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A Short Guide To The Digital - Humanities: Questions & Answers

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This final section of Digital_Humanities reflects on the

preceding chapters, but can also stand alone as a concise


overview of the field. As digital methodologies, tools,
and skills become increasingly central to work in the
humanities, questions regarding fundamentals, project
outcomes, assessment, and design have become urgent.
The specifications provide a set of checklists to guide
those who do work in the Digital Humanities, as well as
those who are asked to assess and fund Digital Humanities
scholars, projects, and initiatives.

a SHORT GUIDE TO THE


DIGITAL_HUMANITIES
Questions & answers
digital humanities fundamentals
the project as basic unit
institutions and pragmatics

specifications
how to evaluate digital scholarship
project-based scholarship
core competencies in processes and methods
learning outcomes for the digital humanities
creating advocacy
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 1 What defines the Digital Humanities now?

DIGITAL HUMANITIES The computational era has been underway since

FUNDAMENTALS World War II, but after the advent of personal com-
puting, the World Wide Web, mobile communication,
and social media, the digital revolution entered a
SG 2 SG What is the Digital Humanities?
new phase, giving rise to a vastly expanded, global-
Digital Humanities refers to new modes of scholar- ized public sphere and to transformed possibilities
ship and institutional units for collaborative, trans- for knowledge creation and dissemination.
disciplinary, and computationally engaged research, Building on the first generation of computational
teaching, and publication. humanities work, more recent Digital Humanities
Digital Humanities is less a unified field than an activity seeks to revitalize liberal arts traditions
array of convergent practices that explore a universe in the electronically inflected language of the 21st
in which print is no longer the primary medium in century: a language in which, uprooted from its long-
which knowledge is produced and disseminated. standing paper support, text is increasingly wedded
Digital tools, techniques, and media have to still and moving images as well as to sound, and
expanded traditional concepts of knowledge in the supports have become increasingly mobile, open,
arts, humanities and social sciences, but Digital and extensible.
Humanities is not solely “about” the digital (in the And the notion of the primacy of text itself is
sense of limiting its scope to the study of digital being challenged. Whereas the initial waves of com-
culture). Nor is Digital Humanities only “about” the putational humanities concentrated on everything
humanities as traditionally understood since it ar- from word frequency studies and textual analysis
gues for a remapping of traditional practices. Rather, (classification systems, mark-up, encoding) to
Digital Humanities is defined by the opportunities hypertext editing and textual database construction,
and challenges that arise from the conjunction of the contemporary Digital Humanities marks a move
term digital with the term humanities to form a new beyond a privileging of the textual, emphasizing
collective singular. graphical methods of knowledge production and
The opportunities include redrawing the boundary organization, design as an integral component of re-
lines among the humanities, the social sciences, search, transmedia crisscrossings, and an expanded
the arts, and the natural sciences; expanding the concept of the sensorium of humanistic knowledge.
audience and social impact of scholarship in the It is also characterized by an intensified focus on the
humanities; developing new forms of inquiry and building of transferrable tools, environments, and
knowledge production and reinvigorating ones that platforms for collaborative scholarly work and by
have fallen by the wayside; training future genera- an emphasis upon curation as a defining feature of
tions of humanists through hands-on, project-based scholarly practice.
learning as a complement to classroom-based learn-
ing; and developing practices that expand the scope, What isn’t the Digital Humanities?
enhance the quality, and increase the visibility of
humanistic research. The mere use of digital tools for the purpose of
The challenges include addressing fundamental humanistic research and communication does not
questions such as: How can skills traditionally used qualify as Digital Humanities. Nor, as already noted,
in the humanities be reshaped in multimedia terms? is Digital Humanities to be understood as the study
How and by whom will the contours of cultural and of digital artifacts, new media, or contemporary
historical memory be defined in the digital era? culture in place of physical artifacts, old media, or
How might practices such as digital storytelling historical culture.
coincide with or diverge from oral or print-based On the contrary, Digital Humanities understands
storytelling? What is the place of humanitas in a its object of study as the entire human record, from
networked world? prehistory to the present. This is why fields such as
classics and archaeology have played just as impor-
tant a role in the development of Digital Humanities
as has, for example, media studies. This is also why
some of the major sectors of Digital Humanities
research extend outside the traditional core of the
humanities to embrace quantitative methods from
the social and natural sciences as well as techniques
and modes of thinking from the arts.

a short guide to the digital_humanities


Where does the Digital Humanities come from? socio-economic processes. The concept of the
Web as a public sphere that extends the physical
The roots of computational work in the humani- public spaces of contemporary life has, of course,
ties stretch back to 1949 when the Jesuit scholar been intensified thanks to smartphones, tablets,
Roberto Busa, working in collaboration with IBM, and other ubiquitous and pervasive computing and
undertook the creation of an automated approach to media devices.
his vast Index Thomisticus, a computer-generated SG SG 3
concordance to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. By
means of such early uses of mainframe computers What is ahead for the Digital Humanities?
to automate tasks such as word-searching, sorting,
Contemporary Digital Humanities stands not in op-
counting, and listing, scholars could process textual
position to the past, but on its shoulders. It honors
corpora on a scale unthinkable with prior methods
the pioneering labors carried out over the past seven
that relied on handwritten or typed index cards.
decades in the form of statistical processing (com-
Other early projects included the debut, in 1966, of
putational linguistics), linking (hypertext), modeling
Computers and the Humanities, the first specialized
(architectural and visual displays), the creation of
journal in the field. Seven years later, the Association
structured data (XML), and iterative editing and ver-
for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) was
sion control (for critical editions as well as analysis
founded, with the Association for Computers and the
and creative practices), even as it seeks to move be-
Humanities (ACH) following in 1978.
yond repository building and editing to new synthetic
By the mid-1980s computational methods for
practices. It is inspired by the same core conviction
linguistic analysis had become widespread enough
that animated computational humanities and early
that protocols for tagging digital texts were needed.
Digital Humanities pioneers: the conviction that
This spurred the development of the Text Encoding
computational tools have the potential to transform
Initiative (TEI). This important undertaking reshaped
the content, scope, methodologies, and audience of
the field of electronic textual scholarship and led
humanistic inquiry.
subsequent digital editing to be carried out in Ex-
tensible Markup Language (XML), the tag scheme of

which TEI is a specialized subset. The first human-
ities-based experiments with database structures
and hypertextual editing structured around links and
nodes (rather than the linear conventions of print)
date from this period, as do the many pilot projects
in computational humanities in the United States
sponsored by the National Endowment for
the Humanities and other agencies, organizations,
and foundations.

