Digital humanities uses digital technologies and computational methods to address research questions in the humanities. It enables new forms of scholarly inquiry, collaboration, and pedagogy through digital evidence, authoring, publishing, curation, and reuse. Digital humanities is an active, collaborative field involving experimentation, building, and participation in definitional debates and online communities. It produces open access, knowledge-based, multimodal work that is non-hierarchical and grounded in theory.
2. The landscape of humanistic research and
teaching has radically changed as digital
technologies have enabled new modes of
scholarly
inquiry, collaboration, publication, and
pedagogy.
“What is DH,” Center for Digital Humanities, UCLA, accessed September
20, 2013, http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/about/what-is.html.
3. Digital scholarship is the use of digital evidence
and method, digital authoring, digital publishing,
digital curation and preservation, and digital
use and reuse of scholarship.
Abby Smith Rumsey, Director
Scholarly Communication Institute, University of Virginia Library
Abby Smith Rumsey, “New-Model Scholarly Communication: Roadmap for Change,” University of
Virginia Library, 2011, accessed September 20, 2013, http://www.uvasci.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/04/SCI9-report.pdf.
4. • University of Richmond (Virginia) : http://dsl.richmond.edu/
• Northeastern University (Massachusetts): http://nulab.neu.edu/
• Emory University (Georgia): http://digitalscholarship.emory.edu/
• Miami University (Ohio): http://cds.lib.miamioh.edu/
• Brown University (Rhode Island): http://library.brown.edu/cds/
• Columbia University (New York): https://studio.cul.columbia.edu/
• University of Oregon (Oregon): http://library.uoregon.edu/digitalscholarship
5. A multifaceted disciplinary field where humanities
interests and research questions are addressed through
computing and/or find an expression in the digital
medium.
- Raffaele Viglianti (Research Programmer, University of Maryland)
The use of computational techniques in the humanities
that would allow research that is otherwise impossible.
- Melissa Terras (Director, University College London, Centre for Digital
Humanities)
Jason Heppler, ed. “What Is Digital Humanities?”, accessed September
24, 2013, http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com.
6. Digital humanities is an active field, full of
collaboration, experimentation, building and doing, and
we recommend participating in these definitional debates
while also critically diving into tutorials, tools, and other
resources, as well as joining the very open and active
community of DH scholars and collaborators
on Twitter, DH Questions & Answers, and the many DH
blogs across the web.
“A Guide to Digital Humanities,” Northwestern University Library, accessed September
24, 2013, http://sites.library.northwestern.edu/dh/.
7. • Collaborative and non-hierarchical
• Grounded in theory and critique
• Knowledge-based
• Experimental
• Multimodal
• Open access
Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, “Keeping the “L” in Digital: Applying LIS Core Competencies to Digital
Humanities Work,” The Journal of Creative Library Practice (September 6, 2013), accessed
September 20, 2013, http://creativelibrarypractice.org/2013/09/06/keeping-the-l-in-digital-applying-lis-
core-competencies-to-digital-humanities-work/.
9. To find more resources and upcoming workshop
information, visit the Digital Scholarship LibGuide
• http://classguides.lib.uconn.edu/digschol
Editor's Notes
In order to engage with scholars who are doing “DH,” academic libraries and institutions have embraced digital scholarship, which broadly encompasses work already associated with libraries, such as data management, metadata standards, as well as open access publishing and digital humanities projects.DH and digital scholarship is largely public and requires infrastructure as well as collaborative partners. Therefore, Digital Scholarship can be a vehicle for librarians to work collaboratively with scholars and students on projects, which require knowledge in areas of scholarly communication, metadata and other standards, data management, as well as the ability to facilitate collaboration with those who have expertise with programming languages (i.e. Python), database building, or visualization software, just to name a few.
Libraries and academic institutions are supporting digital scholarship in various ways. Here is a short list of DS centers/labs around the country. Each one has a particular strength or area of focus. For example: University of Richmond (Virginia) : http://dsl.richmond.edu/ (DH and visualization)Northeastern University (Massachusetts): http://nulab.neu.edu/ (texts, maps, and networks)Emory University (Georgia): http://digitalscholarship.emory.edu/ (digital teaching, research, preservation, publishing, exhibiting)
DH is a subsection of DS. These quotes are from the Day of DH where participants gave their definitions of DH. As opposed to the earlier definitions shown of DS, these definitions specifically say “humanities” and discuss how technology plays a role in the humanities.
One of the commonalities in many definitions is the collaborative nature of DH. This is often seen as a departure from traditional research in the humanities which is very individualized. The sciences and social sciences have been more collaborative in the past than the humanities.
Collaborative: multiple authors/project leaders, network of experts incl: librarians, scholars, students, programmers, designers, etc.Theory and Knowledge based: DH scholarship is grounded in discipline-specific theory, but allows scholars to push the barriers and use tools or technologies outside of one’s field.Experimental: DH practitioners experiment with new tools and technologies, re-think their approaches, and accept occasional failure.Multimodal: Move beyond the traditional text-based scholarship and use many modes: text, audio, visual, which allow one to frame questions or approach a topic in different waysOpen Access: Not all DH scholarship is OA, but the majority embraces open access publication, as well as sharing pre and post publication texts, using the Creative Commons license. Open discussion of one’s work via Twitter, blogs, and other forums is also encouraged in the DH community. Also see: http://sites.library.northwestern.edu/dh/values-methods/. Characteristics are listed as “Values.” Commonalities or values of DH are discussed, as well as methodologies which are inherent to DH work.
Open Context is a platform for researchers to publish primary field data and documentation using linked open data standards (http://linkeddata.org/) Collaboration between California Digital Library, scholars, students, and technologists.Methods/tools: (http://opencontext.org/about/technology) visualization – spatial (map) and temporal (timeline)database creation (MySQL database allows creation of search queries)PHP based application, open-source Zend framework Apache Solr (faceted queries)ArchaeoML global schema (mapping data)API (application programming interface) machine readable text that can be moved into other repositories or projectsAll contributions to Open Context are monitored by a professional editorial staff to make sure contributions only stem from professional field research programs. Songs of the Victorians: Joanna Swafford is a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Virginia, specializing in Victorian poetry, sound studies, and digital humanities. It is apublishing platform for music and literary scholarship. It allows you to integrate an audio file with a score and then each measure is highlighted in time with the music. AugmentedNotes:Methods/tools:HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery (for the box drawing), PyQuery (jquery-like library for python), Python, MEI, and the Google App Engine (build and host web applications)This tool doesn’t require you to know how to program.Creates an archive page and an analysis page like those from "Songs of the Victorians" which users can tweak and design. BibNum and Visualizing Emancipation projects contain a “Methods” or “About” section which explains both the research methods and the digital tools that were used. There are quality controls on each of the projects, even those that allow for scholars unassociated with the original project to make future contributions. Scholars seeking to make contributions to a digital scholarship project undergo a process similar to peer review. These projects, like most digital scholarship projects, are not static but are continually growing as new data is added.