Session 1 - Arts & Cultures: Digital Humanties
KAREN FOLEY: Good morning and welcome to this the Student Hub Live event for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University. And the focus of today is research, teaching, and you. My name's Karen Foley, and I'll be presenting the show. And we have a fantastic line up for you today.
Some of you may have been to the Student Hub Live events before, and others may not have. So let me explain very briefly how it all works. These are live and interactive events. So whilst we have a panel of guests come into the studio to talk about some topics that we've already pre-planned, this event is about your opportunity to ask questions, reflect on some of the research and teaching that our colleagues are talking about today, and get to know other students in the chat box.
So for those of you who are watching on our stadium live interface, you'll notice that there's a video stream, there's also a chat box, and there are some widgets that are popping up. And these widgets are basically voting tools. So you'll see a map, so you can tell us where you are. You'll see a wordle, which is basically three words. And we've asked how you're feeling right now. You can put anything in there, but it has to be three things. If you can't think of three things, then a full stop will do because otherwise your results won't send. We've also asked which level you're studying and which area you're studying in as well. And those names are the names of the schools, which Damon, who is manning our chat tab, will explain to you in the chat box. So another incentive to go and take a look there. And we've asked if you've been to Student Hub Live event before. So you might want to put some words in there about how you feel about that.
So your chat, and your comments, and questions will be brought to our studio panel by HJ and Damon. And so I'd like to welcome them to the show today. Hello.
HJ: Hiya.
DAMON: Hi. How are you doing?
HJ: We're just getting started on chat, which is good. We've been talking about the chicken, so we've heard that's coming up. I can say me and Damon aren't too excited about that because we are vegetarians. But somehow, it is related to a module. Davin tells me that there were frogs and toads on his module, so apparently they try and slip in some interesting creatures. But anything you want to chat about, it all goes. We're more than happy to put your thoughts, comments, and questions to our wonderful guests on Twitter as well at Student Hub Life. I like using Twitter a lot. It's very fun. So if you want to join me there as well. And we've got our board behind us. I like to put my favourite study tips and questions up there. I'm trying to cut down on sugary drinks. Last time I was told by some people in sports that's a very wise thing to do for studies. So if you got any more good tips for me, I'd love to put them on the board.
KAREN FOLEY: Well those of you who are used to Student Hub Live events will know HJ well, but you might not know Damon, who works in the faculty. Damon, would you like to tell our audience at home a little bit about what you do?
DAMON: I work in the communications team in the Deanery in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. But I'm also an associate lecturer, so I teach development studies as well. So yeah, I've been around for a while. So any questions about anything you going on, just ask.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. Thank you very much, sir, Damon and HJ. So today, as I said before, we've got a great programme. Let me tell you what's in store for you. We have an arts and culture session, where we'll be taking a look at the digital humanities. Then, we have religious studies, history, and sociology all coming together to talk about how they're researching power and belief. Very abstract concepts, so that will be very interesting to see how those are made tangible. We'll then take a look at politics, philosophy, economics development, and geography. And their session from that school is about translating research into teaching. And we're going to take a look at migration, citizenship, and chickens. And then, lastly, we end up with a fascinating session from psychology, where we'll take a look at digital mothering. So for those of you who are into social media, this will be very interesting irrespective of whether you are a mother or not. So all of that will be coming up. You can catch up if you've missed any of these sessions later in the day.
But let's crack on and deal with our first session, which is about the digital humanities. And I'm joined by Francesca Benatti, Leah Clark, and David Rowland. So thank you for joining us today.
Those of you at home will notice that our widgets will have changed, and we're asking right now which three words you associate with research and arts and the humanities. So what do you think research in the arts and humanities is all about? And also, we've asked you on a scale, where do you see the level of agreement or disagreement with the question computers are a useful way of studying arts and digital humanities? That might change as we talk about things during our session.
So can I first start by asking each of you what the digital humanities means to you because you're all involved in very different projects, which we're going to discuss today. Francesca?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Right, so my role with Open University is to work on digital arts broadly. But personally, my background is in English literature. So for me, digital humanities means the chance to study on a broader scale. I'm a very avid reader, but even so, there's a limit to how many books I can read by myself. But with the help of computers, I can look through millions of pages and find patterns and information about the topics that interest me.
