At the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory we conduct original research, develop new ways of disseminating information, and foster the innovative adaptation of existing tools. Our cross-disciplinary work in the areas of data-harvesting, textual content analysis, and document encoding puts us at the forefront of a global conversation about the future of communication. Led by Dr. Ray Siemens, Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing at the University of Victoria, the ETCL develops reading environments for electronic scholarly texts that will facilitate activities central to humanities research. We are also actively involved in providing training and education for students, faculty, and administration. For more information, please see our mandate.

Our mandate

At the ETCL, we

  • conduct and communicate original research in the areas of data-harvesting, textual content analysis, and document encoding
  • explore and facilitate the innovative adaptation of existing textual tools
  • develop new models and mechanisms for information management and dissemination
  • provide training and support to graduate students, faculty, and administration involved in digital initiatives

We work closely with research centres and projects at the University of Victoria and beyond. Our activities complement projects underway in the U Victoria library community and the Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC), including the CFI-funded Text Analysis Portal (TAPoR) project. Our affiliation with these projects and others—Synergies, CRKN, and beyond—strengthens our ability to attract new researchers and research initiatives and provides opportunities for significant collaboration within both local and global partners.

The ETCL supports the work of Dr. Ray Siemens, Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing at the University of Victoria. Dr. Siemens' work is towards employing a humanities computing-derived model of scholarly interaction to develop a prototypical computing environment for the professional reading (and the electronic scholarly edition) that integrates activities central to professional involvement in humanities research, specifically in the areas of archival representation and critical inquiry.

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February 1st, 2010 | by admin

DHSI Scholarships Open

The Digital Humanities Summer Institute is fortunate to be able to offer tuition scholarships this year, thanks to the generosity of the SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology program. Applications close February 14th. See our scholarships page for more details.

More information about the DHSI is available on our website, http://www.dhsi.org.

January 28th, 2010 | by admin

The ETCL Welcomes Hugh Craig

Hugh is from the University of Newcastle, Australia and is in Victoria on sabbatical leave until the end of June, attached to the ETCL. He works in computational stylistics, and with collaborators at UMass, Amherst he recently published Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship (Cambridge, 2009).

While in Victoria he plans to do more work on authorship problems in Early Modern English drama, especially in the period 1580-99, and explore some other questions like linguistic drift and vocabulary richness using a broad-based corpus. He is especially interested in potential collaborations with the computing humanists at UVic in areas such as visualisation and distant reading.

We look forward to having Hugh in the ETCL!