ECAI - Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

In The Blue Dots Project, Professor Lewis Lancaster, ECAI, University of California, Berkeley explores the design of high dimensional visualizations, analyzing text structure and patterns for humanities scholars. Multi-dimensional interactive visualizations are a normal component of scholarly processes in the sciences and engineering. These tools are highly specialized to support the research processes of specific disciplines. This project adds a complementary capability by developing a visual, ergonomic methodology for interactive search, retrieval, browsing, and analysis within large text corpuses. Linked to the specific needs of humanities researchers it is however not limited to the features of individual languages. The methodology supports corpus browsing, searching, pattern identification, interactive interrogation, and seamless linkage to ‘witnesses’ – digitized texts and images of original manuscripts. Read more

Our purpose is to explore the use of high dimensional visualization for analyzing text structure and patterns for scholars in the humanities. Digital Library programs are daily increasing the amount of material that is available but, humanities have yet to expand their research strategies to make full use of the potential of this technology. It is crucial that humanities scholars take their place among the technological strategists.

The Korean Buddhist Canon is the oldest complete set of the texts that make up the Buddhist canon for East Asia. The basic digital material is from the 13th century block print edition that was done by the Tripitaka Koreana Institute. We also make use of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) version of the Taisho Edition accessible online at: http://www.cbeta.org/index.htm. With the help of colleagues, my catalogue of the canon was digitized 2001-04 and available for use (http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/descriptive_catalogue/). This proposal is the next major step in bringing innovative techniques to the canon.

The project purpose remains the exploration of the use of high dimensional visualization to analyze text structure and patterns for scholars in the humanities. During the next phase of research we will be focusing on enhancement of the user interface and integration of a statistical analysis toolkit. In addition, we will expand the functionality of the user interface to include a Context Builder for search and retrieval of reference works external to the data repository. A multi-lingual capability will be explored through the collaboration with the Context and Relationships: Ireland and Irish Studies” project.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. 0840061.

"Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed
in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation."

Text Analysis and Pattern Detection