Event Details

This workshop is open to all PGRs, Researchers and university staff who are interested in learning how the Gale Digital Scholar Lab may be used in research, teaching and learning.

Digital Humanities (DH) has long been described as the future of the humanities. Until quite recently, researchers with an interest in DH would not only need to spend significant amounts of time identifying, collecting, curating and preparing large data sets, but also need to have programming skills to develop tools or algorithms for analysing data at scale. Recently, tools and environments have been developed to provide the benefits and opportunities of DH without the need for investing significant time, or needing particular technical skills.

This session will introduce you to Gale Digital Scholar Lab – a leading platform for text and data mining historical primary documents, among other sources. Gale is best known as the publisher of significant digital archives like Times Digital Archive or Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Lancaster has a growing collection of Gale archives, from Archives of Sexuality and Gender and Slavery and Anti-Slavery to vast collections of historic newspapers, state documents and monographs.

Gale Digital Scholar Lab gives the ability to quickly and easily construct research projects to mine these materials at scale, and by doing so, encourages insight into a subject that would be impossible or extremely difficult through conventional means. Learn how to build, clean and analyse texts at scale, including uploading your own content, and discover how the Lab can be used in classrooms to enable group projects and provide a new lens on topics.

The learning outcomes of the workshop are:

• Access the Gale Digital Scholar Lab and understand the value the Gale Primary Sources archive can add to research, teaching and learning.
• Get started with the Gale Digital Scholar lab and understand the core tools within the resource.
• Develop ideas on how to utilise the resource in research, teaching and learning.

The workshop will feature case studies from Lancaster researchers and an opportunity to ask questions to staff from Gale. We encourage attendees to bring a laptop with them to access the Gale resource during the session.