James Cummings

414 Followers
293 Following
158 Posts

Reader in Digital Textual Studies and Late #Medieval #Literature and at #Newcastle University (UK), previously a Turing Fellow.

jamescummings on bird hellsite.

Long-term contributor to the Text Encoding Initiative #TEI, interested in digital scholarly editions in #DigitalHumanities #DH, #HTR, #Manuscripts, training, Records of Early English Drama and late #MedievalDrama (mostly non-cycle plays).

Founder of things like http://DHAwards.org and previously #DHOxSS

Personal account.

Bird Sitehttps://twitter.com/jamescummings
ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-3728

The Call for Papers for #JADH2025 is out!

Conference theme: “Crossing the Gap: Rethinking Boundaries between the Humanities and Informatics”

The Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (#JADH) is pleased to announce its 14th annual conference, to be held in person at Osaka University on September 19-21, 2025.

More infos here: https://www.jadh.org/jadh2025cfp

#CfP #DigitalHumanities #JADH #conference #Japan

Call for Papers: JADH2025 | Japanese Association for Digital Humanities

Last reminder!

Nominate something for DH Awards 2024 before Monday! Do it now!

Don't worry, we'll remove duplicates, but we don't add things to the ballot you've not nominated! Are all your 2024-updated resources nominated?

Link at the bottom of:

http://dhawards.org/dhawards2024/nominations/

DH Awards 2024 – Call For Nominations | Digital Humanities Awards

Don't forget to nominate #DigitalHumanities resources for #DH Awards 2024 before 2025-01-26!

Do it now!

Self-nominations also welcome.

See
http://dhawards.org/dhawards2024/nominations/ for categories and link to Google nomination form.

If you don't nominate them, they don't get on the ballot!

DH Awards 2024 – Call For Nominations | Digital Humanities Awards

Enjoying the festive season? Take a moment out to nominate a DH resource (yours or someone else's) for DH Awards 2024!

http://dhawards.org/dhawards2024/nominations/

Want better representation for your area of #DigitalHumanities? Things don't get on the ballot if you don't nominate them! #DH

DH Awards 2024 – Call For Nominations | Digital Humanities Awards

I was supposed to donate blood on Christmas Eve but had been unwell in the week earlier so rescheduled to New Year's Eve.

I know in the UK this is a time where extra blood stocks are needed to save lives. Please consider donating, it is quick, easy, and painless.

While my Bluesky account explodes with new followers, I've had nary the one new follower here on Mastodon.

It is Betamax vs VHS all over again.

What do you do when on holiday James?

Me: Go to a room with 80s music playing and participate in communal bloodletting with strangers. Why is that weird?
https://www.blood.co.uk/

♥️💉🩸😀🏥

@GiveBloodNHS

Home

Register to be a blood donor, give blood and save lives. Find out more about blood donation.

NHS Blood Donation

The @TEIConsortium TEI Consortium has posted its 'In Memoriam' for Dr C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen:
https://tei-c.org/2024/08/18/c-michael-sperberg-mcqueen-1954-2024-in-memoriam/
😢😭

A loss to the world and those interested in text technologies. We'll remember him at #TEI2024 and always.

#RIP #XML #XSD #iXML #W3C #XSLT @w3c

C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen (1954 – 2024): In Memoriam – TEI: Text Encoding Initiative

Done my talk at "#Legacy150 – The Museum will not be Decolonised" conference. Slides for my talk 'Building Sustainable Digital Futures: converting Livingstone and Bell' are at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10996782
Conference: https://www.dhi.ac.uk/blogs/legacy150/
"Building Sustainable Digital Futures: Converting Livingstone and Bell" - paper presentation for #Legacy150 conference

Abstract for #Legacy150 – The Museum will not be Decolonised  Title: Building Sustainable Digital Futures: converting Livingstone and Bell Author: Dr James Cummings   This paper examines technology for the creation of digital scholarly surrogates of textual materials in museums and archives. It focuses on how to find a balance between technological innovation and practical sustainable solutions for full-text digitisation, making a plea for the sensible application of digital methodologies throughout. The ‘Livingstone Online Enrichment and Access Project’ (LEAP) of 2013-17 is shown as an exemplar for the customization of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and the legacy document conversions undertaken.    The paper then explores the use of handwritten text recognition (HTR) in the AHRC-NEH funded ‘Evolving Hands’ project. The case study considered is that of the letters and diaries of Gertrude Bell, who is quite appropriate for the topic of this conference. Bell (1868 - 1926) was an explorer, archaeologist, colonial diplomat, and writer who was involved in events of  geopolitical significance throughout her life, especially in the formation of the Kingdom of Iraq. Bell is known to have advised on the drawing of seemingly artificial borders, disputed governmental structures, incremental self-rule, and even the selection of Faisal I as the first King of Iraq. Newcastle is especially interested in Bell as we hold her UNESCO ‘International Memory of the World’ registered archive. However, Bell’s complex and contested legacy is just background to this case-study which really focuses on the possibilities and limitations of HTR to TEI workflows for such collections. Building on this background, the paper considers tangential opportunities of such workflows, including the issues in using artificial intelligence for catalogue summaries.    The paper concludes with a consideration of the long-term viability of the digital resources we create from digital conversions, arguing that the production of more static, limited, applications that run primarily in the user’s browsers rather than on costly server infrastructure are a better option. As such, this paper will suggest the use of the Endings Project’s ‘Principles for Digital Longevity’ as a good approach for limiting the technological fragility of archivable website outputs.    This paper argues that standardised methodologies and careful development can lead to a balance that will help build sustainable digital futures.   Bio:  James Cummings is a Reader in Digital Textual Studies and Late-Medieval Literature in the School of English at Newcastle University. His research focuses on the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), the open international standard for textual encoding of historical sources. He is on the TEI Consortium’s Board of Directors and previously spent 15 years elected to its Technical Council. Other research interests include late-Medieval non-cycle plays, AI in humanities research (recently a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute). His recent research projects include those producing a VRE for TEI/LOD editing, Handwritten Text Recognition workflows, and Digital Pedagogy. 

Zenodo

Just a reminder that #DH Awards 2023 voting ends on 2024-03-30.

Vote now, and encourage others to vote, at http://dhawards.org/dhawards2023/voting/ Anyone is allowed to vote, anyone. But vote only one!

Look through the list of fabulous international #DigitalHumanities projects!

DH Awards 2023 Voting | Digital Humanities Awards