How do the Web and other networks affect


the Digital Humanities?
As this revolution in protocols was taking place, the
explosion of personal computing in the mid-1980s
combined with the advent of the World Wide Web a
decade later gave rise to a new generation of Digital
Humanities work that was less text-centered and
more design-driven. The desktop environment—with
its graphical user interface, real-time WYSIWYG tool-
kit, and evolution from command lines to icons and
window-based frames—not only vastly expanded the
corpus of born-digital documents but also ushered in
the gradual integration of audio, video, and graphics.
This integration has matured over the past
decades and given Web culture its profoundly multi-
medial character. It also favored the enhancement
of models of sharing, co-creation, publication, and
community-building that have situated the Web
at the center of contemporary social debates and

questions & answers


QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 2 What is the difference between Digital

THE PROJECT AS BASIC UNIT Humanities projects and Big Humanities


projects?
Digital Humanities projects come in all sizes: big,
Why projects? medium, and small. Some of the defining early Digi-
SG 4 tal Humanities projects, however, as well as promi-
Projects are both nouns and verbs: A project is a nent contemporary work have assumed the form
kind of scholarship that requires design, manage- of Big Humanities projects, which are realized over
ment, negotiation, and collaboration. It is also many years, with many contributors, developers, and
scholarship that projects, in the sense of futurity, as funders involved at various stages of development.
something which is not yet. Projects are often pur- Big Humanities projects are built along the lines of
sued in teams, with collaborators bringing comple- Big Science. They involve large-scale, long-term,
mentary skill-sets and interests to conceptualize the team-based initiatives that build big pictures out of
research questions being investigated and design the tesserae of expert knowledge. The researchers
possible trajectories for them to be answered. Hence, and team members, from historians to technologists
projects are projective, involving iterative processes to designers, may number in the hundreds.
and many dimensions of coordination, experimenta- Little or “lowercase” Digital Humanities projects
tion, and production. are typically carried out by individuals or small
teams in consultation with experienced staff. As
standard platforms and protocols have emerged, ed-
Who is involved in Digital Humanities
iting, exhibit-building, network analysis, and reposi-
projects?
tory development require less one-off investment.
Digital Humanities projects typically involve multiple The bulk of Digital Humanities projects fall in
circles of researchers, from faculty and staff to stu- between the two ends of the spectrum.
dents and community partners. A project’s complex-
ity and scale generally implies the involvement of
How is the Digital Humanities continuous with
multiple strata of personnel from within and across
traditional forms of research and teaching in
institutions of learning.
the humanities?
Projects can involve partner institutions such
as museums, libraries, and archives as well as Like traditional humanities-based research and
members of the community, alumni, and members teaching, Digital Humanities work involves practices
of interested virtual networks such as collectors, of analysis, critique, and interpretation; editing and
amateur historians, and the like. annotation; historical research and contextualization.
Partnerships with corporations, in particular It examines the formal and historical properties of
media and technology companies, are also possible, works of the imagination, the interplay of self and
with a caveat that corporate and academic cultures society, the history of ideas and of material culture.
may be different in their goals and values. It attends to qualitative and non-quantifiable features
of the human experience: complexity, ambiguity,
How are Digital Humanities projects medium specificity, and subjectivity. It builds on
traditional approaches to the study, preservation,
organized?
and classification of cultural corpora.
Projects are usually faculty-, staff-, or student- Though the range of media with which Digital
initiated. They are often built around a research Humanities works extends beyond the textual, its
question and/or a university collection or archival core commitments harmonize with the long-standing
repository. Many take place outside the classroom; values of the humanistic tradition: the pursuit of
others involve a research project that is anchored in analytical acuity and clarity, the making of effective
a recurring course. arguments, the rigorous use of evidence, and com-
A Principal Investigator (or, PI), co-PIs, project municative expressivity and efficacy. Digital Humani-
advisors, staff, interns, and students are all part of ties then melds hands-on work with vastly expanded
the project team. It is the responsibility of the PI to data sets, across media and through new couplings
organize the project team, establish timelines for of the digital and the physical, resulting in definitions
deliverables, and assess the project at each stage of of and engagements with knowledge that encompass
development. the entire human sensorium.
Both the traditional classroom and solitary study
remain key features in the landscape of Digital

