1970s – mid 1980s – the “Era of Consolidation”
During the “Era of Consolidation”, ranging throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, there was more widespread use of technologies developed earlier, as well as a greater utilization and creation of electronic texts. As computers became more accessible, the potential of computation in humanities work was becoming increasingly apparent in this time period, and new applications were being formulated. Text archiving and maintenance were consolidated to reduce duplication of efforts. Preparation of electronic texts replaced programming as key activities that were central to the humanities computing enterprise.
The Oxford Text Archive (OTA) was established in 1976 to ensure that prepared electronic texts were properly maintained and stored, as well as disseminated to researchers for academic purposes. Although not recognized as such at the time, the OTA could be considered as the beginning stages of a digital library. Consequently, methods for describing and documenting material had to be developed, especially to address the large amount of undocumented material.
This period also witnessed the formation of centers for humanities computing, including the Norwegian Computing Center for the Humanities in Bergen, Norway, which is now known as Uni Digital; the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts at the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, humanities computing was now being taught at the post-secondary level, attesting to its maturing status. Many of these courses focused on the use of specific software packages, although application areas were emphasized in other courses. Although FORTRAN (Formula Translator/Translation) was still the main programming language, SNOBOL (String Oriented and Symbolic Language) also enjoyed some popularity during this period due to its relatively easy-to-learn string handling functionality.
During this period, advances in computational processing and storage technology had a positive impact on the field. Storage shifted from tape to disk. File searching technology improved to the point where files no longer needed to be searched in a strictly sequential (from beginning of the file to the end) manner. Database technology, especially the relational database paradigm developed by Edgar F. Codd in the mid-1970s, proved to be a substantial benefit to the field, as textual material could now be much more easily organized. However, relational database technology required that data be stored in tables, analogously to a standard spreadsheet. Texts do not easily fit into the tabular paradigm, and, consequently, relational databases were simultaneously enabling and limiting.
Some of the work of this period related to vocabulary studies, resulting in innovative stylistic or linguistic analyses. This research was enabled by concordance programs, going back to the seminal work of Roberto Busa on the Index Thomisticus, described above. However, these advances were not always widely understood by practitioners, as they relied on advanced mathematical concepts.
In summary, this time period is generally characterized by advances in support systems, technologies, and the establishment of journals and conferences for dissemination of knowledge, rather than in innovative or groundbreaking humanities computing methodologies. At this stage, there was also a lack of critical review of the methodologies that were available. Furthermore, dissemination of knowledge was also in forums specifically tailored to humanities computing, rather than to the wider humanities communities, leading to the perception that work in humanities computing had not gained full academic respectability.