UCL CENTRE FOR DIGITAL HUMANITIES

UCLDH: James Cronin presents No “radical new beginning”: DH and SoTL

UCLDH is pleased to announce the following lecture by James Cronin on 13th December 2012 at 17:30. Lecture: No “radical new beginning”: How can Digital Humanities benefit from engagement with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community? Speaker: James G. R. Cronin, University College Cork, Ireland Abstract: In this presentation, James Cronin, an Ionad Bairre Fellow in Teaching and [...]

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DDHL: The Residue of Uniqueness

Received from the Decoding Digital Humanities London mailing list: DDH London will be meeting again on * Wednesday 30 May 18:00 * at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH This month we will be reading: McCarty, Willard (forthcoming). “The residue of uniqueness”. The Cologne Dialogue on Digital Humanities @ Wahn Manor House, 2012. Historical Social Research – Historische Sozialforschung. [pre-print pdf] Please [...]

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DDH-London: April 25

Decoding Digitial Humanities (London) returns on April 25, to discuss the paper: Elaine G. Toms, Heather L. O’Brien, (2008) “Understanding the information and communication technology needs of the e-humanist”, Journal of Documentation, vol. 64(1), pp. 102 – 130. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1657905 We will meet at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH <http://g.co/maps/vftpw> All are welcome,so please circulate [...]

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A Digital Renaissance: Imaging the Iliad

Please join us for the April meeting of Decoding Digital Humanities, an informal, international digital humanities discussion group.

Friday, April 27, 4-6pm, in the Wells Library E174

April’s meeting will focus on a screening of A Digital Renaissance: Imaging the Iliad, a film documenting the digitization of the oldest complete copy of Homer’sIliad in Venice, in 2007. 

During the summer of 2007 researchers from the University of Kentucky, University of Houston, College of the Holy Cross, Furman University, and Brandeis University gathered in Venice, Italy at the Marciana Library to digitally preserve the Venetus A, the oldest existing complete text of the Homeric Iliad. Meticulously crafted in Byzantium, the Venetus A has been stored for 500 years in the Marciana Library. Its thousand-year-old pages contain handwritten notes recoding a tradition of scholarship going back to the Ptolemaic scholars of the second century BCE. In addition to digital photos, the text was also scanned in 3D with each page now fully preserved as a 3D model.

During this time the Vis Center produced a documentary entitled, A Digital Renaissance: Imaging the Iliad: . The film premiered on the University of Kentucky campus in December 2008 and then was first broadcast on Kentucky Educational Television in January 2009. Since then at least 25 public television stations around the United States have aired the documentary. The film has also been shown at the Islamic Manuscript Association at Christ’s College in Cambridge, England. In summer 2010, Imaging the Iliad was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Find out more about the film and watch a trailer here: http://www.vis.uky.edu/iliad.php

The film is one hour long and the screening will begin at 4pm, with discussion to follow. We’ll have a few people who took part in the digitization project joining via Skype. Snacks will be provided!

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

DDHL Meeting Next Week

Received from the Decoding Digital Humanities London mailing list this morning: DDH London will be meeting again on * Wednesday 28 March 18:00 * at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH <http://g.co/maps/vftpw> This month we will be reading: Carlson, S., and Anderson, B. (2007). What are data? The many kinds of data and their implications for data re-use. Journal of Computer-Mediated [...]

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DDH-L tonight

Received from the Decoding Digital Humanities London mailing list this morning: DDHL is tonight at the Plough (WC1A 1LH) at 6pm. This time we’ll chat about the impact of social media both as a research subject and as a way for the researcher to establish his/her presence through them. To give us something to get the conversation started, we suggest [...]

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2012: a busy year already

We are little more than a month into 2012 and already we have seen a lot of changes at UCLDH, so I thought it might be a good idea to write briefly about a few of them. It’s especially good to welcome back Melissa Terras, who was on maternity leave and sabbatical last year. Now [...]

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Alternative Academics

Please join us for the February meeting of Decoding Digital Humanities, an informal, international digital humanities discussion group.

Friday, February 17, 4-6pm, in the IU Memorial Union Starbucks

February’s theme is the alternative academic, or “alt-ac” movement.  This movement is when academics, usually those with a PhD, decide to take positions that are not as tenure track teaching faculty.  Instead, these academics find jobs in other areas of academia or perhaps even leave academia but still continue to research and publish. This is a movement that is affecting the humanities, as scholars take positions outside of the standard humanities teaching positions, but still influence what is going one within the academic community.

