What is data in the 
Humanities?

Creation, discovery, and analysis

Daniel Paul O’Donnell
University of Lethbridge

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1443310



Traditionally, humanists resist speaking of data
● “Primary sources” = Texts, artifacts, objects of study
● “Secondary sources” = Works of other scholars
● “Readings” (1) = Passages, extracts, quotations for interpretation or support
● “Readings” (2) = Interpretation, the end product of research (literary study)



Traditionally, humanists resist speaking of data
● Our definitions are highly contingent

○ “Primary source” in one context, can be the “secondary source” in 
another (and vice versa)

○ Or simultaneously “Primary” and “Secondary” (e.g. a critical edition)
● Also hard to constrain

“a historical text, simultaneously primary and secondary. As Christine 
Borgman notes, “[a]lmost any document, physical artifact, or record or human 
activity can be used to study culture” and arguments proposing previously 
unrecognised sources (“high school yearbooks, cookbooks, or wear patterns 
in the floors of public places”) are valued acts of scholarship”

(Borgman 2007)



How does data work in other fields?
● Resistance makes sense, because 

Humanities data is different from 
other forms of data

● In other domains, “data” (“given 
things”) is more properly “capta” 
(“taken”): generated through 
experiment, observation, and 
measurement

● Think about Darwin and his work in 
the Galapagos Islands
○ What is his data?



How does data work in other fields?
● Resistance makes sense, because 

Humanities data is different from 
other forms of data

● In other domains, “data” (“given 
things”) is more properly “capta” 
(“taken”): generated through 
experiment, observation, and 
measurement

● Think about Darwin and his work in 
the Galapagos Islands
○ What is his data?

The finches?



How does data work in other fields?
● Resistance makes sense, because 

Humanities data is different from 
other forms of data

● In other domains, “data” (“given 
things”) is more properly “capta” 
(“taken”): generated through 
experiment, observation, and 
measurement

● Think about Darwin and his work in 
the Galapagos Islands
○ What is his data?

The notes about the finches?



How does data work in other fields?
● In fact, in the sciences, it is the 

notes.
● “Data” = “represent[ation of] 

information in a formalized manner 
suitable for communication, 
interpretation, or processing” 
(NASA 2012); “the facts, numbers, 
letters, and symbols that describe 
an object, idea, condition, situation, 
or other factors” (NRC 1999)

The notes about the finches.



In Humanities, “Data” is arguably mostly “Finch”
● In other humanities, “data” is both 

“data” and “capta” (given and 
taken), but more often “data”

● No protocols for preserving our 
notes (and in most cases nobody 
would be interested in them)

● Often unique and usually 
provisional, depend on broader 
understandings of purpose, 
context, and form that are 
themselves open to analysis and 
modification

Mostly individual finches, maybe something about
Darwin, maybe something from our notes



In Humanities, “Data” is arguably mostly “Finch”
● Interesting proof: Humanities 

“data,” unlike science “data” is 
almost all practically and 
theoretically non-rivalrous.

● Humanities researchers rarely have 
an incentive (or capability) to 
prevent others from accessing their 
raw material.

● 200 years of Jane Austen studies 
based on five main pieces of data.

Mostly individual finches, maybe something about
Darwin, maybe something from our notes



DH has the potential to bring new approach to data
● We can now have “capta” (intermediate “observations” extracted 

algorithmically from large data sets that are then require interpretation)
● We can now work across complete historical or geographic corpora: all known 

nineteenth-century English periodicals; every surviving tract from the U.S. 
Civil War

● Introduces the possibility of deductive work
● Makes questions such as sample bias more important than when you worked 

inductively from the collections you could access



Does this invalidate previous work?
● New forms of data introduce new types of techniques and questions:

○ Falsification as standard of proof?
○ Questions of sampling practice and bias
○ Lab books? 
○ Requirement to share data protocols?
○ Requirement to share raw data?
○ Hypotheses rather than theses?
○ Report null results?



Does this invalidate previous work?
Ian Watts, The Rise of the Novel 

(1957)

● Five novels by three novelists 
(Defoe, Richardson, Fielding)

● All male, all white, all eighteenth 
century, all English

Matt Jockers (2013)

What are we to do with the other three to 
five thousand works of fiction published in 
the eighteenth century? [...]Watt had no 
yardstick against which to make such a 
measurement. He had only a few hundred 
texts that he had read. Today things are 
different. The larger literary record can no 
longer be ignored: it is here, and much of 
it is now accessible.



In fact, it means enrichment
● “Capta” and “Data” are different approaches that answer different questions
● But working with Capta will require us to be more careful about our Data

○ Watts’s title Rise of the Novel makes a historical claim his actual work 
doesn’t support: really about how Fielding, Defoe, and Richardson fit into 
genre

○ Access to 5k novels doesn’t invalidate his arguments; but it does call 
attention to overreach

○ Can’t imagine that he’d not want access to an even broader collection of 
work; but I’m not sure his argument would have to be much different.



We now have a greater scope for work



Thank you