What are the digital humanities, and why should I care?

Paige MorganDigital Humanities Librarian

February 12, 2016

Goals: what I can do• Provide necessary background and

strategic advice.• Allow you to begin charting your own

course.• Help make UM Libraries a supportive

space for experimenting and learning about DH.

• Continue building a digital humanities cohort at Miami.

Limits: what I can’t do

CAN BECOME A DIGITAL HUMANIST

But don’t worry...

The point of this workshop is not to

convert you to digital humanities.

There is no single way of being a

digital humanist.

Defining DH• By the start of the “first DH project”

(1946, approximately: date of Roberto Busa’s plan for the Codex Thomisticus, a digital concordance of the works of Aquinas)

• By its stability, or lack thereof, its self-consciously mutable and multimodal nature

• According to its friction with traditional a.k.a. “analog” humanities

Defining DH• “the use of digital evidence, [and/or]

methods of inquiry, [and/or] research, [and/or] publication and[/or] preservation to achieve scholarly and research goals.” (Scholarly Communication Institute, University of Virginia)

• “research that uses information technology as a central part of its methodology, for creating and/or processing data.” (University of Oxford)

DH goals and methodologies depend on the specific subject

matter, and the availability of

primary/secondary source materials and

tools.

Alternatives to the “What is DH?” question• How does this

project/essay/argument engage with current and previous scholarship in my discipline?

• What sort of critical thinking and interpretive work is involved in this project?

• How does this project fit into the existing environment of projects and resources?

Why values?• While the tools, projects, and

methods are diverse, values tend to be more holistic

• Understanding the values that drive digital scholarship allows you to participate in conversations whether or not you yourself identify as a digital scholar

Values behind DH• adaptive• sustainable/

resource-aware• multimodal• interdisciplinary• auto-didactic• collaborative

• ad hoc• process & product-

driven• accessible• public &

transparent• project-oriented• social

Most DH projects are, in essence,

sources, processed and presented.*

• “Sources, processed and presented” is the framework used by Miriam Posner in “How Did They Make That? The

Video,” http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video/

They’re also designed with a

specific audience (or audiences) in

mind.

Websites for Evaluation

TBA Friday!

Questions for Evaluation

• What is the project doing? Why are its creators doing this?

• What aspects of it work well? What aspects could be improved?

• Which DH values do you see exhibited within the project?

What is DH?(a humbler definition)

Thinking about the available materials; how digital tools will allow you to process them and present them to audiences in ways that weren’t previously possible (or at least, weren’t easy) – and acting on your thoughts.

Why should you care?• Opportunities for scholarship in new

forms.• Better understanding of how digital

scholarly sources are made.• Even if you’re not planning to build

digital tools, your scholarly expertise is relevant to digital humanities research.

The big question:

What do you want to do with digital

scholarship?

Flash Project Development

Brainstorm a DH project with your team!(Students at Cabrini College brainstorm a DH project on porn. Image c/o Adeline Koh.)

Will it focus on one distinct topic? Or on bringing multiple topics together?

What artefacts will it contain, or collect?How will users interact

and/or contribute?What forms (modes) will it take?

Flash Project Brainstorming

What perspectives do you want it to explore?

Resources for further training and collaboration

• Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (http://fldh.org/)

• HASTAC: http://www.hastac.org • DHNow: http://

digitalhumanitiesnow.org • TransformDH: http://

transformdh.org • Profhacker: http

://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/

• How Did They Make That? http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video/

• Digital Humanities on Twitter -- no account needed https://twitter.com/paigecmorgan/digital-humanities and https://twitter.com/GrandjeanMartin/lists/digital-humanities

• Digital Research Tools (DiRT) http://dirtdirectory.org

• DHCommons http://www.dhcommons.org

• DHSI: http://www.dhsi.org• TEI Seminars at Brown

University: http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/seminars/

Thank you!

Want to chat more about DH? Email me (p.morgan@miami.edu )

or make an appointment (

http://paigecmorgan.youcanbook.me)