ENGL 481: Digital Humanities

This is an informational page on digital preservation. The page talks about the National Digital Informational Infrastructure and Preservation Program. It's main concern is preserving and making available significant digital content, especially is it is only in digital form.

This online digital library, also called the "Million Book Collection," provides free online access to a searchable archive of digitized books. The website seeks to make digitally preserved and freely available "all the significant literary, artistic, and scientific works of mankind." This enormous undertaking is supported by Carnegie Mellon University and an extensive list of contributors from around the world.

The American Historical Association was founded in 1884, and promotes historical studies across "every historical period and geographical period." The AHA produces several publications including the American Historical Review, a history journal, and AHA Today, the AHA's blog. The website also serves to provide teaching materials.

How to earn your Cyber Stripes is a short write up on the five ways in which students can earn their stripes. Like the Show your Badge article students can go online and show how much they have retained within a given semester. This gesture helps students develop credibility in their specific subject areas which will eventually help them find jobs with their career field. The five subject areas being testing on this particular website is mostly pertaining to science and math. This is very useful for people who are looking to hire students who are qualified in those areas.

The Digital Public lIbrary of America (DPLA) is an ambitious project intedned to make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available free or charge to all. With the Hubs Pilot, the DPLA will undertake the first efforts to establish a national network out of these and other promising intitives bringing together digitaized content from across the country into a singlr access for end users.

This website seeks to make history accessible to an online audience through a series of online exhibits. Topics range from "Imaging the French Revolution" to "The September 11 Digital Archive." The website offers free access to primary sources as well as accompanying teaching modules.

This brief news article from 2011 highlights an agreement between the Digital Public Libraries of America and Europeana to code their systems in such a way as to be interoperable and similar to each other. This change allows the two databases to be readily accessed and aggregated by the user, to "have access to the combined riches... at a single click." One of the major projects arising from this collaboration was a virtual exhibition about the migration of Europeans to America.

Beginning in 1971, Project Gutenberg is the first online catalog of electronic books. Claiming to be the largest collection online, Project Gutenberg aims to digitize all books and allow them to be organized and searched through their site. The website can be viewed in multiple languages and allows people to volunteer and donate for the continuation of this project. The site only uses books whose copyright has expired, which makes them free in the United States, and they are allowed to be downloaded and redistributed.

This article is one of my favorites! Ms. Knowles chose to ask a question that could not be aswered....until they found a way by means of digital humanities. The questions was simply this, "What could General Grant see in his view at Gettysburg?" This question sparked a menas to find an answer by digitally mapping the terrain at the time on the battle in coordination with Grant's height/ location. This success led to a Project wtih Knowles and Paul Jaskot concerning the concentration camp, Auschwitz, and another similar project done about the Salem Witch Trials by Benjamin Ray. Such great research and visual representations.

Anne Kelly Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont, posed a simple question that could not be accurately answered before: What could the confederate general Robert E. Lee actually see during the battle of Gettysburrg. In order to answer this question Ms. Knowles team began by creating a digital map of the areas topography at the time of the battle. Then, the group as whole began to replicate the view Lee would have had by generating what is known as a viewshed from a point 75feeet above the terrain the distance from the ground to the cupid floor plus Lee's eye level standing in his.

This article highlights three large uncertainties of the Micha Cardenas about the digital humanities: is queer new media rare or is analysis of it rare, if there is something "conservative, even sellable" that is present in the digital humanities, and can queer theory, new media, or the digital humanities "disturb hegemonic systems." Although the article does not answer any of these questions, it discusses the history of Queer Theory as "hip, trendy," and its potential reflection in the digital humanities. These questions also arise out of a concern that discussions in digital humanities, particularly CCS, "can run down a road that is very conservative."

In this article, William Pannapacker discusses his personal "come to DH moment," his interactions with the field, his concerns about Digital Humanities, and some of the projects appearing that are interesting and address his concerns. One major project highlighted by Pannapacker is the DH Commons project, described "as the match.com for digital humanists." The article ends with a call for uninvolved scholars at institutions, particularly those that do not have DH centers, to utilize these various projects to collaborate and join the digital humanities.

Although not always on topic, the #transformDH tumblr contains a large archive of numerous works within the field of digital humanities related to race and gender. Projects highlighted by the Tumblr include "Swag Diplomacy," a mapping project tracking "200 African American autobiographers who wrote international travel memoirs," and "BlackGirlsCode," a project working "to meet the needs of young women of color who are underrepresented in the... field of technology." The archive also occasionally reblogs and communicates with other tumblrs.

Peter Gatkouth an immigration specialist working with the work relief in high point North Carolina helps legal immigrants stay connected with their families. This particular project was sponsored by the Wake Forest University and funded in part by the Humanities council. The Humanities council uses digital material to encourage a new approach to understanding of immigration, with a renewed focus on the lives and experiences of those who are already here. The site includes an interactive world map, which gives a geographic lens to the issue of immigration. It also incorporates a crowd sourcing component where users can upload their own content, their own stories of movement and migration.

This article represents the popularization of the #transformDH movement following ASA 2011. The article highlights the launching of the #transformDH Tumblr, as well as containing a section at the end with a collection of articles written by digital humanists related to the concerns of the #transformDH movement. The remainder of the article discusses the sessions the article writer personally participated in, as well as the people met related to the #transformDH movement.

This article by Roger Whitson is a response to calls from groups such as #transformDH to work harder to incorporate marginalized groups. The core of the argument being made is that the Digital Humanities are, by their nature, collaborative and that this will be the means by which the digital humanities is opened fully to marginalized groups. The argument is not that it doesn't need to happen, but that the systems are already in place which will bring it about.

This article by Elexis Lothian is partly a response to another article, "Does DH Really Need to be Transformed?" by Roger Whitson. The article argues that although people in the field may have had good experiences with regards to acceptance, that there is still room for growth in areas such as queer studies, critical race studies, feminist studies, etc. The article also illuminates a little on the process behind choosing the tag #transformDH as well as some of the groups, such as HASTAC, which have collaborated to support the project.

Alex Wright introduces the idea of the radiated library. This system would allows acess to all the world's communication systems at one time, similar to the internet, but on a macro-scale. Books, magazines, films, music, etc. would all be readily acessible simultaneously.

In this 2011 article, Moya Z. Bailey analyzes the racial and gender makeup of the digital humanities, the navigation of marginalized groups within society, and their interactions with academia. Problems, such as the use of ableist language and the assumption that a few token minorities will eradicate marginalization, are addressed within the article. Bailey also highlights some of the ways in which Digital Humanities are being used to transform the humanities, such as Crunk Feminist Collective communicating with groups that the collective "felt accountable to outside academia."

This short article for the 2012 American Studies Association Annual Meeting represents a call for digital humanists to collaborate and propose ways in which American Studies and Digital Humanities can be transformed to be better address concerns such a marginalization. Provided proof that this is possible, the article highlights such "digital collectives and social movements" such as Crunk Feminist Collective, "shit [people] say" and artists offering a "productive [exploration] of digital productions and methods." The article also highlights in particular the #transformDH movement, and provides links to some of the articles and websites utilized by the group.