KAREN FOLEY: What about you, David?
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, not dissimilar to Francesca really because I'm running the Listening Experience Database Project. And we're looking for evidence of people listening over the centuries. So what computers do for me is to enable us to locate those experiences from a massive amount of literature that exists in databases. And then once we've got it, put into our own database, we're able to use it to search effectively. If we're looking for particular periods, particular pieces of music, particular listeners, we can just draw that all together in a way that's much more efficient.
KAREN FOLEY: So really, your two key areas are around archiving to some extent, collating, storing, and disseminating various pieces of data, which we'll talk about a bit later. But you're different, Leah.
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, I'm an art historian. And so I think the digital humanities and computers and actually filming can be a way to engage in diverse, but also new audiences. And I think it also makes us think about not only what we do, but how we do it. How do we engage with objects and paintings?
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. So we're going to be talking about all of those three things. But first, let's talk about the Reading Experience Database, Francesca, because this is a very, very interesting project. And we've got a screenshot about it. Can you explain to our audience very briefly what the Reading Experience Database is all about?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Right, so it's actually one of our oldest digital humanities projects. We've been going on for 12 years at this stage. We collect what real readers across time from 1450 to 1945 thought about what they were reading. In literature, we teach our students what important readers thought, critics, authors, but we want to know what people from different backgrounds, different ages, different locations thought about the books, letters they came into contact with. Computers help us to structure this data to make it searchable as David was saying. Sort of, we can ask questions on a much larger scale. What did women readers read in the 19th century, for example? What are the most popular authors across time? At the moment, in our database, it's Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and the Bible.
And, interestingly, it allows people to collaborate with our research. We have, in the database, a contribute tab that allows anyone to actually record reading experiences that they found while reading diaries, letters, and so on, and so to become part of knowledge.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. Well, let's take a quick look at the Reading Experience Database and see. You've mentioned two very important points here, which is the ability to search and also the Contributions tab. So this is the landing page. And for those of you interested, you can have a look at this on the Student Hub Live website. So what would you like to mention about this particular page?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: As you said, Karen, the two most important areas are the search, where you can search by book being read, by author being read, by the name of the reader, by period, and the Contribute page, which allows you to input your own information and to join us doing our community because the Reading Experience Database is only as strong and as interesting as the people who question it and contribute to it.
KAREN FOLEY: So why are you so interested in all these different views? Are you interested in seeing what's popular in different areas or different locations and different age groups? What are you doing with this?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Well, we think within the Open University History, Books, and Reading Research Group and the Digital Humanities Research Group that reading is one of the fundamental activities that makes us human. But we find a very partial picture of what reading means, as we've mentioned from the well-known readers, the ones who have made their mark, whose stories are being recorded and told. So we want to look at reading across the ages. And actually from the 1st of June, we will be also looking at that reading across countries. At the moment, we're only collecting UK information. But from the 1st of June, we'll be starting a new collaboration with colleagues from France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and look at reading across Europe and across languages, so we're really exciting. Is it different that reading in France from reading in Britain? Reading the 18th century from the 19th century?
KAREN FOLEY: And what sort of things, if people wanted to contribute, could you just say, I've read this amazing book? What sort of level of input would you expect from people to add?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: So if you click on the Contribute tab, you'll be taken through a form, which allows you to enter information in a guided fashion. We're looking for reading experiences or encounters with reading material that have been recorded in books, diaries, letters. At the moment, we're stopping at 1945. So the hope with a new project is that we could take it all the way to the present. But at the moment, if you're reading a book or someone's diary, and they mention reading a book, you can enter it in the Reading Experience Database, say what they've read, when, the name of the reader.
KAREN FOLEY: And Damon has put the link to that in the chat box. So you can follow that link, or if you aren't watching live, you can chase up the link on the Student Hub Live website to find out more about it.
Now, David, you are doing something fairly similar. And just sort of before we talk about the specifics, I wanted to talk about this idea of collating lots of information from real people about lived experiences and how meaningful that is.
