Web Scraping for Environmental History Research Re-Cap

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On Wednesday 11 May 2022, the NiCHE New Scholars Committee held a digital methodologies workshop on web scraping for environmental history research. The event was hosted by Heather Rogers and Lidia Ponce de la Vega. Thanks to them both for an excellent and informative workshop!

The workshop covered a wide range of topics. The workshop introduced participants to the Digital Environmental Humanities (DEH), a field within Digital Humanities that meets at the intersection of digital tools and environmental humanities research, and to examples of DEH projects. It also covered how web scraping can be used for environmental history and featured webscraper.io, a free Google Chrome plug-in. The workshop included a demonstration showcasing how webscraper.io can be used to collect large amounts of data about specimens—such as collector, location, and scientific and common names—from online environmental archives such as Canadensys, an online database of Canadian species.  

You can watch the recording of the workshop here:

And below you can watch the tutorial videos that Heather and Lidia used in their presentation. If you have questions about the material or want to learn more, please contact Heather Rogers, Lidia Ponce de la Vega, or the New Scholars rep, Blake Butler.

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M. Blake Butler

I am an Ottawa-based historian. Much of my research examines Canadian and environmental histories, with an emphasis on winter-based topics. My doctoral dissertation examined the history of snow in Vancouver between the mid-nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century. I am also currently employed as a historical researcher at Know History. I can be reached at mblakebutler18@gmail.com.

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