updated presentation

1. .
MAKING SENSE OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES
- A CONVERSATION STARTER:
Presented by Ingrid Thomson, UCT
Libraries

2. WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED DIGITAL
HUMANITIES OR DH?
 Various definitions of Digital Humanities
 Previously known as Human Computing
 Umbrella term covering a wide range of activities
from online preservation and digital mapping to data
mining and the use of geographic information
systems.
 It’s Digital Humanities Scholarship
 There have been scholars and technologists doing DH
work long before DH was a phrase!

3. DEFINITIONS....
 Day in the Life of Digital Humanities (8 April 2014)
 Some definitions:
http://dayofdh2014.matrix.msu.edu/members/
DH is a cover term for a wide variety of activities that attempt to explore and
expand areas of knowledge typically examined in the Humanities by
developing and/or applying computational tools or methods in ways best
suited for these areas. DH is also a cover term for a supporting community of
practitioners who share a common interest in the tools and methods--and
challenges--generated by the activities DH scholars, as well as potentially
useful activities in fields outside the traditional Humanities. - Scott Kleinman California
State University, Northridge

4. DEFINITION
We use “digital humanities” as an umbrella term for a number of
different activities that surround technology and humanities
scholarship. Under the digital humanities rubric, I would include
topics like open access to materials, intellectual property rights,
tool development, digital libraries, data mining, born-digital
preservation, multimedia publication, visualization, GIS, digital
reconstruction, study of the impact of technology on numerous
fields, technology for teaching and learning, sustainability
models, and many others
. -Brett Bobley, NEH, United States (2011)

5. MORE DEFINITIONS
I define the digital humanities as two things. Firstly, I think of it as using
new and emerging technologies to enhance our understanding of our
humanistic fields of inquiry. For me, as a historian, it is learning new
things through technology that we couldn't learn otherwise. Secondly, I
think of it as playing and exploring new methods of scholarly
communication - i.e. putting history online - Ian Milligan, Uni of Waterloo

6. Broadly construed, digital humanities is the use of
digital media and technology to advance the full
range of thought and practice in the humanities,
from the creation of scholarly resources, to research
on those resources, to the communication of
results to colleagues and students.
Dan Cohen – Executive Director, Digital Public
Library of America

7. QUESTION THAT IS ASKED
 There was a moment of asking “Can I use this
technology to further my research?” or saying “This
is what I want to do” and identifies a technology to
help them do that. (Or in some cases, create a tool to
do that)

8. DIGITAL HUMANITIES
SCHOLARSHIP

9. BRIEF HISTORY
 Image: http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/typo3temp/pics/7212f0d7fe.jpg
 Image: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/card2.jpg
 Images: http://www.osservatoreromano.va/orportal-portlets-portal/detail/binaries/news/cultura/2011/184q11-lettore-fermati----morto-padre-busa/184q05b.jpg
 Image: http://www.sas-sas.it/Alice/images/Thomis6.jpg

10. BRIEF HISTORY 2
 Other scholars began using mainframe computers to
automate tasks like word-searching, sorting, and
counting, which was much faster than processing
information from texts with handwritten or typed
index cards
 The first specialized journal in the digital humanities
was Computers and the Humanities, which debuted in
1966. The Association for Literary and Linguistic
Computer (ALLC) and the Association for Computers
and the Humanities (ACH) were then founded in 1977
and 1978, respectively.

11. BRIEF HISTORY 3
 Soon, there was a need for a standardized protocol for tagging digital
texts, and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) was developed. The TEI project
was launched in 1987 and published the first full version of the TEI
Guidelines in May 1994
 In the nineties, major digital text and image archives emerged at centres of
humanities computing in the U.S. e.g. the Women Writers Project, the
Rossetti Archive
 1992 – 2004 Library digitization and digital humanities centres
 2004: 1st Publication on DH: The Blackwell
 Companion to the Digital Humanities

12. SOME DIGITAL HUMANITIES
TOOLS

13. NETWORK ANALYSIS
 Explore the relationships between
individuals, places, topics and
more
e.g. Sex, Race and Allegiance in
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
http://www.eduhacker.net/digital-humanities/sex-race-allegiance-hobbit-lord-of-the-rings.html

14. DATA VISUALISATION
 Visualise to tell a story, understand, identify trends, make
connections, see patterns .... With great speed
 A tool called Palladio which was used to do Mapping the Republic
of Letters
http://palladio.designhumanities.org

15. NGRAM VIEWER (GOOGLE BOOKS)
 Displays a graph showing how those phrases have
occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years
https://books.google.com/ngrams/info

16. TEXT ANALYSIS
 Studying texts with computers and software to
uncover new patterns, overlooked connections and
deeper meaning

17. GIS
 A geographic information system (GIS) integrates
hardware, software and data for capturing, managing,
analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically
referenced information
http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/