Our discussion this month will focus on two readings.  One, a blog post by Bethany Noviskie which started the trend: http://nowviskie.org/2010/alt-ac/ and the other is by William Pannapacker on alt-ac being the future of the academy: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/commentary-alt-ac-is-the-future-of-the-academy/42871. Feel free to check out resources or follow the  #altac or #alt-ac hashtag on twitter to see what is going on currently with the movement.

Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and coffee.

Note: Future DDH meetings are scheduled for March 16, April 20, and May 18 (the third Friday of each month). Please contact Nancy Meuth (njmeuth at imail dot iu dot edu)  if you would like to propose a topic of conversation for one of these meetings.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

Decoding Digital Humanities London is back!

Decoding Digital Humanities London (DDHL) is back and it is bigger than ever! The series was founded at here at UCLDH  and has now grown to include a larger number of institutions across London. PhD, MA students and staff at UCL, King’s College London and Goldmisth’s University of London are amongst the [...]

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Making (digital) humanities understandable to non-(digital) humanists

Please join us for the November meeting of Decoding Digital Humanities, an informal, international digital humanities discussion group.

Friday, November 11, 4-6pm, in the IU Memorial Union Starbucks

November’s theme is “Making (digital) humanities understandable to non-(digital) humanists”

First, have a look at this post on the HASTAC blog from Cathy Davidson, “Best Idea for Higher Ed Since About 2002” (http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2011/10/23/best-idea-higher-ed-about-2002). The post discusses The Conversation, a collaborative project out of Australia that seeks to make scholarly research (mostly from science, technology, business, and policy) understandable to a more general audience. Then check out The Conversation at  http://theconversation.edu.au/. Look through the site to gain a general feel for it and then reflect on how useful this site or others like it could be.

Topic for our discussion: What are the implications for this approach to the humanities? Would it be worthwhile to do something similar and if so, on what level (University, Organization, National)?

Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and coffee.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research

Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research
"Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research" is the title of an international workshop to be held at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, on 18 and 19 November, 2011.

Organization: Luís Espinha da Silveira and Daniel Alves

Presentation: With this initiative we intend to discuss the implications of using digital technologies in the production and dissemination of knowledge in History. We seek to understand how a set of digital methodologies has influenced historical research, to discuss its advantages and disadvantages, as well as to identify innovative ways of linking the future of the digital world to the study of the past. On the first day, the meeting goes around four thematic sessions dedicated to the presentation and discussion of different methodologies (relational databases; geographic information systems; text encoding; digitization and preservation of digital memory). The program of that day closes with a conference on the significance of historical research in a digital environment. The second day will be filled with three workshops devoted to relevant digital tools for historical research, including GIS, text encoding, and reference management software. We expect this conference stimulates discussion about the interaction between History and Information Technology, and encourages its use by the academic community, especially young researchers.

Dates: 2011, November, 18th-19th (free attendance)

Location: I&D building, 4th floor, room 2 (FCSH, Av. de Berna, 26-C, 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal)

Program:
Friday (18th) (Room 2, 4th floor, I&D building, FCSH)
9:00 – Opening
9:30 – 1st session: Primary sources and relational databases
John Bradley (King's College London), Silk purses and sow's ears: in what ways can structured data deal with historical sources?

Joaquim de Carvalho (Universidade de Coimbra), Combining source oriented and person oriented data models in prosopographical database design

moderator: Daniel Alves (IHC, FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

11:00 – coffee break

11:15 – 2nd session: Interaction of space and time: GIS and History
Paul Ell (Queen's University Belfast), Humanities Geographical Information Systems: texts, images, maps

Luís Espinha da Silveira (IHC, FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa), GIS and historical research: promises, achievements and pitfalls

moderator: Marco Painho (ISEGI - Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

12:45 – Lunch

14:30 – 3rd session: Decoding historical sources: Text Encoding
Malte Rehbein (Universität Würzburg), Text Encoding: a historian's perspective

Rita Marquilhas (Centro de Linguística - Universidade de Lisboa), The automatic research of digital editions

moderator: Andreia Martins (FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa and King’s College London)

16:00 – coffee break

16:15 – 4th session: Internet, digitization and digital preservation
Melissa Terras (University College London), Exploring the potential of Digital Humanities with the Transcribe Bentham project

Daniel Gomes (Portuguese Web Archive – Fundação de Cálculo Científico Nacional), Web archiving

moderator: José Borbinha (Instituto Superior Técnico)