a short guide to the digital_humanities


Humanities learning. At the same time, many or revised on a rewritable substrate that supports
precedents for collaborative work in communities rapid refresh rates. The same digital artifact can lead
of letters and knowledge networks are enhanced by multiple lives on multiple platforms, with multiple
digital platforms in a fabric animated by opportuni- authors. It can undergo remixing by others before,
ties for hands-on, project-based learning. Since during, and after its “completion.”
antiquity, the dominant models of humanistic inquiry
have favored an understanding of intellectual labor
SG SG 5
How are Digital Humanities projects funded
as solitary and contemplative, cut off from—and
and sustained?
even superior to—manual labor and the realm of
making or doing. Digital Humanities re-embeds Because they cross over boundaries between disci-
these models in an augmented model of pedagogy plines; between theoretical and applied knowledge;
that emphasizes learning through making and doing, and among the humanities, library science, informa-
whether on the level of the individual or the group. tion technology, and design, Digital Humanities
projects typically require support structures that
How is the Digital Humanities discontinuous cut across conventional department and school orga-
nizational lines. Private foundations, public granting
with traditional forms of research and
agencies, and industry partners have all provided
teaching in the humanities?
monies for projects at every scale.
For nearly six centuries, humanistic models of Funding for research in the humanities is far more
knowledge have been shaped by the power of print limited than in the science and engineering fields,
as the primary medium of knowledge production and but the scope and innovative character of the Digital
dissemination. Rather than rejecting print culture Humanities have led many projects to successfully
or embracing the simple pouring of print models garner external funding. In order to attract and
into digital molds, Digital Humanities is engaged sustain such funding, it has proven essential for
in developing print-plus and post-print models of projects to receive internal support during a period
knowledge. Both involve more than an updating of of incubation so that they may prove their worth by
the knowledge delivery system. They entail the cog- successfully reaching an initial set of benchmarks.
nitive and epistemological reshaping of humanistic Sustaining such projects requires that faculty and
fields as a function of the affordances provided by students who assume leadership positions need the
the digital with respect to print. They also respect support and recognition that this work is a combina-
the increasing role teamwork and collaboration play tion of research, teaching, and service.
in humanities research and training.
What are the prevailing crediting and
How does the Digital Humanities function in attribution conventions and authorship
the print-plus era? models for Digital Humanities projects?
Print typically offers a single viewing angle, linear Traditional authorship and crediting practices in
organization, a research output characterized by the humanities are based on single authorship.
finitude and stability, and a scale of documentation Although practices of attribution are still fluid in the
and argumentation that has to respect the physi- Digital Humanities community, the emerging model
cal proportions of the book. The digital print-plus recognizes that many, if not most, Digital Humani-
era, in contrast, allows for toggling back and forth ties projects are analogous either to natural science
between multiple views of the same materials. It laboratory projects or to the collaborative attribution
allows for fluid scale shifts, for “zooming” from the system used in the performing arts.
macro- to the micro-level, and for the interweaving No standardized crediting system for Digital
of data sets (such as source materials, notes, and Humanities projects has been embraced universally.
correspondence) into research outputs. The screens But the dominant trend is toward the differentiation
and augmented spaces of the print-plus era allow for of roles such as principal investigator, researcher,
the faceting, filtering, and versioning of corpora; for designer, programmer, modeler, editor, and the like.
the coexistence of multiple pathways within a single
repository; for multilinear forms of argument. It is
extensible in the double sense of allowing for seem-
ingly unlimited scale and of being process- rather
than product-based. When a book goes to print, it
stabilizes in an edition that has to be reissued in
order to be revised; a digital artifact can be altered

questions & answers


QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 3 How can Digital Humanities projects involve

INSTITUTIONS AND PRAGMATICs expertise outside the academy?


Many Digital Humanities projects develop entirely
within a single college or university. But others re-
quire domains of knowledge and forms of expertise
SG 6 SG How do Digital Humanities projects
that are under- or unrepresented in or lie outside the
interconnect the classroom with libraries,
confines of academic fields. Combining intra- and
museums, and archives? extramural expertise within well-designed Digital
Most colleges and universities have extensive re- Humanities projects often proves essential to their
sources for research and study that are underutilized success. Such approaches include work with com-
after fulfilling their core research, teaching, and train- munities of collectors and historical associations
ing missions. Contemporary Digital Humanities taps and the use of crowd-sourcing for the processing,
these riches by expanding the concept of the class- transcription, and annotation of archival documents.
room to encompass library, museum, and archival col- Not only can the scope and quality of humanities
lections, positioning them as central training places research benefit from such partnerships, but they
via hands-on research in the company of peers. also contribute to the creation of a new class of citi-
Much as in a natural science laboratory, students zen scholars who otherwise would be mere citizen
involved in Digital Humanities projects learn by consumers.
making and doing, working within this extended
classroom under the guidance of expert curators, How can extramural partnerships play a role
archivists, and researchers, and in the company of in developing, supporting, and sustaining
peers. Whereas traditional models of humanistic
Digital Humanities projects?
training view the acquisition of skill-sets and disci-
plinary training as preconditions for the transition The promotion of public knowledge is a core value
to becoming engaged in the creation of original of the Digital Humanities. Extramural partner-
scholarship, Digital Humanities work accelerates ships—whether with professional societies, historical
this apprenticeship, inserting students into research associations, institutions of informal learning
communities from the start. (libraries, museums, archives), corporations, or
public entities—can extend the reach and impact of
humanities research in contemporary society. The
How can Digital Humanities projects involve
most successful partnerships address questions of
inter-university collaboration?
shared critical interest with research results that
The scale and scope of many Digital Humanities rise to the highest standards of scholarly rigor while
projects, as well as their ties to physical collections being conjugated across multiple media platforms
and IT infrastructure needs, make them ideally suited in the “language” of the partner institutions through
to inter-university collaboration. Projects can be de- exhibitions, performances, books, Web publications,
veloped and divided up strategically among multiple or other means.
partner institutions leveraging specific strengths, dis- Partnerships can expand the depth and diver-
tributing workloads, sharing the benefits of research sity of the talent pool of available participants in
outcomes, and building cross-institutional bridges. a project, broaden a project’s potential audience
Benefits include cost-sharing and enhanced pros- and impact, and, as with inter-university collabora-
pects for external funding. But they also transcend tions, help to solidify short- and long-term financial
the practical sphere: They enable Big Humanities sustainability.
models of research whose outcomes are of potential
interest to broad cross-disciplinary and nonspecialist How can educational institutions support
audiences. By involving multiple institutions, such
Digital Humanities research?
projects contribute to a sense of shared identity and
of belonging to a broader research community. They Digital Humanities research projects require fluid
also help to answer endemic student anxieties re- boundary lines among academic departments and
garding the practical value of humanities knowledge institutional units. Because the projects are often
and research. team-based and imply merged models of theoreti-
cal and applied knowledge across the traditionally
separated domains of “research,” “teaching,” and
“service,” elements such as design facilities, infor-
mation systems, multimedia production, IT work, and
collections-based research are not mere “supports,”