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah, well, the problem is, I suppose, is that most of music history is written from the point of view of the critics, the informed people, the opinion formers. Those are the sort of sources that people tend to go to because they want to find out about music of the past. What we're interested, just like the RED database, is how ordinary people listen to music, what impact it had on them, where they listen to it, how they listen to it, and so on. So we're focusing on that, which hasn't really been done in the past. But there's a vast amount of literature out there. So our project is a little bit younger than the read project. We've been going about five years, and we've got about 10,000 entries in our database. I think you've got a lot more than that.
FRANCESCA BENATTI: About 40,000.
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah, OK.
KAREN FOLEY: The smug look.
DAVID ROWLAND: So we are getting there, but it's taking us time. So part of the source for those entries is, as I said before, we're sort of combing large databases of literature and trying to pull out the relevant sources. But we're also getting them from anyone who wants to contribute. Like the RED project, anyone can make an entry into the database.
KAREN FOLEY: OK, well, let's take a look then at the LED, the Listening Experience Database. And we can say here the home page.
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah, so on the home page, it just tells you how you can contribute if you want to. So there's little sign up process that you have to go through. And then you can begin to enter listening experiences. What we're after, the real gold dust, is diaries or correspondence that hasn't been published. That would be wonderful. But we are also using published material too. So, the more personal it is, the better.
KAREN FOLEY: Now I noticed there you had nearly 10,000 listed experiences in 1,625 different locations and that you had 882 waiting for approval. What is approval process about if you're interested in generating a real lived experience? To what extent is there a critical curation of the content?
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, it's pretty light touch actually. But the important thing is that it meets the criteria for the project. So that it is personal experiences of the past that have already taken place. We're not looking for people to say oh, I'm listening to this piece. This is how I feel about it. We want experiences from the past. So they need to be verified that they're actually real experiences that come from recognised sources, not just something that somebody ...
KAREN FOLEY: Also, how do you do that?
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, light touch really.
KAREN FOLEY: Phone them up and see if someone answers.
DAVID ROWLAND: No, no, no. We're not that intimidating.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant, OK. So why are you collecting all of this data? What are you doing with this?
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, I'll give you an example. There are many reasons, but I'm just working now on late 18th century, early 19th century listening. And how do people do it? There's the one character that really intrigues me is Thomas Twining.
KAREN FOLEY: And we've got a screenshot here that will show you on the website.
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah, we got a number of Thomas Twining entries in the database. And one that's actually not going to be on the screen, but one that's in my mind at the moment is where Thomas Twining listens to a domestic performance, and it makes him cry. So the question is, this is 1780, is that normal for a gentleman in 1780 to sit and listen to music and cry? So we were able to pull in a lot of other listening experiences from the period and see, first of all, whether that was a usual thing. Actually, it turned out to be rather exceptional because most gentlemen or aristocrats of that period would just tell you what they listen to, or who performed it, or where they were. So it's unusual.
So then, you broaden the discussion into so why was it unusual? What was the behaviour expected of gentlemen in that period and so on? So that's the kind of discussion that I've never seen anywhere else before.
KAREN FOLEY: Wow, that's fascinating. Excellent. OK, so you're both interested, then, in capturing these experiences from laypeople or just from the general public and looking at how you can make sense of that, both in terms of time and space. But Leah, you are something very different, where you're almost taking the critical aspect and thinking about how that can be used to, I guess, get people to look at things in a slightly different way. So it's a very different idea.
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, I think I mean one of the main things what we want to do is, some people actually feel intimidated even going into museums. So trying to widen and diversify audiences of looking at art, bringing it into the classroom, bringing it into the home and thinking about maybe it might encourage people to actually go and step into a museum.
KAREN FOLEY: So the Open Arts Objects Project then, basically, is all about, I guess, trying to give students that museum experience, isn't it? But not just students.
LEAH CLARK: No, I mean the idea is for the wider public. So they're all open access. And we also have been working with A-Level art history teachers because of the new A-Level art history speculation and the kind of idea that actually we need more support, teaching resources as well. So we have teaching support materials along with the films. And we're also not doing films just with us, but we're going and dealing with museum curators and things like that.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. Shall we have a look then at an example? And then that should hopefully enable us to make more sense. So we're going to show you a video now, which is from the Open Arts Objects promotional material.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- My name is Susie West and I'm standing in a Rest Park in Bedfordshire.
- This is not a conventional object designed to be seen on the wall of a museum or gallery as for example you might see an oil painting.
