CREATE invites you to a virtual datasprint on Thursday 28 May. Challenged by the corona-crisis, we want to take the opportunity to experiment with new ways for hands-on collaborative work on digital data in humanities research.
In this dataprint, we will focus on Dutch film culture in the post-war era. Structured data on historical film programming allows us to find patterns in the popularity of certain films, stars and genres in the past. Herewith, you are encouraged to travel back with us to the heydays of Doris Day in the 1950s, the Guns of Navarone in the early 1960s, and the advent of Bavarian softporn in the 1970s.
Goal of the 28 May datasprint is processing data on Dutch film programming that has been automatically extracted from digitised newspapers in the DIGIFIL project. In this project, machine learning techniques were used to automatically recognise and extract film listings for the 4 largest Dutch cities in the post-war era, taken from 10 Dutch newspapers available in the Delpher repository. In order to be usable for historical research, the raw data needs to be checked (did the computer recognise the right cinema and link it to the correct film?) and enriched (can we identify which film was listed in the programme?). After this final phase of human inspection, the data can serve as a valuable addition to the online film encyclopaedia Cinema Context, which presently only includes film programming data until 1948.
10:00 – 10:45 Welcome, introduction, instructions, 30-45 minutes (plenary session on Zoom)
10:45 – 16:00 Opportunity to work with the data individually and/or in small groups online according to your own schedule (instructors are available online for feedback and support)
16:00 – 16:30 Closing session (plenary session on Zoom)
(Passive) knowledge of Dutch is advisable, because the sources are in Dutch. The data files will be in easy to use csv format. To join in the Zoom meeting, an internet browser is sufficient, or you can download and install the Zoom software for free. Of course you choose to participate only for a part of the day but it would be advisable to attend the introductory meeting at 10:00. Instructions, guidelines and feedback will be available online.
Please register via this form: https://forms.gle/B8ibHJD1yTxBug8u8
For questions, please contact Thunnis van Oort (firstname.lastname@example.org)