a short guide to the digital_humanities


but rather integral features of project design How can institutions assess the scale of
and execution. investment and expectation for Digital
In addition to promoting a culture where such Humanities projects appropriate to them?
boundary lines do not stand in the way of innovation,
institutions must embrace co-teaching as a standard Projects come in all sizes. There is no inherent rea-
feature of the new landscape of the humanities, son why a large project cannot be undertaken by a
rather than penalizing it as a form of work reduc- small institution or a small project by a large institu- SG SG 7
tion. Co-creation must be seen as a legitimate form tion. Nor is there any inherent reason why individual
of scholarly and student intellectual labor, comple- scholars cannot undertake large-scale collaborations
mentary to traditional forms of output. The easing among multiple colleges or universities.
of access and use-restrictions on museum, archive, So there is no single formula for success. The
and library special collections represents a key pre- scale and form that Digital Humanities projects take
condition to the creation of an expanded, hands-on must be dictated by thoughtful project design—
classroom, and serves open-access models equating combining research questions, ambitions, and an-
preservation with proliferation, rather than restricted ticipated outputs—as well as the available logistical,
control. personnel, and financial resources. Much as in the
College and university legal offices must be care- laboratory sciences, this implies a balance between
ful not to interpret copyright restrictions narrowly pragmatic vision and entrepreneurial initiative.
out of an unwillingness to broker hypothetical risks.
Fair use needs to be understood in the broad- How can peers and academic leaders assess
est possible sense in order not to shackle Digital
Digital Humanities projects?
Humanities research. College- and university-based
collections need to be shared with the research com- Metrics for evaluating the quality and impact of
munity as freely as possible. Digital Humanities projects combine traditional
Last but not least, institutions of higher learning assessment methods in the humanities with new fac-
must promote and foster a less risk-averse culture tors. Peer review remains fundamental to processes
in the humanities disciplines: a culture where, as of assessment, but now draws as much from the
in the sciences, “failure” would be accepted as a community of leading Digital Humanities practitio-
productive outcome when undertaking innovative, ners as from field-based peers. A less risk-averse
speculative work. Differentiating between productive culture is the prerequisite for a more innovation- and
forms of failure and poor research is essential to experimentation-driven model of the Digital Humani-
promoting research communities where innovation is ties to take hold.
a core value. In addition to traditional peer-based criteria,
some assessment tools that have a long history in
the natural and social sciences may become relevant
What are the institutional niches that best
to humanities fields: citations, grant-writing suc-
support Digital Humanities projects?
cess, public impact, and the like. It should be noted
Digital Humanities projects have generally flourished that variations in the sizes of fields make caution
less within single departments, schools or insti- essential in the use of quantitative tools; otherwise
tutional units, than across such structures. Even they will provide very crude, and possibly mislead-
humanities research centers, built to house and ing, measures of importance or impact. Original
support the research of individual scholars, have not scholarship and intellectual rigor remain the essence
always proven to be the ideal home—although some of Digital Humanities work.
have successfully reshaped their policies, funding Traditional print-based metrics of productivity are
models, and physical infrastructure to support col- already being eclipsed by the realities of print-plus
laborative Digital Humanities work. and digital publishing, so expectations of produc-
More typically, Digital Humanities has thrived in tivity must encompass multiple media, different
independent, free-standing laboratories or centers formats, and variable scales of contributions to
where there exists a community of scholars (hu- knowledge. In other words, the media and technolo-
manists and non-humanists alike), staff members, gies in which intellectual work is realized matter
curators, and students interested in the shared as much as its “content.” This means that the “work”
exploration of innovative models of scholarship. is not just the content but, rather, everything: the
Such environments are best envisaged as a hybrid environment that has been designed for the work’s
of making, thinking, and play spaces, combining performance and publication; the interface and data
computational facilities; digital imaging, sound, and structures, the back-end database, and the code that
video production facilities; and meeting and exhibi- enables multiple forms of audience engagement. All
tion spaces. of these matter in assessments of quality and rigor.

questions & answers


SPECIFICATION 1 Who conceptualized the project and designed the

How to Evaluate Digital


initial specifications (functional and technical)? Who
created the mock-ups? Who wrote the grant proposals

Scholarship or secured the funding that supported the project?


What role did each contributor play in the development
and execution of the project? Who authored the con-
SG 8 SG This text provides a set of guidelines tent? Who decided how that content would be accessed,
for the evaluation of digital scholarship displayed, and stored? What is the “public face” of the
project and who represents it and how?
in the humanities, social sciences, arts,
and related disciplines. The guidelines
Intellectual rigor
are aimed, foremost, at academic review
Digital projects vary tremendously and may not “look”
committees, chairs, deans, and provosts
like traditional academic scholarship; at the same
who want to know how to assess and time, scholarly rigor must be assessed by examining
evaluate digital scholarship in the hiring, how the work contributes to and advances the state of
tenure, and promotion process. knowledge in a given field or fields. What is the nature
The list is also intended to inform the of the new knowledge created? What is the methodol-
ogy used to create this knowledge? It is important for
development of institution-wide policies
review committees to recognize that new knowledge
for supporting and evaluating scholar- is not just new content but also new ways of organizing,
ship and creative work that reflects classifying, and interacting with content. This means
traditional values while incorporating that part of the intellectual contribution of a digital
project is the design of the interface, the database, and
specific understandings of new plat-
the code, all of which govern the form of the content.
forms and formats. Digital scholars are not only in the position of doing
original research but also of inventing new scholarly
Fundamentals for initial review platforms. Five hundred years of print have so fully
The work must be evaluated in the medium in which naturalized the “look” of knowledge that it may be dif-
it was produced and published. If it is a website, that ficult for reviewers to fully understand these new forms
means viewing it in a browser with the appropriate of documentation and the intellectual effort that goes
plug-ins necessary for the site to work. If it is a virtual into developing them. This is the dual burden—and the
simulation model, that may mean going to a laboratory dual opportunity—for creativity in the digital domain.
outfitted with the necessary software and projection
systems to view the model. Work that is time-based— Crossing research, teaching, and service
such as videos—will often be represented by stills,
Digital projects almost always have multiple applica-
but reviewers also need to devote attention to clips in
tions and uses that enhance research, teaching, and
order to fully evaluate the work. The same can be said
service. Digital research projects can make transforma-
for interface development, since still images cannot
tive contributions in the classroom and sometimes even
fully demonstrate the interactive nature of interface
have an impact on the public-at-large. This ripple effect
research. Authors of digital works should provide a list
should not be diminished. Review committees need to
of system requirements (both hardware and software,
be attentive to colleagues who dismiss the research
including compatible browsers, versions, and plug-ins)
contributions of digital work by cavalierly characterizing
for viewing the work. It is incumbent upon academic
it as a mere “tool” for teaching or service. Tools shape
personnel offices to verify that the appropriate tech-
knowledge, and knowledge shapes tools. But it is also
nologies are available and installed on the systems
important that review committees focus on the research
that will be used by the reviewers before they evaluate
contributions of the digital work by asking questions
the digital work.
such as the following: How is the work engaged with a
problem specific to a scholarly discipline or group of
Crediting disciplines? How does the work reframe that problem or
Digital projects are often collaborative in nature, contribute to a new way of understanding the problem?
involving teams of scholars who work together in How does the work advance an argument through both
different venues over various periods of time. Authors the content and the way the content is presented? How
of digital works should provide a clear articulation of is the design of the platform an argument? To answer
the role or roles that they have played in the genesis, this last question, review committees might ask for
development, and execution of the digital project. It is documentation describing the development process and
impractical—if not impossible—to separate out every design of the platform or software, such as database
micro-contribution made by team members since digi- schemata, interface designs, modules of code (and
tal projects are often synergistic, iterative, experimen- explanations of what they do), as well as sample data
tal, and even dynamically generated through ongoing types. If the project is, in fact, primarily for teaching,
collaborations. Nevertheless, authors should how has it transformed the learning environment? What
indicate the roles that they played (and time commit- contributions has it made to learning and how have
ments) at each phase of the project development. these contributions been assessed?