- The painting's a full length portrait of a young woman. She's slightly smaller than life size, but it's still on quite a grand scale for an Impressionist work.
- Open Arts Objects is a project from the Department of Art History at the Open University. It offers free open access films looking closely at works of art and objects. It can be used by anyone who incorporates art and design in their teaching.
The objects or works examined cover a variety of media from painting to sculpture, from installation art to architecture.
- For the viceroy's palace, Lutyens invented a New Delhi order. But if we look in the interior, we can see this New Delhi order better.
- And we also cover a vast time period from ancient times to the present.
The short films really bring to life the works of art with each one concentrating only on one object.
- Today, I'd like to talk about this photograph by Cecil Beaton, and It's one of a collection of 18,000 photographs by Beaton that we house at the museum.
- Art history is a discipline that is inherently interdisciplinary, so the films also relate to other subjects such as colonialism, economics, and trade.
- Now, the Renaissance certainly didn't have the commercial or technological abilities we have today, but the painting shows that in the 15th century in Italy, you could still see a Chinese porcelain cup, showing and demonstrating that the world has always been in some way global.
- The films also relate to issues that are relevant for today. They address globalisation, national borders, social inequalities, gender, and identity. Students are asked to reflect on their own contemporary society in light of what they have learned.
We also have a series of films that bring the museum into the classroom. We've had expert curators look at works in their collections from the Victorian Albert Museum, the Wallace Collection, and even Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
- My name's Sarah Coulson, and I'm curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. And today, I'm going to be talking about hanging trees by Andy Goldsworthy.
- The Open University is renowned for its innovative research, which feeds into many of the films.
- And they built a cast of the inside spaces, the interior walls of the house. They then removed the interior, sealed it off to create this strange inverted cast.
- We live in a world bombarded with visual images from advertising to Instagram photos. More than ever, we need the critical tools to assess and understand the visual world around us.
[END PLAYBACK]
KAREN FOLEY: So I hope that's giving you an idea about the Open Arts Objects project. How about talking, Leah, about some of the complexities about showcasing things that are very visible, very tangible like the sculpture that you've brought in today? How do you go about thinking about how best to convey that in a digital format?
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, I mean one of the difficulties in teaching art history at a distance is actually trying to convey things like scale. So you can only see the size of this because I'm holding it in my hands. If you just saw a picture of it, it could be large, it could be small. But also the tactility, right? The way that things feel. And of course, even people going into a museum can't often experience that. We can't touch the objects. So in some films, we try to do a kind of handling session with a curator who can actually bring something out and touch it. But it is something that's very difficult in art history to convey unless it's in a film when you can actually see scale.
KAREN FOLEY: So this really is about taking some of these objects and trying to disseminate them. What does the project ultimately trying to do? And where do you see it going in the future?
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, I mean it's about widening participation and in engaging different audiences to think about the world around them and the kind of visual and material world that they engage with. So the next leg of the project is kind of thinking about community groups and actually getting communities to take ownership of local collections. And that doesn't mean a national gallery or a national museum. It actually means thinking about sculpture on a village green, for instance, or even a stained glass in a local church. And also, regional museums, you know, those small collections dotted across the country and trying to make use of those rather than think you have to go to London to see a work of art.
KAREN FOLEY: Absolutely. OK. We got some time now to talk about more generally how some of these projects are impacting and teaching. So we've seen sort of some of the ways that you're collecting various forms of research and using research to help with teaching to some extent. But can we talk more specifically about what these databases and things are doing and how students might experience them within modules and add to them, et cetera, to enhance their learning?
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Right, so the Reading Experience Database is part of 8334, Literature from Shakespeare to Austen. So within the module, students are asked to go to the Reading Experience Database and look for how readers from the past have experienced the same text that they're reading in the present and comparing their experience of reading Jane Austen with that of readers from the past. And so they can contextualise what they're studying in a broader historical perspective.
On a slightly different approach to digital humanities, we ask students in 8335, Literature in Transition, to examine digital literature, literature produced to be read on a computer screen, using the methods that they have learned as students of literature and culture. So it's using the digital to study the humanities and using the humanities to study the digital.
KAREN FOLEY: We've got some questions on our hot desk.
