There had to be a better way: John Nitti and Julianne Nyhan

Has Interviewer: Julianne Nyhan
Has Interviewee: John Nitti
Date: Created on 17 October 2013
Location: Skype interview
Language: N/A
Part of Series: Computation and the Humanities interviews
fileFormat: MP3
Recording Storage Medium: https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/2084/archive/files/6555a818bfac8d63ca391de5fd74bf34.jpeg?Expires=1730332800&Signature=GrppNfGSgMHAKEYMC3q58F5JELrTaPgt4jpQGi3KMxg-FcHrLtma9hkADV4vHE8aYaQmQJUiykjoIJg6ZRGWrQwbvIkfUUA6qgNM6XpjTu4UaLSBW5geN8xreDpOCPEF8aP2TlSeHeNmPulEjUELH9eU5ghHEhC5X%7E7Iwf4U7kXIoMPzs9I%7Ep8N-GYhYn70VXyQUMptRD9XJjwIrs7NT1D0Gi3HWObrJW0RrWHFapGfh1L98vD5VXWgr5c9lc6KgXSQNrfa3xkMdW8JGXMAV9hC9U-KCUcMurpimZSL8Nc4qzI8kElecZoI5qur%7EAnuNPMtJjelBdpR5qST%7EYBiX6g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
Title: There had to be a better way: John Nitti and Julianne Nyhan
Interview Summary: This oral history conversation was carried out via Skype on 17 October 2013 at 18:00 GMT. Nitti was provided with the core questions in advance of the interview. He recalls that his first encounter with computing came about when a fellow PhD student asked him to visit the campus computing facility of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where a new concordancing programme had recently been made available via the campus mainframe, the UNIVAC. He found the computing that he encountered there rather primitive: input was in uppercase letters only and via a keypunch machine. Nevertheless, the possibility of using computing in research stuck with him and when his mentor Professor Lloyd Kasten agreed that the Old Spanish Dictionary project should be computerised, Nitti set to work. He won his first significant NEH grant c.1972; up to that point (and, where necessary, continuing for some years after) Kasten cheerfully financed out of his own pocket some of the technology that Nitti adapted to the project. In this interview Nitti gives a fascinating insight into his dissatisfaction with both the state and provision of the computing that he encountered, especially during the 1970s and early 80s. He describes how he circumvented such problems not only via his innovative use of technology but also through the many collaborations he developed with the commercial and professional sectors. As well as describing how he and Kasten set up the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (HSMS) he also mentions less formal processes of knowledge dissemination, for example, his so-called lecture 'roadshow' in the USA and Canada where he demonstrated the technologies used on the dictionary project to colleagues in other universities.
Subject: An oral history interview on the history of Digital Humanities for the Hidden Histories project
Processed Derivative Material: Full text in Chapter 9 of Computation and the Humanities
Rights: Interview audio files are made available under a creative commons licence “by-nc-nd” with the following characteristics:
• by: the content must be attributed to me and the interviewer.
• non-commercial: commercial use of the content is not allowed.• no derivative works: the material is to be allocated in its original form and may not beedited.
See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode.
Related Resource: Julianne Nyhan and Andrew Flinn 2016. Computation and the Humanities: towards an oral history of Digital Humanities. Springer.
Bibliographic Citation: Julianne Nyhan and John Nitti, “There had to be a better way: John Nitti and Julianne Nyhan,”Hidden Histories: Digital Humanities 1949 - Present, accessed October 21, 2024, https://hiddenhistories.net/s/medorah/item/81.
Creator: Julianne Nyhan and John Nitti
Type: N/A
identifier: N/A

Item sets: Computation and the Humanities interviews

Media: [Recording] There had to be a better way John Nitti and Julianne Nyhan.mp3