a short guide to the digital_humanities


Peer review Development cycles, sustainability, and ethics
Digital projects should be peer-reviewed by scholars in It is important that review committees recognize the
fields who are able to assess the project’s contribution iterative nature of digital projects, which may entail
to knowledge and situate it within the relevant intel- multiple reviews over several review cycles, as projects
lectual landscape. Peer review can happen formally grow, change, and mature. Given that academic review
through letters of solicitation but can also be assessed cycles are generally several years apart (while digital
through online forums, citations, and discussions in advances occur more rapidly), reviewers should SG SG 9
scholarly venues, by grants received from foundations consider individual projects in their specific contexts.
and other sources of funding, and through public pre- At what “stage” is the project in its current form? Is
sentations of the project at conferences and symposia. it considered “complete” by the creators, or will it
Has the project given rise to publications in peer-re- continue in new iterations, perhaps through spin-off
viewed journals or won prizes by professional associa- projects and further development? Has the project fol-
tions? How does it measure up to comparable projects lowed the best practices, as they have been established
in the field that use or develop similar technologies or in the field, in terms of data collection and content
similar kinds of data? Finally, grants received are often production, the use of standards, and appropriate
significant indicators of peer review. It is important that documentation? How will the project “live” and be
reviewers familiarize themselves with grant organiza- accessible in the future, and what sort of infrastructure
tions across schools and disciplines, including the will be necessary to support it? Here, project specific
humanities, the social sciences, the arts, information needs and institutional obligations come together at
studies and library sciences, and the natural sciences, the highest levels and should be discussed openly with
since these are indicators of prestige and impact. deans and provosts, library and IT staff, and project
leaders. Finally, digital projects may raise critical
Impact ethical issues about the nature and value of cultural
preservation, public history, participatory culture and
Digital projects can have an impact on numerous fields accessibility, digital diversity, and collection curation
in the academy as well as across institutions and even which should be thoughtfully considered by project
the general public. They often cross the divide that leaders and review committees.
arises among research, teaching, and service in in-
novative ways. Impact can be measured in many ways,
including the following: support by granting agencies Experimentation and risk-taking
or foundations, number of viewers or contributors to a Digital projects in the humanities, social sciences, and
site and what they contribute, citations in both tradi- arts share with experimental practices in the sciences
tional literature and online (blogs, social media, links, a willingness to be open about iteration and negative
and trackbacks), use or adoption of the project by oth- results. As such, experimentation and trial-and-error
er scholars and institutions, conferences and symposia are inherent parts of digital research and must be
featuring the project, and resonance in public and com- recognized. The processes of experimentation can be
munity outreach (such as museum exhibitions, public documented and can prove to be essential in the long-
policy impact, adoption in curricula, and so forth). term development process of an idea or project. White
papers, sets of best practices, new design environ-
Approximating equivalencies ments, and publications can result from such projects,
and these should be considered in the review process.
Is a digital research project “equivalent” to a book Experimentation and risk-taking in scholarship rep-
published by a university press, an edited volume or resent the best of what the university, in all its many
a research article? These sorts of questions are often disciplines, has to offer society. To treat scholarship that
misguided since they are predicated on comparing takes on risk and the challenge of experimentation as an
fundamentally different knowledge artifacts and, per- activity of secondary (or no) value for promotion and ad-
haps more problematically, consider print publications vancement can only serve to reduce innovation, reward
as the norm and benchmark from which to measure mediocrity, and retard the development of research.
all other work. Reviewers should be able to assess the
significance of the digital work based on a number of
factors: the quality and quantity of the research that
contributed to the project; the length of time spent and
the kind of intellectual investment of the creators and
contributors; the range, depth, and forms of the content
types and the ways in which this content is presented;
and the nature of the authorship and publication process.
Large-scale projects with major funding, multiple collabo-
rators, and a wide-range of scholarly outputs may justifi-
ably be given more weight in the review and promotion
process than smaller-scale or short-term projects.

specifications
SPECIFICATION 2 a content-driven project and how do these intersect?

Project-Based Scholarship
How can the intellectual labor of the design and develop-
ment of the “tool” be assessed in tandem with the
“content”? To what extent are they inextricable and why?

Methods
SG 10 SG Project-based scholarship exemplifies
Does the project have a thesis or guiding methodo-
contemporary Digital Humanities prin- logical principle? How did the digital platform allow
ciples. It differs from traditional scholarly it to be explored, tested, argued, demonstrated, or
publication in being team-based, dis- even refuted?
tributed in its production and outcome,
dependent on networked resources Born digital and/or digitized artifact
(technical and/or administrative), and in Digital projects often combine analog materials that
have been scanned or digitized and elements that
being iterative and ongoing, rather than
are born digital—analysis, research, processing, or
fixed or final, in its outcome. It necessar- newly authored files. Elements of information structure
ily involves many dimensions of concep- are also born digital. How are each of these elements
tion, design, coordination, and resource understood and what role do they play in the
use that build extra layers of complexity overall project?

