UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Thursday 6th June, 9:30am-5:00pm

Room G31, Foster Court

As part of the Social Media Knowledge Exchange (SMKE), UCL, together with its project partners, is hosting a one day workshop on 6th June on the theme: Social Media and the Museum.

General workshop theme: how social media is changing museum practice and visitor experience; how social media can be integrated into museums and collections.

This is a one day workshop with talks from a range of academic and non-academic social media experts, targeted at doctoral students and early career researchers. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion as well as hands on practical experience. Workshop places are strictly limited and so early registration is necessary. Please register via Eventbrite.

Please see the SMKE website for full programme information.

Registration is also now open for the SMKE conference on 2 & 3 July.

Kim Martin from Digging Digital Humanities has written a blog post about her recent research visit to UCLDH. We’re glad to see our various mugs make such a prominent appearance!

Claire Ross writes about the Social Interpretation project:

The Social Interpretation project was a one year Research and Development exercise joint funded by the NESTA / Arts Council / AHRC digital R&D Fund, and Imperial War Museums (IWM).  At its heart, it aimed to bring successful social interactions already found online and apply them across IWM’s collections – making social objects out of museums objects.  The aim being to increase spread and engagement of  IWM collections.

Museums’ objects have too often been seen as purely historical objects. They aren’t. Rather, they are social objects, inspiring emotional attachment, discussion, debate and action. This project is at the forefront of capturing and representing what audiences feel and say in response to our collections and subjects.

Social Interpretation aimed to holistically represent the discussions about, and sharing of, our objects by audiences. The intention was to do this seamlessly across all of the museums digital outputs (in-gallery, on-mobile and on-line). Making museums objects truly social.

The project essentially applied the models and insight found in social networks, and successful interactions online generally, and applying them wholesale to museum collections.

You can find out more about the project process at http://blogs.iwm.org.uk/social-interpretation/.

Or Read the final report from NESTA: http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/sites/default/files/case-study-documents/Digital_RandD_CaseStdy_SocialInterpretation.pdf

Or Watch a snazzy video.

We at UCLDH are very proud to announce that three of our projects have been nominated in the Digital Humanities Awards 2012!

Best Digital Humanities Project for public audiences category: Transcribe Bentham

Best DH visualization or infographic category: Quantifying Digital Humanities, an infographic

Best Use of DH for Fun category: Textal

Voting in the DH Awards is open to all, you can see all the nominees and vote here: http://dhawards.org/dhawards2012/voting/

One of our DH team members—Frauke Zeller—is involved in a new project that brings together art, critics, and robots in a joint international project with Canadian artist David Harris Smith: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/watch-your-step-campus-toughest-art-critic-could-be-under-your-feet/

Kim Martin, a member of the Digging DH team (University of Western Ontario), will be visiting UCLDH 11-20 February and would like to interview both staff and students on their thoughts about DH, the tools used for their research, the social network of DH and more.  If you would like to take part, please contact Kim at diggingdh@gmail.com.  Further details can be found on the Digging DH blog.

‘Sustaining our Digital Future’, a new report from JISC and Ithaka S+R aimed at helping digital projects to thrive was published yesterday, in which UCLDH is proud to feature highly.  You can read the report here: http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2013/01/Sustaining-our-digital-future-FINAL-31.pdf

UCLDH co-director Melissa Terras is quoted in an article on the effect big data is having on academic disciplines.

Read the whole article here: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/25/big-data-end-of-theory

UCLDH is pleased to announce that Ryan Baumann will be visiting to give an informal talk.  Ryan is currently based at the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies, working on tools for digital commentary, and has previously worked with EDUCE at the University of Kentucky Centre for Visualization and Virtual Environments http://vis.uky.edu/.

His talk at UCLDH will detail various imaging techniques and their applications to ancient text-bearing artifacts, including 3D laser, micro-CT, and multispectral imaging. Using examples from real-world problems and data, the appropriateness of applying different techniques to different artifacts will be discussed.

All welcome.

Time: 17:30

Date: Wednesday 16th January

Location: G31 Foster Court