2. Digital Humanities
Current issues in the field:
• What is the field of Digital Humanities?
• Understanding digital transformations
• Big Data/New methods – GIS
• The Value of the Humanities
• Public Engagement
• What is the future of Digital Humanities?
3. What are the Digital
Humanities?
Humanities Computing?
• Brought new information and communication technologies to the
Humanities
• Led to major landmarks such as Text Encoding Initiative (standard
encoding scheme for humanities electronic texts)
• Largely associated with digitisation initiatives
Humanities Computing to Digital Humanities (2004)
What are the Digital Humanities now?
4. Beyond Digitisation?
• 2008-2009 JISC study ‘Usage and Impact of Digitised Scholarly
Resources’
• Used qualitative and quantitative measures to measure and
understand usage and impact of five Humanities digitisation
projects
• Key findings:
• Transformed access
• Enabled new ways of drilling into the materials
• New means of engaging students
• Enabled distance learning
• Fostered, rather than impeded, serendipitous discoveries
11. ‘Literature is not Data’
‘Big Data is coming for your Books. It’s
already come for everything else.’
Marche on EEBO: ‘That wonderful database
in its own way demonstrates how digitization
leads to the decline of the sacred.’
Can traditional Humanities subjects survive if
they don’t engage with the Digital?
12. Big Data and new tools
Literature is not Data, but…
• AHRC is funding research into Big Data for the Humanities
• Includes the OII’s BUDDAH project: ‘to develop a framework
for the study of web archive data and produce a major history
of the UK web space’.
• New tools for visualisation such as GIS are taking advantage of
Big Datasets
How can we ensure that these new datasets and tools are
relevant to the Humanities, and support traditional Humanities
research?
13. The Value of the Humanities
• The Humanities are in a precarious position
• Recent lecture series at Oxford on ‘Humanities and the Public
Good’ to address contemporary challenges
• Key intellectuals from across the disciplines defended the
Humanities
(How) can the Digital Humanities contribute to this debate?
14. Involving the crowd
‘A Jeering Crowd: Fragment of a Mocking of
Christ’ by Hans Memling, Oil on Panel
15. Crowdsourcing
• ‘A Museum Without Walls: Realising the Potential
of Crowdsourcing in the Arts’
• AHRC
• Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford
• Crowdsourcing/Impact
• Key themes:
• Co-creation
• Public interaction
• Agency/Wellbeing
• Impact
• Relevance
16. Taggers and impacts
• Visits to museums and galleries increased
• New awareness of institutions/collections
• New confidence in visiting/viewing different
types of exhibitions/art
• Use of language improved due to exposure to
the project
• Tagging provided an important and positive
distraction from traumatic life event, harmful
behaviours, unemployment
• Community/networking events were important
21. Crowdsourcing
‘Crowd’ by Oona Hassim (2000)
Oil on Canvas
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/crowd-123473
22. Public engagement in
Humanities
‘The Newlyn Exhibition’ by Joan Gillchrest (1979)
Oil on board
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-newlyn-exhibition-14890
23. Cultural heritage and wellbeing
Image of the National Media Museum, Bradford, taken by 4.D and made
available thanks to an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license
24. Some questions
• How would you define the Digital Humanities now?
• What is Digital Humanities and what is not?
• How effective is the name ‘Digital Humanities’? Would you
change it? To what?
• What kind of topics and sources does Digital Humanities
address, and are these the right ones? Which would you add?
• Do you have to build things in order to be a Digital Humanist?
• Do you have to be able to programme in order to be a Digital
Humanist?
• When everyone in the Humanities is using digital techniques
in their work, with Digital Humanities become obsolete?
• Do other fields worry about defining themselves as much?
From M. Terras, J.Nyhan and E. Vanhoutte (eds) Defining
Digital Humanities: A Reader (Ashgate, 2013)
25. Contact me:
Dr Kathryn Eccles
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk
‘A Museum Without Walls’:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=100
Email me: kathryn.eccles@oii.ox.ac.uk
Follow me on Twitter:
@KathrynEccles
Editor's Notes
Terras – ‘the Digital Humanities are computational methods that are trying to understand what it means to be human, in both our past and present society’