onto the traditional approach to humani-


ties research. The following list is useful Collections-sharing and licensing
to the creation of a grant proposal or re- The future of humanistic learning and the level of
societal impact that humanities scholarship can
search plan for project-based work and
achieve depend upon unrestricted access to cultural
reflects best-practices standards (with and historical repositories; accordingly, the least
the caveat that debate persists). restrictive licenses should be the norm. What kinds
of licensing and intellectual property issues will the
Contribution to knowledge project encounter? How can the work be accessed and
used by the scholarly community and public-at-large?
The project should meet the criteria of any scholarly
work through its contribution to knowledge in a disci-
pline or field. How is the project in dialogue with an Interface as knowledge representation
issue or topic in a given disciplinary field and how does and content-modeling
it move the discourse forward in an innovative way? The interface of a project expresses an argument in its
Does the project contribute to and advance the state of design. Does it offer a snapshot of the contents of the
knowledge of a given field or fields? project, or a set of entry points for activities that can
be performed? Understanding the ways the interface
The model of knowledge is structured, how it embodies the ideas of the project,
and how it supports the engagement with the project
How is the knowledge shaped and modeled: as an ar-
is essential.
gument, a presentation, a display? What can be taken
from the project as a theoretical principle, method, or
information that is useful for other scholars, including Team, collaborative, and project management
those who are not engaged with Digital Humanities Knowing who will take responsibility for each part
research? How does the project model and embody of a digital project is crucial for development and
new knowledge? design. Each participant’s role should be spelled out
in documentation: project conception, research plan,
Research questions and digital media technical analysis, Web development (infrastructure),
Web design (interface), content development, database
Digital environments allow for different approaches
design, and so on. Some account of the percentage of
for relating and processing materials and this should
effort in the project as a whole should be indicated.
be demonstrated in the research plan. Simply putting
something online is not digital research. The litmus
test is to ask what is being done that could not be Credit for intellectual contributions /authorship
done in print-based or traditional scholarship. How has Project teams have to work collaboratively, and the
the research project been formulated from within the research activity unfolds within the implementation;
affordances of digital methods? it is not separate from it. But the responsibility for the
research question and the intellectual contribution
Tools and content of each participant should be made clear in documen-
tation. This should include a description of how the
Many digital projects involve innovative recombining
project was shaped by design decisions, discipline-
and reconfiguring of existing tools toward the formula-
specific knowledge, and technical expertise.
tion of new knowledge. Is this a tools-based project or

a short guide to the digital_humanities


Info architecture/institutional research, and the contribution that such research
cyber-infrastructure/systems administration makes to the knowledge and recognition of cultural
objects and heritage.
Decisions about information architecture and design
are crucial parts of the project. Knowing where the
work will sit institutionally, how it will be supported Publishing/dissemination models
and in what server environments, and how the software Getting attention for a digital project requires putting
and/or platforms for content development will be it into view in an online venue, getting it reviewed, and
SG SG 11
chosen is at the foundation of the project. It is also creating visibility within a scholarly community and
necessary to know who will configure the server infra- among potential users and future contributors. Projects
structure, administer the systems, install the software should have a plan for dissemination and publication.
(and keep it up to date), and back up the content. Projects built with and from communities have more
buy-in than projects built by single scholars. Digital
Open-source software and technology transfer projects should not “rebuild the wheel” but instead
strategically assess and, where possible, take advan-
Development of tools and platforms is one of the foun-
tage of existing software solutions, platforms, or tools.
dation stones of Digital Humanities projects. It is in
Both the future of humanistic learning and the ability
the interest of the common enterprise of teaching and
of humanities scholarship to matter in society at large
learning for software to be understood as a community
depend upon the unrestricted circulation of scholarly
resource with source code shared so as to enable
knowledge; accordingly, the least restrictive licenses
support and development by the user community as a
should be the norm.
whole. In general, projects should be built with an eye
toward fostering common solutions and shared plat-
forms, though there may be times when one-offs serve Assessment criteria
a specific purpose. How does the project allow for the A project should have its metrics of success and failure
documentation and transfer of code, tools, platforms, stated explicitly. These might range from creating a
and applications? project that proves a concept or demonstrates a design
principle to a project that sets a goal of digitizing and
Documentation marking up a particular amount of material or engag-
ing a specific community in online discussion and
Documentation of the structure and design of a project
discourse. Having clear goals and milestones is useful
is an essential piece of the work. Too often this is
as a way to assess the relation between resources
ignored. Documentation is essential for continuity of the
and results.
project after its initial start-up, and it is an important
contribution to the field, as well as a way for others to
repurpose the design. Development processes should Conversation with multiple fields
be documented; functional and technical specifications Is the project in dialogue with other works in its field,
should be documented; system requirements for the both those traditionally conceived as well as those
project should be documented (for example, which realized in digital media? Do the authors understand
browsers and versions are supported; what plug-ins are and reference other research and digital projects as
required); database entities and relational schemata models? How does the project situate itself within the
should be documented; and, finally, code should be doc- intellectual development of a given field or fields?
umented, including the publicly available code libraries
used in the project, licensing agreements or user agree-
Sustainability
ments (especially for APIs), and the intended operations
of individual modules, with author attributions. However experimental its technology base, preserva-
tion strategies are a defining feature of good project
design. Digital assets are fragile by nature, and this
Audience, user considerations
fragility needs to be addressed from the outset by
Making clear who the audience for the project is and means of a mid- to long-term preservation strategy.
how its members are engaged in its development is im- What is the plan for sustaining the digital project?
portant, even if the research is driven by an individual Where will it be housed and maintained institutionally?
scholar’s curiosity or agenda. Projects without audi- How will those resources be sustained? What will it
ences or users are silos into which work and resources cost to continue the project, if it is open-ended, and
disappear. User-testing is often a critically necessary what possible sources of revenue are there for this sup-
part of the refinement of the project’s interface and port? The labor of staff, students, and consultants as
navigational features. well as the costs of hardware, software, and other ma-
terials need to be taken into account, not to mention
Compliance with all legal regulations the intellectual commitments of the primary researcher
and community of advisors and contributors.
Digital Humanities projects must follow Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards in their design
and must be compliant with intellectual property and Transparency
copyright restrictions. The latter are, however, to be ap- All funding sources, whether monetary or in-kind
plied with a clear understanding of the right to fair use, donations, should be disclosed in the various outputs
the not-for-profit character of nearly all humanities to which a Digital Humanities project gives rise.