17:45 – coffee break

18:00 – Closing conference
Peter Doorn (Data Archiving and Networked Services, Nederland), Computational history among e-science, digital humanities and research infrastructures: accomplishments and challenges

Saturday (19th) (Room T8, Tower B, FCSH)
Workshops (11:00 - 13:00):
A – Historical GIS (Luís Silveira and Ana Alcântara, FCSH-UNL)
B – Zotero (Daniel Alves, FCSH-UNL)
Workshops (14:30 - 17:30):
C – Text Encoding (Julianne Nyhan, University College London)
D – Atlas.ti (Pedro Sousa, FCSH-UNL)

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Lisboa]

Issues of Representation in Digital Imaging

Please join us for the September meeting of Decoding Digital Humanities, an informal, international digital humanities discussion group.

Friday, September 30th, 4pm-6pm in the IU Memorial Union Starbucks.

September’s theme is “Issues of Representation in Digital Imaging”
For the meeting, please read the following article:

Melissa Terras’ “Artefacts and Errors: Acknowledging Issues of Representation in the Digital Imaging of Ancient Texts.”

As digital images of primary sources become more accessible, many scholars tend to interact with images of sources rather than with the sources themselves. What are the scholarly implications of this move? Can we trust our digital surrogates, and if not how can we trust our readings of them? Although Terras’ article focuses on sources used for study in the Classics, the issue will be of interest to any scholar who uses primary sources, no matter the discipline or time period.

Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and coffee.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

GIS and the Spatial Humanities

Please join us for the April meeting of Decoding Digital Humanities, an
informal, international digital humanities discussion group.

Friday, April 29th, 3-5PM at the Irish Lion. (Upstairs. This is an all
ages event.)

March’s theme is “GIS and the Spatial Humanities”
For the meeting, please read the following article:

• David J. Bodenhammer’s “The Potential of Spatial Humanities”

What possibilities can thinking about space, in qualitative and quantitative terms, afford us? What are the possibilities for GIS in humanities scholarship?
Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and beer.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

March 2011 Meeting Recap (Amy's POV)

Amy is a newcomer to Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington; she also has a blog, www.theambulantscholar.com.  She shares her perspective of “Building,” the discussion topic for March, below.

It was a blustery Friday, and orders for drinks and appetizers were aplenty.  While some of us preferred the onion rings to the fried pickles and still others elected to nibble on soda bread, we all agreed with Stephen Ramsay and Matthew Kirschenbaum: a digital humanist must be able to code.  As Ramsay explains in “On Building,” coding represents a radical, significant step from “reading and critiquing” (i.e., the activities of a traditional scholar) to “building and making.” 

I wondered how “building and making” might transform my work, so I’d like to indulge that question here, if only to illustrate the inherent difference between traditional and digital humanist scholarship.  Consider Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890), which focuses on New York City’s immigrant underclass: a literary scholar might critique the text’s representation of the Lower East Side’s transportation pathways, including its meandering sidewalks, nefarious streets, and subterranean sewer passages; however, a digital humanist might build a program that would spatially map these pathways so that users ultimately could compare Riis’ version of the Lower East Side with actual maps of this area. 

Had each discussion participant been a programmer, our conclusion about coding’s fundamental place in the digital humanities would have been unsurprising.  But, several of those in attendance had no knowledge of code—myself included.  Interestingly, I didn’t come to the meeting with the mindset that a digital humanist must be able to code.  I was skeptical of Ramsay’s assertion that “building and making”—that essential thing a digital humanist does—only boils down to one practice (i.e., programming.)  In fact, before the discussion, I agreed with Lincoln Mullen who claims that “we’re all digital humanists now” because the field not only is a spectrum of activities, but also is built on an “ethos of inclusion.” Although Mullen’s piece didn’t make the discussion agenda for March, I want to mention it here because it sharply contests the group’s ideas about coding as well as the claims advanced in the readings we examined.

The group’s lively discussion about tenure and funding in the digital humanities perhaps is what brought me—and maybe other non-coders—to Ramsay and Kirschenbaum’s camp.  Granted, deeming coding as a firm line in the digital sand might seem undemocratic; however, the promotional structure of academia necessitates such a strict standard.

We revisited the issue of “who is getting credit for what and for what purpose” when we turned our attention to collaborations between traditional scholars and digital humanists—that is, between one who has idea and one who has the tools and expertise to build as well as refine the project.  In this kind of partnership, who is the digital humanist, and by extension, what kind of “credit” on the institutional level does each individual receive for his/her work?

