Modeling Networks and Scholarship with ORBIS

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

ORBIS is self-defined as a historical transportation network model of the Roman world, but while it is fundamentally a computational model, it is also part of a genre of objects that could be referred to as interactive scholarly works, and so in explaining how to use ORBIS it becomes necessary to also engage with interactive scholarly works in general. What follows is not solely an explanation of ORBIS, but an exploration of the genre in a broader sense, providing both pragmatic and theoretical examples of the usage of both.

ORBIS: An Interactive Scholarly Work on the Roman World

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There are, broadly speaking, four expressions of digital humanities scholarship: research utilizing digital objects, tools, and methods; the publication of the products of that research; the creation, extension, and annotation of digital archives; and the development or improvement of digital tools. The boundaries between these are fluid; in particular, some products of digital humanities scholarship blur the line between archive, tool, and publication. ORBIS — the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World,¹ is one such hybrid. It is an interactive scholarly work (ISW) that comprises a digital archive of sites and routes, a tool for exploring Roman transportation, and an argument about the dynamic shape of the Roman world and the nature of transport within it. Furthermore, it makes a methodological argument that its representations — its computational model and visualizations — are a useful means for reasoning about those aspects of Roman history.

Kgrossner on Journal of Digital Humanities

Modeling Networks and Scholarship with ORBIS

ORBIS: An Interactive Scholarly Work on the Roman World