Lecture Notes: Engaging with Digital Humanities Projects

Introduction

• Presenter: Marc Dirk's, representing ACRL and Choice
• Webinar Title: Reading and Engaging with Existing Digital Humanities Projects
• Sponsored by: Springer Nature
• Details: 60-minute live presentations for interactive discussions on academic librarianship topics.

Webinar Format

• Presentation software features:
  • Q&A and chat panels for interaction
  • Uses hashtag: #ACRLChoiceWebinars
  • Recording available post-event for registered participants

Speaker Introduction

• Presenter: Paige Morgan
• Role: Digital Humanities and Scholarship Librarian at the University of Miami
• Background:
  • PhD in English and Textual Studies from the University of Washington
  • Experience in digital humanities as a researcher, instructor, data wrangler, and curriculum builder.

Key Concepts in Digital Humanities

• Digital Humanities (DH):
  • Fusion of scholarly materials, technology, and critical thinking.
  • Often appears imperfect, valuable in its iterative process.
• Importance of engaging with existing DH projects:
  • Projects require readers and users, not just creators.

Finding Digital Humanities Projects

Challenges

• Lack of centralized repositories or indexes for DH projects.
• Varied institutional support and quality of projects.

Resources to Discover DH Projects

• Advanced Research Collaboratory Sites:
  • Offers peer-reviewed listings for topic-related projects.
• Data repositories:
  • Core, Share, Figshare, and Venado for datasets and presentations.
• Twitter:
  • Search for DH-related keywords for discussions and projects.

Categories of DH Projects

• Resource aggregation sites
• Digital editions
• Mapping projects
• Database projects
• Text analysis projects
• Dataset-focused projects

Methodologies for Reading and Engaging with DH Projects

Heuristic Approach

• Sources, Processed, Presented:
  • Understand what materials were used, how they were processed, and how they are presented.
• Example Projects:
  • Folger Digital Text Project: Annotations and metadata for Shakespeare's plays.
  • Old Bailey Online: Digitized court records with searchable interfaces.
  • Smelly London: Interactive maps showing historical smells based on health reports.

Critical Questions to Explore Projects

1. What topics are highlighted through specific projects?
2. How does a project change the accessibility of materials?
3. What is the gap in research that the project aims to address?
4. What choices did creators make in presenting the material?

Data Models in Digital Humanities

• Data and Structured Data:
  • Material organized for both machine and human readability.
• Data Model:
  • Diagram connecting different parts of data within a project, representing the project's structure and organization.
• Importance:
  • Determines discoverability and research possibilities within a project.

Engaging with DH Projects

• Recommendations to students and faculty based on project relevance.
• Collaborating with faculty for classroom assignments focused on DH projects.
• Asking critical questions about data choices and project methodologies.

Q&A Session Highlights

1. Transcription of Manuscripts:
   • Can be a part of DH projects, significant for making material machine-readable.
2. Faculty Reluctance:
   • Find relevant projects to spark interest, prioritize engagement over persuasion.
3. New Developments:
   • Increase in datasets as standalone projects.
4. Peer Review:
   • Complex due to diverse methodologies; emerging practices in peer review.
5. Project Viability:
   • Context-specific; training institutes can help evaluate thresholds for project feasibility.

Closing Remarks

• Encouragement to explore and engage with various DH projects.
• Thank you to all participants, follow-up email with recorded session to be sent.