18. DIGITAL EXHIBITS

19. SOME SA DH PROJECTS

20. BIOGRAPHY OF AN UNCHARTED
PEOPLE (STELLENBOSCH UNI)

21. HISTORICAL PAPERS RESEARCH
ARCHIVE AT WITS

22. TALBOT MAP COLLECTION AT UCT
LIBRARIES

23. SOWETO HISTORICAL GIS PROJECT

24. SOME OTHER INTERESTING DH
PROJECTS

25. CHARLES DARWIN’S LIBRARY

26. MAPPING THE REPUBLIC OF
LETTERS

27. FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY
DIGITAL ARCHIVE

28. SHOAH VISUAL ARCHIVES

29. TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

30. OLD BAILEY PROCEEDINGS

31. PROJECT COMING OUT OF OLD
BAILEY PROCEEDINGS

32. DH CENTRES AND
ORGANISATIONS

33. LIBRARY DIGITIZATION AND
DIGITAL HUMANITIES CENTRES

39. DEVELOPMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA
 The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR)
 Government support, through the Department of Science and Technology, as well as the
combined effort of many South African Academics, made the establishment of SADiLaR
possible.
 SADiLaR runs two programmes:
 A digitisation programme, which entails the systematic creation of relevant digital text,
speech and multi-modal resources related to all official languages of South Africa. The
development of appropriate natural language processing software tools for research and
development purposes are included as part of the digitisation programme.
 A Digital Humanities programme, which facilitates the building of research capacity by
promoting and supporting the use of digital data and innovative methodological
approaches within the Humanities and Social Sciences.
 African Digital Humanities. The universities of Cape Town, Pretoria, Stellenbosch,
Western Cape and the Witwatersrand have recently been awarded a generous grant from
the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for a Programme in African Digital Humanities. The
Programme will offer R3 million annually over five years in support of projects of
digitisation, course design and research. Proposals deadlines have closed.

40. SOUTH AFRICAN CENTRE FOR DIGITAL
LANGUAGE RESOURCES (SADILAR)

41. DHASA 2019 CONFERENCE

42. SO HOW AND WHY ARE LIBRARIES
INVOLVED?

43.  Approaches to promoting digital humanities work
varies from institution to institution — some have
centres or hubs on campus or in libraries, others have
coordinated programs and initiatives, and many have
neither.
 The challenge for researchers interested in pursuing
digital humanities work is to create a path forward
and identify resources to help them at each stage of
the scholarly process.
 Libraries serve as connectors, collaborators,
and initiators in digital humanities work.

44. ROLES LIBRARIES PLAY
 Collections: Enabling Research and Learning
 Expertise and Technology: Enabling Discovery
 Library Partnerships
 Aptitude for Experimentation
 Promoting Interdisciplinary Study
 Librarian Service Ethic
 Libraries and Funding Opportunities
 Library as Learning Spaces and More

45. CAN’T DO DH WITHOUT
LIBRARIES!
 Digitisation
 Preservation and Curation of digitally born artefacts
 Research Data Management
 Text analysis and text encoding
 Provision of tools for text mining, 3D
 Online Exhibition space
 GIS Services (Maps)
 Inclusion of Makerspaces
 Training on hardware and software tools and working with data
(e.g. Library carpentry)
 Wikipedia editing

46.  Adam Crymble describes his Digital Humanities Thesis
in two minutes
“Big Data, Old History “
http://www.phdcomics.com/tv/#047

47. USEFUL READS + LINKS
 ACRL Digital Humanities Interest Group http://connect.ala.org/node/158885
 Schaffner, Jennifer and Erway, Ricky: Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center? OCLC
http://oclc.org/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresearch-digital-humanities-center-2014-overview.html
 Response from Beth Nowviskie to the OCLC Report above http://nowviskie.org/2014/asking-for-it/
 Dh+lib: where the Digital Humanities and Librarianship meet http://acrl.ala.org/dh/
 Coble, Zach: Make it New? A dh+lib Mini Series zachcoble.com/dhlib/Make-It-New-A-dhlib-Mini-Series.pdf
 Hubbard, Melanie: Explore Digital Humanities. Syracuse University. http://melaniehubbard.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/exploredh_plan_20141.pdf
 Adams, Jennifer and Gunn, Kevin. Digital Humanities: Where to start. College & Research Libraries News vol. 73 no. 9 536-569 October 2012.
http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/9/536.full
 VandeGrif, Michau: What is digital humanities and what is it doing in the library? http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandthelib/
 Lease, Eric Morgan: Digital Humanities and Libraries (blog posting on Days in the Life of a Librarian) http://blogs.nd.edu/emorgan/2014/04/dh-and-
libraries/
 Unsworth, John: What’s digital humanities and how did it get here? http://blogs.brandeis.edu/lts/2012/10/09/whats-digital-humanities-and-how-did-
it-get-here/
 Alexander, Laurie, Case, Beau, Downing, Karen, Gomis, Melissa and Maslowski, Moxy Tech. Librarians and Scholars: Partners in Digital Humanities.
2014, https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/6/librarians-and-scholars-partners-in-digital-humanities

48. USEFUL READS + LINKS
BOOKS
 Gold, Matthew: Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Bryson, Tim: Digital Humanities. Washington, DC : Association of Research Libraries, c2011.
EXAMPLES OF DH PROJECTS
 Mapping the Republic of Letters http://www.republicofletters.stanford.edu/
 First World War Poetry Digital Archives http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/www1lit/
 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces
 Kindred Britain http://kindred.stanford.edu/#
 Old Bailey Proceedings http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
 Charles Darwin’s Library http://www.biodiversity.org/collection/darwinlibrary
 Sex, Race and Allegiance in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings http://www.eduhacker.net/digital-humanities/sex-race-allegiance-hobbit-lord-of-the-rings.html
 French Revolution Digital Archive https://frda.stanford.edu/
TOOLS TO EXPLORE
 Voyant http://www.voyant-tools.org
 Tapor http://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal
 Palladio http://palladio.designhumanities.org
 Library Carpentry http://librarycarpentry.org
ORGANISATIONS
 Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations http://adho.org/
 That Camps http://thatcamp.org/
 Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) http://digitalhumanities.org.za/