In using the platforms chosen for today’s activity (Hathtrust and Voyant), I ran into a few, albeit non-insurmountable, problems. The largest problem I have involves both Hathtrust and Voyant and that they provide too many options in terms of operations but too few in terms of application. Succinctly, there are numerous things you can do in both Hathturst and Voyant, but not much to say about the data unless you are well versed in the methodology of distant reading. For instance, there are numerous algorithmic operations in Hathtrust, but many of the texts that you can mine are public domain texts from the late 19th and early 20th century. This is perfectly fine if your studies take you in this direction, as mine do for me. However, if your forte is more contemporary, Hathtrust isn’t your friend. For instance, I tried searching for texts on Grass and there were many available, but not in English, making an algorithmic data pool related to it less useful in this context.
To this end, Voyant is a better tool inasmuch as it is afflicted with the opposite problem. It is possible to place nearly any text you need into it. Yet, it provides numerous options in terms of saving, viewing, and browsing that makes sharing somewhat difficult. In terms of the project I am pursuing in this course, Voyant is a far better tool, but I can imagine neophytes to the digital humanities such as myself struggling with it.
Thus, the tool is determined by the research question as good scholarship is wont to do. But, in a sense, if we are generating metadata by our questions and not the other way around, are we still engaged in a distant reading or is our distance an imagined one?