Because several participants were graduate students, we also discussed Kirschenbaum’s claim that humanities students whose projects would benefit from programming expertise should learn coding languages and receive foreign language credit for such study.  The consensus?  A resounding “Like.” 

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

DDH Post at HASTAC

Over at HASTAC, I blogged about the DDH discussion group model. HASTAC’s all about collaboration, so I think there’s a possibility this will strike a chord with someone who will be inspired to create their own chapter.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

Building Things

Friday, March 25th, 3-5PM at The Irish Lion (upstairs; reservation is in Grant’s name).

Map

One of the persistent tropes in defining DH is the idea that digital humanists build things. Tools. Objects. Stuff. The degree to which they should be engaging in such differentiates scholars’ definitions of the field. Whether, for example, humanists should learn to program (to, among other things, facilitate building things) is currently being debated as we struggle to define our field.

What is/should be our relationship to creating digital objects? What roles do we/should we play in such? (Primary investigators? Cowboy coders?) How are the things we see DH practitioners creating related to the kinds of things humanists have always created (books, articles, etc.)?

Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and beer.

For the next meeting, please read:

• Stephen Ramsay’s “Who’s In and Who’s Out” and “On Building”
• Matthew Kirschenbaum’s “Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program”

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

DDH #11 Coming up on 23rd March

The next DDH, number 11, will be held on the 23rd March.  The topic of this Decoding Digital Humanities will involve discussions about “A Day in the Life of Digital Humanities 2011″. Start: Mar 23, 2011 5:30:00 PM End: Mar 23, 2011 7:30:00 PM Location: G24, Foster Court, UCL A Day in the Life of Digital Humanities (Day of [...]

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Humanities 2.0: Collaborative Research and Copyright Challenges

The next session of Decoding Digital Humanities-Lisboa will be this Thursday, the 3rd of March. The meeting will take place at 18.00, at the I&D building of the FCSH, 1st floor (lounge).
The topic up for discussion is "Humanities 2.0: collaborative research and copyright challenges". We will talk about how the extended use of new technologies has affected the way we embark on scholarly activities today, namely how we engage in collaborative research. Is it possible to be isolated when so much of our work nowadays means engaging with the Web 2.0?
We will also discuss the implications of collaborative knowledge production for copyright. Collaborative work implies not only shared authorship; it also gives rise to a complex definition of individual contributions and, accordingly, to an unclear assignment of copyright ownership. Furthermore, how can we conciliate extant copyright concepts, ideas of authorship and open access to information?

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Lisboa]

Switching to English

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Lisboa]

UCL: The week in digital humanities events

We’ve been working on the UCLDH Events section. New and improved, the section now offers a chronological view of upcoming events and sports separate feeds for the individual event series: Decoding Digital Humanities, Painless Introductions and Digital Excursions. UCLDH events will no longer be announced here on the DH blog but event reminders will continue, [...]

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DDH London #10: New Year DH Open Forum

Happy New Year! We thought we would celebrate the New Year with an open forum down at DDH. Do you have any burning questions about DH? I know I have! DDH Open Forum is an informal gathering of those curious about humanities, technology and everything in between. Anyone can share great ideas or projects they’ve working on, ask [...]

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Humanidades Digitais. Reflexões académicas

O primeiro encontro do DDH-LX irá ter lugar no dia 30 de Novembro, às 18.30, na Livraria Pó dos Livros. Para iniciar a série escolhemos abordar o tópico: o que é um humanista digital e qual é o seu papel no panorama académico?
A conferência de Melissa Terras (University College London), “Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon”, proporciona um bom ponto de partida. O texto encontra-se aqui; o vídeo da sessão pode ser visionado aqui.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Lisboa]

October 2010 Meeting Recap (Grant's POV)

Another successful and engaging conversation! Perhaps it was the pitcher of Smithwicks.

In attendance were the Suzanne Lodato and Clara Henderson of the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities, Dot Porter of the Digital Library Program, Bob Noel, the head librarian for the Swain Hall library (i.e., the one that specializes in physics, astronomy, mathematics, statistics, computer science, and informatics), as well as students from English and Library Science.

If I may speak for everyone, I would venture that we were all intrigued by Peter Suber’s “Promoting Open Access In the Humanities”, which for many of us, was our first indication of the varied nature of open access between disciplines and the fact that such access grew out of disciplinary necessities.