HJ: Yeah, Davin has asked whether the art history department is working on any virtual reality experiences.
KAREN FOLEY: That's a very interesting ...
LEAH CLARK: It's a very good question. It's something I've been thinking about. So there are ways in which you can actually digitally reconstruct an object and then kind of turn it around on your phone, for example. So that's something I think would be absolutely fantastic because it would replicate this, obviously not tactility, but it would give me that feeling that you can actually look around an object on all its sides.
And another kind of research project that I'm interested in is actually, I work on the Italian Renaissance courts. So many spaces have been either are not the way that they were, but the objects have all been taken out as well. So thinking about actually how you would reconstruct the kind of courtly space that involved feasting, you'd have incense burners burning, you'd have lamps, you'd have tapestries, trying to actually the complexity of experiencing a space I think is something that we could really do.
KAREN FOLEY: To a large extent, I guess technology is really changing the potential to do things. It's changing the very landscape of what we're looking at because some time ago, we could never have augmented or virtual reality. We could never have those sorts of ways of looking at things. You might not know that the Mona Lisa was very small, for example. Bringing these things is ultimately changing that very landscape. Is there some sort of element there that's concerning or that you're mindful of in terms of how you're shaping some of that context?
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, I mean I think one of the interesting things that's happened with the kind of Google Cultural Institute where you can zoom in on paintings is that you can actually see brush strokes that you can't see when you're in the museum. So I think it's also about expectations. We go into a museum thinking we're going to be able to do all these things. We're going to be into touching objects, but even actually getting close. And often there's glass that you can't even see the brush strokes because the reflection in the glass. So I think it's also about trying to think about the different ways that we engage with a work of art, which is sometimes actually through digital means that gives us something else than what it does when you're looking at it in person. Yeah.
KAREN FOLEY: And what about from your perspective? Because again, here, you're looking at people accessing lay perspectives as opposed to critical perspectives. And yet, often we're very used to sort of knowing what a good book is and why this is an excellent piece of text. We're very much used to having experts shape, really, what we're looking at. How does including these lay perspectives then add to that? And does that change your landscape? Either of you.
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, it certainly gives you a very different perspective on the past and the way the music has functioned in society from my point of view. You realise one thing through looking at these listening experiences, you realise how little access to music so many people had. We're used to concentrating in music history on the big centres, London, Vienna, Paris, wherever. But actually, a lot of people around the country who probably never heard live music from one day to the next, or if they did, it might have been singing nursery rhymes, or somebody just playing a violin or flute on its own. Access to a range of music is something we are incredibly used to. But in the past, they weren't. So it does give you a very different perspective on past experience of music.
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Yeah and for literature, I think what a project like the Reading Experience Database brings is just how significant reading is to people and has been to people from all walks of life, but also, how much the experience of reading has changed. Nowadays, we are used to reading silently on our own. But in the past, a lot of people experienced reading aloud and in groups because maybe they didn't have access to books. Maybe their literacy wasn't quite good enough. So there was actually a close proximity between reading experiences and listening experiences in a way. And that's something that you don't get if you just study the critics who had access to lots of books, usually came from the upper classes, were usually male. So it's this diversity that you just wouldn't see otherwise and that we think is important. It really adds to the experience of studying literature.
DAVID ROWLAND: Well, one of the exciting things, I think, with listening experiences is the experience of the new. Nowadays, we're used to hearing Western classical music, popular music, music of other cultures from all around the world. But just occasionally in these past listening experiences, you encounter somebody who's hearing something for the very first time. And the way that they hear it, the impact that it has on them is very, very striking. You get the impression that these days, we're just a bit bored with the extent of all the listening we can do. We're used to such a myriad of experiences. But it was something very, very special.
I'm thinking of one experience of a guy who had never heard a classical concert. He couldn't get in because he couldn't afford to. But he crept up the stairs and listened through the door, and he writes this in his diary. And he was completely bowled over by the experience.
KAREN FOLEY: Yeah because it is so different. And I'm just sort of mindful that even now with technology and when you develop these products in the future with, well, current aspects. Again, technology is really shaping the way that we can listen to things and even with music, and I guess, to a lesser extent reading, although people are able to access different interfaces. That does ultimately change the whole experience of interacting with the object.