specifications
SPECIFICATION 3 Metadata standards

Core Competencies in What process of metadata selection was used and how

Processes and Methods


does the metadata standard suit the project and its dis-
ciplinary field as well as its institutional home? Are the
metadata standards compliant with existing standards
in the field?
SG 12 SG What are the basic skills essential for be-
ing able to do Digital Humanities work? Scripting languages
How can such projects be supported
To what extent are scripting languages used in the
within an academic or institutional project and how are they suited to the server and
environment? This advisory lists the administrative environment in which they work, as well
fundamental elements necessary for as to the tasks to which they are put?
the creation of digital research projects.
The specific competencies will vary by GIS platforms and spatial data
field and discipline and not all projects Tools for spatial mapping and analysis have been de-
require all of these competencies. veloped within geographical disciplines for professional
use but other more popular tools for mapping (like
Google Earth) have a lower threshold for use. What are
All digital projects have technical, ad- the spatial (and temporal) aspects of the data and how
ministrative, and intellectual aspects to will these data be appropriately marked up for analy-
their production. As tools and platforms sis? How will they be displayed within a mapping or
GIS system, and what are the research questions that
designed specifically for the Digital
can be tested with such systems? Are the data already
Humanities become increasingly avail- “spatial” and, if not, is this process automated or does it
able, building custom-designed projects involve manual geo-rectification of materials (whether
will only be justified if a new tool or plat- maps, historical photographs, videos, or oral histories)?
form is part of the development or if the How will this be done, by whom, and with an eye
toward what standards for visualization and sharing
project has some demonstrably unique within and across geo-browser applications?
elements that require a one-off solution.
Virtual simulation tools
Technical Virtual worlds and three-dimensional modeling are
Web development, infrastructure, server environment, tools for creating immersive environments for historical
interface design; choices about tools, platforms, soft- research and presentation. Again, what tools, software,
ware, and hardware. and systems are being used and for what ends? What
standards are being followed and how will various com-
munities of practice engage with the models, simula-
Familiarity with data types and file formats tions, and virtual worlds? Into which existing platforms
On what basis are decisions about file formats and will the models be placed and what kind of constraints
data types made? do these platforms have?

Database knowledge Existing and emerging platforms for content


If a database is part of the information architecture, management and authoring
what type is it? How will it work and why is it needed? How will the project manage existing content and sup-
What are the entities in the database, what are their port the growth of new content? Who are the authors of
attributes and relationships, and how will the objects this proposed content, and how will they input it? Will
be queried and sorted? Is the database open-source, they need to be technically savvy or does a browser
proprietary, and/or licensed? What data sets will be interface enable their participation? What content man-
used in the project and who controls them? What kind agement systems are used in the infrastructure or re-
of permissions and rights will govern the data sets? pository? Do the content management systems enable
data to be shared across platforms and repositories?
XML structured data
What schema or version of XML is being used and why? Interface design as knowledge modeling
Is it used for mark-up or just for metadata? How is content displayed in the interface and how does
a user navigate this content through the interface?
What is the interface model and how does it express
the knowledge model of the project and support its
mission?

a short guide to the digital_humanities


Game engines Iterative and lateral thinking
Game economies have a role to play in scholarly work How might the project change over time, and how will
as well as in entertainment. Understanding the way reflections on its limitations be used to improve each
game engines might be incorporated into a project to iteration? Can the project “play well” with other proj-
support participation is useful in certain circumstances. ects by sharing data through Web services frameworks
or code modules through code-sharing repositories?
Design for mobility and diversity
SG SG 13
Does the project have dimensions that will make its administrative
content available on mobile applications or allow it to
Resource allocation, reporting lines, clear job descrip-
be repurposed for use in multiple contexts? Will the
tions, goals, and outlines of responsibility for all
project work on different platforms? Will it work across
involved are crucial and should be spelled out in a
cultural, linguistic, and social divides? Is the project
memorandum of understanding, at the very least.
ADA compliant, or does it have limitations for use by
persons with disabilities?
Intellectual property
Custom-built vs. off-the-shelf Have rights and copyright clearances for intellectual
property been managed and documented? The terms
Is part of the project’s research the designing and
for use of content should be posted clearly on the site
building of a platform or tool, and if so, can this work
and the contact information for inquiring about the use
be repurposed or generalized from its customized use
of intellectual property easy to locate.
for a broader audience? If off-the-shelf solutions or
standard software systems are being used, how were
they chosen? Many times, Digital Humanities projects Institutional circumstances
will be a combination of these two approaches, using What is the institutional home for this project and who
existing APIs, standard content management systems, will be responsible for its maintenance after the project
or blogging engines that can be variously customized is built? Costs and impacts on human and material
and extended to address the specific needs of a project. resources should be assessed.

intellectual Sustainability, funding, and preservation

While the most visible intellectual element is usually Long-term plans for sustainability can include migra-
the content, it is important to recognize that Digital tion of the project into an institutional repository, or
Humanities projects present arguments and knowledge archiving on a server or paid service provider, or
experiments in many different ways, often contribut- creation of a revenue stream and business model for
ing to the creation of new knowledge through complex its ongoing support and maintenance. Collaboration
interactions, visualizations, data and data structures, with institutional entities, particularly libraries and
and even code. Digital Humanities projects are not just data repositories, will be necessary for preserving data
about the content (although this is often primary), created for and by a Digital Humanities project. Can
but also about the design of multiple levels of the data be “outputted” easily from the project and
knowledge and argument from the operations on the archived in standard formats that are widely readable?
back-end database to the front-end access points of a What kind of data management plan has been created
user interface. and how will it be implemented? Are there any privacy
or security concerns that need to be addressed?

Cross-cultural communication
Has consideration been given to the ways in which the
design of the project will work cross-culturally? Is it
meant to engage communities whose language and/or
cultural orientation will be varied?