Bob indicated that the preprint strategy, popular for many years in the sciences, works because it is “good enough.” As a programmer, I see in my day job many instances in which “good enough” is the best that can be expected; anything better than good enough leads to over-designed solutions. Perhaps what we need to approach in the humanities is an open access solution that is good enough, meaning it is not ideal but meets the needs with regard to openness, quality, and long-term hopes for preservation (i.e., open formats, etc.).

One question I asked of this diverse group was whether they, being at various points in their academic careers, would publish in a peer-reviewed open access journal. I myself did not answer the question. I suppose I owe it to everyone to do so now. What worries me about publishing in open access journals is not quality. I have faith in the peer review process; it does not need to be coupled to the academic printing (read: corporatized) structure. And many open access journals seem like the perfect fit for the kind of work I’m doing. What worries me is essentially brand recognition and how such journals will be seen in the tenure review process. Established (read: not open access, usually) journals have a cachet that the (inevitably younger) open access journals don’t yet have.

With that in mind, here’s my personal plan of action. I can’t wait for these things to be taken seriously. They’re already doing serious work. I will submit to where my article makes sense. At the same time, I will advocate more for open access journals to be taken more seriously in the tenure process.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

Open Access, or, You Cannot Get a Database from Interlibrary Loan: October 2010 Meeting

Thursday, October 21st, 4-6PM at The Irish Lion (upstairs).

Map

For the next meeting, please read:

• Peter Suber’s “Promoting Open Access In the Humanities”
• Sayeed Choudhury’s “Position Paper on Licensing/Legal Matters” from the Open Source Critical Editions workshop

With digital technology comes new affordances, including, paradoxically, the ability to more effectively limit access through digital “rights management” (DRM) schemes. Without disabling such protections, DVDs cannot be copied, copy-protected files will not be authorized for play, and passages from a Kindle book cannot be cut and pasted into an article.

It is this new world that DH practitioners must navigate in the use and creation of digital objects. But as both creators and users, we are in a ideal position to discuss the issues and ethics surrounding access and licensing.

Come join us for friendly face-to-face conversation and beer (two of the best reasons to temporarily unplug).

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]

First Meeting Recap (Grant's POV)

DDH Bloomington had its first meeting yesterday at the Irish Lion. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was free WiFi but found myself too engaged in the conversation to tweet about the meeting. So, to satisfy the curiosity of those who’ve asked me, I’m doing a selective writeup of the event, from my perspective.

In attendance were students, faculty, and alumni from Folklore and Ethnomusicology, English, Communication and Culture, and the School of Library and Information Science.

We focused most of our time on Melissa Terras’s DH 2010 keynote speech, Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon. Since The Chronicle of Higher Education had just published an article about UCL’s Transcribe Bentham project, which figures prominently in the keynote, it seemed a fitting place to start.

In our e-mail out to local listservs, Dot and I had provided a link to both a text version and a video version of the lecture. To be honest, I didn’t watch the video, opting instead for the “safer” traditional text (an unexamined, unconscious choice, to be sure). I did a quick poll and found that most people in attendance had watched the video version. Some digital humanist I am.

Our discussion started with the issue of crowdsourcing. Transcribe Bentham has a clearly defined task: that of transcription. Would the reliability of said transcriptions depend on the number and dedication of participants (i.e., does Wikipedia work because there is a critical mass of diligent editors)? How would crowdsourcing work for a project that required other forms of editorial judgment? Why do I seem to be scared of crowdsourcing when I’m not scared of open source software (and, in fact, welcome it), or, as someone diligently pointed out, I’m not worried much by the reliability of medieval scribes? (That is, I trust that the protocols of textual criticism will prevail over error.)

Crowdsourcing led to discussions of the boundaries between the academy and the “outside,” between the professional and the amateur (i.e., the one who does it for love), and between research and activism. (At one point I asked what it was about the digital humanities that elicits these questions so often.) The role of knowledgeable amateurs was a particularly interesting discussion. Most seemed to agree that digital projects shouldn’t be walled gardens and that we limit potential productive relationships by arbitrarily walling off the rest of the world. Who, after all, are we expecting to transcribe Bentham? I’m sure there are Benthamites out there with no connection to the academy. Prison architects, perhaps? (That got mild laughs yesterday so I’ll try it again.) Joss Marsh discussed her work, with David Francis, on magic lanterns, specifically that the project encourages and needs participation by those from outside the academy with knowledge about magic lanterns. It’s a written project requirement that the public be allowed to contribute.

In short, we had a productive first meeting. Dot and I will send out information about the October meeting soon.

view article | [Decoding Digital Humanities Bloomington]