Big Picture Group

Google Big Picture Group‣ A Research Group dedicated to exploring how

information visualization can make complex data accessible, useful, and even fun ;-)

‣ How it is useful?

‣ What are the limitations?

Google Apps for Higher Ed

Google Apps for Higher Ed‣ What it is? ‣ How it is useful? ‣ What are the limitations? ‣ What are the dangers?

Summarising‣ There’s No Direct Way to Find All of the Tools ‣ Tools can work together ‣ Data Sharing ‣ Sustainability ‣ Ease of Use ‣ Extensibility ‣ Applicability

Google Time

Upcoming Seminars‣ 20 April - Requirements Engineering for Humanities/

Social Science Scholars ‣ May - Digital Project Management ‣ May - Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for Beginners

ThanksShawn Day @iridium

[email protected] http://qubdh.co.uk