Digital humanities workshop given at Villanova University on May 29, 2014.

1. Intro to Digital Humanities
Workshop
Villanova University
May 29, 2014
Deb Boyer
debsting@gmail.com
@debsting

2. *
Workshop Agenda
• Intro to digital humanities
• Review key themes and project examples
• Workshop 1: Omeka for online exhibits
• Workshop 2: Basic mapping
• Workshop 3: Data visualization and analysis
• How to integrate DH into the classroom?
• Additional resources

3. What are the Digital
Humanities?
1959

4. Nothing but a fad
A set of
methodologies
The use of digital tools for
humanities research
Just a construct
Humanistic inquiry using
digital technology
An interdisciplinary
community of practice
A current term that will soon be
how we refer to the humanities
in general
A big tent where all are welcome
The research we’ve
always done just
with faster tools
A brand new field

5. *
Does it matter?
• Define by its values - Openness, collaboration,
collegiality, connectedness, diversity,
experimentation - Lisa Spiro
• http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/
• Day of DH - open community publication
project - http://dayofdh2014.matrix.msu.edu/

6. *
The History of DH*
• Began as “humanities computing” – primarily
focused on concordances, electronic texts
• 1949 - Father Roberto Busa and the works of
St. Thomas Aquinas
• 1960s – Slowly more textual analysis projects,
first conferences, first university centers
• 1970s-mid-80s – More consolidation of
projects, sharing of ideas, regular conferences
*Susan Hockey - “The History of Humanities Computing” and Matthew Kirschenbaum -
“What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments”

7. The History of DH
• mid 1980s-early 1990s – Personal computers, TEI
(text encoding initiative), list-servs
• mid 1990s – present – Rise of the internet, digital
library collections, multimedia, web publishing
• 2001 – 2005 – First mentions of digital
humanities, Association for Computers in the
Humanities and Association for Literary and
Linguistic Computing merge into the Alliance of
Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)

8. The History of DH
• 2006 – NEH launches the Digital Humanities
Initiative
• 2008 – NEH forms the Office of Digital
Humanities
• 2009 – Modern Language Association Annual
Convention includes several key DH presentations
• Today – Digital Humanities (DH) common term,
digital scholarship/digital liberal arts on the rise

9. Digital Humanities vs. Digital History
• Digital history often focuses on the
presentation of material, access, and
preservation.
• Spatial mapping vs. topic modeling/text
mining
• Inclusion of cultural institutions (but not
always)
• Not really clear and not really crucial

10. Provide new ways to
Access Resources
Philadelphia City Archives
Photo by Deb Boyer

11. New methods for
Historical Analysis and
Sharing DataVisualizing Emancipation
http://dsl.richmond.edu/emanci
pation/

12. Explore connections with
New Audiences and
New Media
The Ward - www.dubois-theward.org/

13. Key Areas
• Digitization and increased access to primary
sources
• Online publishing and open data
• Text analysis
• Spatial mapping
• Network mapping
• Data visualization
• Multimedia and digital storytelling
• Crowdsourcing and user generated content
• Gaming

14. Let’s Get Critical
Student Photo - 1913

15. Key Debates
• Too focused on doing/making at the expense of
theory and criticism (more hack, less yack)
• Overly obsessed with data at the expense of
interpretation
• Elitist, opportunistic, and self-aggrandizing
• A place to escape - DHPoco (Postcolonial Digital
Humanities) - http://dhpoco.org/

16. Is This All Just About the Money?
City Fair - 1967

17. (My) Benefits of DH
• Interdisciplinary
• Encourages experimentation
• Collaborative
• Promotes discussion and outreach
with diverse audiences
• Provides opportunities for multiple
forms of narrative

18. How do you become
a digital humanist?
Founders Week - 1908

19. 1. Say you are one and join the
conversation
2. Spend some time learning new
tools
3. Make mistakes and try again

20. Getting Started
• Bamboo DiRT - http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/
• Intro to Digital Humanities - UCLA
• “Getting Started in the Digital Humanities” – Lisa Spiro
• “How Did They Make That?” – Miriam Posner
• A Short Guide to the Digital Humanities
• “Tales of an Indiscriminate Tool Adopter,” ProfHacker –
Michelle Moravec

21. DH in the Classroom
Typing Class - 1928

22. Basic Guidelines
• Don’t assume students have technical skills
• Perhaps conduct technical survey/skills
assessment early in semester
• Tie into existing educational goals – no
technology for technology’s sake
• Start small and use existing free tools

23. Wikipedia
• Discuss collaborative
content creation – who
is writing what
everyone reads?
• Neutral point of view
• Linking to resources
• Wiki formatting
• GLAM:WIKI, Rewriting
Wikipedia, etc

24. Informal Online Writing

25. Class and Student Blogs
• Go beyond reading journals in digital form
• Tie into course goals – summarized version of research
paper, info on group project, etc
• Opportunity to discuss audience, presentation, tone,
content, article length
• Become part of the online conversation - immediacy
• Maybe it’s not a blog at all – Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr,
digital storytelling

26. Critiquing Digital Tools

27. Critiquing Digital Tools
• Find a digital project/website and analyze it like a text,
primary source, etc
• Digital tools (databases, visualizations, maps) are
arguments. What decisions did the creators make?
• Who is the audience? How has the project been
designed or constructed with their needs in mind?
• How could the tool be used differently, improved, or
expanded?

28. Working with Digital Primary Sources
• Reading primary
resources in new format
• Options to
participate/crowdsourc
e
• Connect to digital
literacy
• Critique formatting and
analysis
The Ward - http://www.dubois-theward.org/

29. Build Something

30. Intro Tools
• Omeka - http://www.omeka.net/
• Google Maps Engine Lite -
https://mapsengine.google.com
• Timeline - http://www.simile-
widgets.org/timeline/
• TimelineJS - http://timeline.knightlab.com/
• TimeMapper - http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/
• Voyant Tools - http://voyant-tools.org/

31. Learning More
Southwark Elementary School - 1912

32. Local Resources
• PhillyDH - http://phillydh.org/
• PhillyDH@Penn - Friday, June 20, 2014 -
http://penn2014.phillydh.org/
• THATCamp Philly - http://thatcampphilly.org/
• GLAM Café Meetup - http://www.meetup.com/GLAM-Cafe-
Philadelphia/
• Aurelius Digital Humanities Initiative, Falvey Library
• Many, many local tech, geospatial, and design meetups

33. Conferences and Workshops
• Alliance of Digital Humanities -
http://adho.org/conference
• Digital Library Forum - http://www.diglib.org/forums/
• HILT – Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching -
http://www.dhtraining.org/hilt/
• Museums and the Web -
http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/
• THATCamp - http://thatcamp.org/

34. Key Books
• Debates in the Digital Humanities – Edited by
Matthew Gold
• Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving,
and Presenting the Past on the Web – Daniel J.
Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig
• Writing History in the Digital Age – Edited by Jack
Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki

35. Key Online Publications
• Digital Humanities Now -
http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/
• Digital Humanities Quarterly -
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/
• Journal of Digital Humanities -
http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/
• ProfHacker - http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/