Generative imagination
Is the project generative and will it continue to create
new content, dialogue, debate, and engagement, or is
it largely a packaged repository of content meant to be
viewed and used but not altered through contributions
or extensions? Both of these are worthwhile and serve
different needs, audiences, and intellectual goals.

specifications
SPECIFICATION 4 Develop critical savvy for assessing sources

learning outcomes for the and data

Digital Humanities
Judging the reliability of information and knowledge
presented in a digital environment requires skills of
discernment that examine the source, the authority,
and the legitimacy of the digital material. With regard
SG 14 SG While core assessment standards re- to data, this means examining how they were obtained,
main continuous with those of traditional marked-up, stored, and variously made accessible to
classroom-based humanities pedagogy, end-users.
the Digital Humanities recognizes the
importance of additional outcomes Ability to use design critically
produced by hands-on, experiential, and Understand the importance of knowledge design in
project-based learning through doing. communication, project development, and long-term
preservation of digital data in ways that go beyond
Digital Humanities pedagogy empha- competence to a critical understanding of tools, their
sizes teamwork and implies an increased uses and limitations. Develop ability to use computa-
role for peer assessment, as well as at- tional design thinking to produce forms of argument
tention to a widened set of skills beyond and expressions of interpretation.
text-based critical thinking and commu-
nication. Outcomes emphasize the ability Ability to assess information and information
technologies critically
to think critically with digital methods to
Interrogate digital, visual, and multi-modal information
formulate projects that have humanities
as evidence and critique its formation and validity.
questions at their core. Among the learn- Critique the digital features of publications for
ing outcomes for the Digital Humanities, a) scholarly relevance, b) best practices (e.g., online
we prioritize the following: footnoting and citation, transparency of sources and
data), c) attribution, d) authority and argumentative
rigor. Understand and critique the epistemologies,
worldviews, and structuring assumptions built into
Ability to integrate digitally driven research digital platforms, technologies, visualizations, and even
goals, methods, and media with discipline- computational languages.
specific inquiry
Acquire and demonstrate new fluencies from working Ability to work collaboratively
within and navigating across various information plat-
Think across disciplines, media, and methodologies on
forms to conceptualize and carry out discipline-specific
multi-authored research projects, project proposals,
research. In practice, this means bringing together the
reports, and presentations aimed at both academic and
traditional tools of humanistic thinking (interpreta-
nonacademic communities. Work in teams and par-
tion and critique, historical perspective, comparative
ticipate in peer assessment. Acquire knowledge of the
cultural and social analysis, contextualization, archival
development life cycle of a Digital Humanities project
research) with the tools of computational thinking
and the ability to understand the needs and priorities
(information design, statistical analysis, geographic
of each phase of development. Meet aggressive dead-
information systems, database creation, and com-
lines and produce completed, fully functional digital
puter graphics) to formulate, interpret, and analyze a
prototypes, products, research tools, and publications.
humanities-based research problem.
Identify and assess specific contributions and roles in
collaborative projects for the purposes of peer review
Ability to understand, analyze, and use data and intellectual credit.
Demonstrate ability to synthesize data from multiple
sources and harness multi-modal and multimedia
technologies to produce digital arguments. Create
capacity to formulate a research problem or question
that lends itself to a computational approach. Develop
ability to analyze problems by applying digital methods
to humanities-based data and to interpret the results
of digital analysis and computationally produced out-
comes in a critically significant way.

a short guide to the digital_humanities


SPECIFICATION 5 Reflexive awareness of coercive regimes

Creating Advocacy All media conceal as well as reveal the rules according
to which they include certain kinds of expressions and
prevent others. What is possible in any given digital
space or project and what is not? We must be reflexive,
dialectical thinkers aware that any “solution” always
Among its other activities, digital schol- prevents certain questions and problems from arising, SG SG 15
arship asserts the possibility of changed while privileging the very ones to which it is the answer.
relations between consumers and pro- All technologies are coercive in some respect, and
many have become so naturalized that we no longer
ducers of cultural work. Listed here is a
consider them coercive but rather self-evident and
set of considerations for addressing the necessary. It is up to digital humanists to denaturalize
cultural significance of humanities work, these technologies and create fissures for new, imagi-
of transforming individuals into prosum- native possibilities to come about.
ers with critical insight into the workings
of digital platforms. It also contains a Thinking beyond the ideologies of templates
handful of crucial points on which to ad- and structured discourse
vocate for Digital Humanities as a field. How do we read the embodiment of power dynamics
and relations in the organization of structured spaces
and processes? The digital environment structures its
Value of the cultural record ideological expression in the graphical interfaces, the
Humanistic scholarship is engaged with the production, data types, the database relations, as well as in the
preservation, and interpretation of the cultural record. content of each project. Epistemological defamiliariza-
Gauging the value of legacy materials and vetting the tion—the “making strange”—is an important feature of
value of contemporary contributions is essential. In modern critical thought. The force of delight, surprise,
what ways does the project contribute to the cultural and even alienation in the face of innovative inventions
record (through preservation of materials, through are the enlightening elements of contemporary imagi-
interactions among contributors, through modes of native thought. What can be shown to wake us from our
public engagement, and so forth)? passive consumption? And how do new ways of know-
ing, engaging, and designing become the very means
Humanistic values/cultural significance and to provoke inquiry, generate thought, deepen values,
legitimacy and contribute to the cultural record of our species?

Demonstrating the value of interpretive methods and


fundamental humanistic values as a counter to those of From passive consumer to active prosumer
managed culture is an essential part of advocacy. How The role of reader and viewer varies from that of a
are the values and perspectives of the humanities a consumer of material on display to that of a critically
central part of the contributions of the project? What informed and discriminating prosumer of cultural mate-
does the project contribute to the cultural record and rials. How does the project facilitate productive, critical
how is this record legitimated (and by whom)? engagement rather than passive consumption?

Expanded notions of community and participation Creation of citizen-scholars and scholar-


For whom is this project of value and how are they citizens
engaged in its production, reception, or preservation? Many projects support the substantive participation
What notions of community and participation are of amateurs, scholars without professional affilia-
central to the project? How is participation opened tion whose expertise in a field is highly developed,
up, managed, and facilitated? How are decisions informed, and driven by intellectual passion. In what
about permissions for participation, inclusion and/or ways does the project integrate (and also evaluate) a
exclusion, made and who makes them? And what are multiplicity of perspectives and knowledge-creators?
the limits, liabilities, and challenges that remain for How do scholars—traditionally conceived—become
participation without restriction? engaged with a broader pubic citizenry, and, similarly,
how are citizens engaged in the intellectual project of
Ability to analyze modalities of organization knowledge creation as scholars?
and presentation
Skills for understanding the ways media organize and
present arguments are the foundations of informed use
of information in any environment. The specific char-
acteristics of digital media—in all their multiple, hybrid,
and overlapping forms—need their own languages of
assessment.

specifications
The Short Guide is an open pdf excerpt from Digital_Humanities, by Anne Burdick, Johanna
Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, MIT Press, 2012, pp. 121–136.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-ShareAlike


license, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or by mail from
Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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