HPC can support digital humanities research by Ithaka Constellate Notebooks is a platform for learning these techniques without any prior technical experience required. It is currently available as a GitHub repository which can be accessed as a Jupyter workspace containing organized folders and Python files. This page aims to show you how to access the lessons in Jupyter-Lab.
There are also videos dedicated to most of the lessons in the workshop available here: https://www.youtube.com/@Constellate_org
- Start Interactive JupyterLab from the M3 OnDemand Portal
- Under Select Python Environment, choose one of the following: (M3 Module) python/3.11.11/data_science/2025.04.01 or (M3 Module) python/3.11.11/data_science/2025.08.21
- Ignore Custom environment settings
- Leave rest settings to default values
- Create/choose a place for storing the lessons. This is the parent directory of folder
constellate-notebooks. The file explorer on the left of Jupyter-Lab is limited to the $HOME directory; however, one can enter the $SCRATCH directory by copying and pastingcd $SCRATCHto a separate line and then pressing the Enter key.
- Click on Terminal under Other in the Launcher tab. Type the following commands at the end of the latest line in terminal.
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To see the folders and files present in the current directory, type
lsin a separate line in the Terminal and then press the Enter key. -
(Optional) To create a new folder in the current directory, type
mkdir DirectoryNamein a separate line in the Terminal, replacingDirectoryNamewith the name you want to give the parent directory and then press the Enter key. -
Once the path of the chosen parent directory is present before the blinking cursor in the terminal, copy and paste the following command in a separate line in the Terminal and then press the Enter key.
git clone https://github.com/SouthernMethodistUniversity/constellate-notebooks.gitThis creates a copy of Constellate Notebooks in your parent directory. The course material is inside a new folder named
constellate-notebooks.To undo the cloning process, just right-click and delete the folder with the default name
constellate-notebooksin the directory you had chosen.