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. From my perspective, in the recording area, it's just such a totally different experience. Familiarity with the breadth of repertoire has grown and grown and grown. But if you go back into the 19th century and much before that, people had a very much narrower experience of music.
KAREN FOLEY: And I guess it's just my sense of that cultural experience, of putting things on the record player. There are things around that surround where you are doing and in what sort of context.
So, Leah, how are you using some of the, we've talked a little bit about how this is used in teaching, but how is it used in module materials? Do you want to say a little bit more about that?
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah some of the films that we've done are based on our own research and also were incorporated into our modules because it's related to things that we've been writing about, particularly in art and its global history. It's our new third level module, A344. We have the number of global dimension to the art object, to the curriculum. So we've been using the films in there. But also they're used sometimes as bridging gaps between second and third level. So during the summer, when students want a little bit of taste of art history, but they don't necessarily want to do all of the reading, it offers a opportunity for them to get excited about the materials that they will be studying or thinking about art history. And they can pick and choose. There's over 30 films on our website. So they can find what they like.
KAREN FOLEY: That's amazing. And the link to that as well, if you're interested, is on the Resources page of the Student Hub Live website. I'm sure Damon will pop that in the chat if it hasn't already been done.
Whereas the Listening Experience Database is included in the music MA, isn't it?
DAVID ROWLAND: Yeah, that's right. It's included across our curriculum. So we're just writing a module at the moment on music and technology. So it's about the recording process, the editing process, and students actually get to do that themselves. But across that experience of recording and editing, there's one critical skill the students have to learn and develop, which is listening. And so we've been able just to use that database to demonstrate to them that there are a variety of ways of listening to music. And they can go and look at the different ways in which people have done it in the past.
But at the master's level, it's more about how you frame a project, the questions you ask, the kind of techniques you used, methodologies you used. So you can use the materials in a variety of ways.
KAREN FOLEY: Excellent. Finally, I wanted to talk about how students might experience some of this because often we forget that we do have PhD students at the Open University. And I wanted if, Francesca, we could talk about how the Reading Experience Database is being used and some of the experiences of some of our PhD students here.
FRANCESCA BENATTI: We actually have several PhD students who have just completed, who have done their work, studied a particular reader, and so putting data into the Reading Experience Database and then using the search capabilities to make sense of what they were record. Digitally humanities is used across a variety of other subjects for a PhD student.
So one project that we didn't get to talk about is the Pelagios Project, which comes from the Classics Department. And that project brings together different resources about the classical world based on the places that they mention. So we filmed an interview with PhD student Sarah Middle. She can explain just how much of a difference working digitally has made to her PhD, how it's shaped what she does.
KAREN FOLEY: Excellent. And we will be watching that after the session in one of our short ad outbreaks. So is there any concluding thoughts or advice that either of any, or any of you, would like to share with our students before we end the session?
DAVID ROWLAND: The one thing that popped into my head is just explore new things. There's a world of digital experience out there. We're all still getting to grips with. There are many possibilities. So just dig in, found out what's there, and try and use it.
LEAH CLARK: Yeah, and I think a lot of museums actually have apps as well so that when you're going around a museum you can either click on a little, I don't know what's it's called, scan thing that you can do on your phone. And it will tell you a lot more about the paintings. So there's ways in which you can learn digitally that's beyond just the text box that's beside a painting.
FRANCESCA BENATTI: Yeah, for my part, ask questions. We are surrounded by a digital world and what we're teaching you in your art modules is how to look at something critically, whether it's a book, a piece of music, a work of art. So employ the same skills on the world that surrounds you, no matter what form it takes, whether it's digital material or an old manuscript.
KAREN FOLEY: There's so much information out there. It becomes quite difficult sifting it through. And so it's nice to have some pointers about some practical things that you can go and do instead of getting lost on the internet for hours, which is a common problem I know for me and many other students.
Right, thank you very much Francesca, Leah, and David for coming and talking to us about the digital humanities today. We're now going to show you that video that Francesca was talking about, about the Pelagios Project so you can meet Sarah Middle in this video. And then after that, we're going to be showing you a little clip about the BA in music, which is new and is generating a lot of interest. Then, we'll be back for our next session, which is about power and belief. I'll see you in a few minutes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]