Unca Don and Unca Scrooge’s Guide to History. Representations of the Past in the Disney Comics of Don Rosa

This thesis studies the various forms and layers of representations of the past that can be found in the Disney comics of Don Rosa. To stay true to the legacy of renowned comic book artist Carl Barks, Rosa has stopped time in the duck universe to the 1950’s: the decade when Barks created his most noted stories. There is a special feel of historicalness in Rosa’s duck stories, as his characters recall events that occurred in both Rosa’s own stories as well as Barks’. Rosa has shed new light to the past of the characters by writing and illustrating the history of Scrooge McDuck, one of the most beloved Disney characters. Rosa is also adamant that the historical facts used in his stories are always correct and based on thorough research. The methodological tools used in the analysis of the comics come from the fields of comic book studies, film theory, and history culture. Film and comics are recognized by many scholars as very similar media, which share elements that make them comparable in many ways. This thesis utilizes studies on historical film, narrative and genre, which provide valuable insight and comparisons for analysis. The thesis consists of three main chapters, the first of which deconstructs the duck universe in the stories in order to understand how the historicalness in them is created,and which outside elements might affect them, including the genre of Disney comics, publishers, and the legacy of Barks. The next chapter focuses on The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series, i.e. the stories which are located in the past. Such stories feature similar representations of history as for example Westerns. They also compress and alter history to meet the restrictions of the medium of comics. The last part focuses on the adventure stories which draw inspiration from for example mythology, and take the characters to strange and mystical, but yet historical worlds. Such treasure-hunting stories show similarity to the action-adventure genre in film and for example their stereotypical representations of foreign cultures. Finally, the chapter addresses the problematic of historical fiction and its capability to write history.

Kieli ja folklore - yhtä ja toista maata

Finno-ugric contribution to international research on folklore, myth and cultural identity: Fifth International Symposium on Finno-Ugric Languages in Groningen, Groningenin yliopisto 7.- 9. 6. 2011.

Spekulaation materiaalinen paluu ja välttämätön kontingenssi

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Vaikeasti määrittyvät kohtalottaret

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

OCR Correction Tool for Linguistic Corpora

We introduce a new tool for correcting OCR errors of materials in a repository of cultural materials. The poster is aimed to all who are interested in digital humanities and who might find our tool useful. The poster will focus on the OCR correction tool and on the background processes. We have started a project on materials published in Finno-Ugric languages in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. The materials are digitised in Russia. As they arrive, we publish them in DSpace (fennougrica.kansalliskirjasto.fi). For research purposes, the results of the OCR must be corrected manually. For this we have built a new tool. Although similar tools exist, we found in-house development necessary in order to serve the researchers' needs. The tool enables exporting the corrected text as required by the researchers. It makes it possible to distribute the correction tasks and their supervision. After a supervisor has approved a text as finalised, the new version of the work will replace the old one in DSpace. The project has - benefitted the small language communities, - opened channels for cooperation in Russia. - increased our capabilities in digital humanities. The OCR correction tool will be available to others.

Making the impact on research and society : a case study: crowdsourcing solutions developed for the linguistic research and citizen science

Can crowdsourcing solutions serve many masters? Can they be beneficial for both, for the layman or native speakers of minority languages on the one hand and serious linguistic research on the other? How did an infrastructure that was designed to support linguistics turn out to be a solution for raising awareness of native languages? Since 2012 the National Library of Finland has been developing the Digitisation Project for Kindred Languages, in which the key objective is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote crowdsourcing as a tool for participation of the language community in research. In the course of the project, over 1,200 monographs and nearly 111,000 pages of newspapers in Finno-Ugric languages will be digitised and made available in the Fenno-Ugrica digital collection. This material was published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, and users have had only sporadic access to the material. The publication of open-access and searchable materials from this period is a goldmine for researchers. Historians, social scientists and laymen with an interest in specific local publications can now find text materials pertinent to their studies. The linguistically-oriented population can also find writings to delight them: (1) lexical items specific to a given publication, and (2) orthographically-documented specifics of phonetics. In addition to the open access collection, we developed an open source code OCR editor that enables the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary since these rare and peripheral prints often include already archaic characters, which are neglected by modern OCR software developers but belong to the historical context of kindred languages, and are thus an essential part of the linguistic heritage. When modelling the OCR editor, it was essential to consider both the needs of researchers and the capabilities of lay citizens, and to have them participate in the planning and execution of the project from the very beginning. By implementing the feedback iteratively from both groups, it was possible to transform the requested changes as tools for research that not only supported the work of linguistics but also encouraged the citizen scientists to face the challenge and work with the crowdsourcing tools for the benefit of research. This presentation will not only deal with the technical aspects, developments and achievements of the infrastructure but will highlight the way in which user groups, researchers and lay citizens were engaged in a process as an active and communicative group of users and how their contributions were made to mutual benefit.

OCR Correction Tool for Linguistic Corpora

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Phonologie und Morphologie des Erzanischen

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Meditationes sancti evangelii 10

Arkit: A-B4.

Kyriale, Sequentiarium (MS C.ö.I.23)

A graduale and a sequentiarium were copied in the reformation period for use in the Diocese of Turku, possibly in Raisio. The graduale in Finnish appears to depend on Jacobus Finno's hymnbook of 1586, whereas the sequentiarium is probably somewhat older, possibly even coeval with Mathias Westh's liturgical codex (1540's). The present fragments probably come from at least two (possibly three) originally distinct books or booklets.

Yxi vähä suomenkielinen wirsikiria, suomencocouxis Jumalata kijttä suomenkielellä, tehty m. Jacobilda Suomalaiselda, ja muild Suomen papeilda. Cunnjalisten herrain Turun pispan m. Erichin, ja capitularesten tiedhost ja suosjost, H. Hemmingin Maschun kirckoherran vaevall ja culutuxell, ensins präntätty Stocholmisa. Mutta nyt Herman Sulkin käskyst, Staffan Myllärin präntill uudhistettu Rostochis.

Koonnut ja suomentanut Jacobus Finno, täydentänyt Hemminki Henrikinpoika Maskulainen. Useilla lehdillä numerointivirheitä, numerointi: [6], 1-62 93 [po. 63] 64-94 94 [po. 95] 96-161 192 [po. 162] 163-180 161 [po. 181] 182-223, [5]. - Lehtien 197 ja 198 sivut painettu väärään järjestykseen. Viimeisellä sivulla oikolukijan jälkisanat, allekirjoitus S. I. C. S. = Simon Johannis Carelius. Arkit: A-T12 V6. Puuttuu kansalliskokoelmasta.