Collaboration, the UBC-V 2020 virtual Digital Humanities Conference ends on Oct. 31st, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t continue learning. Check all the great resources available at UBC Library:
Get started with the Digital Humanities Library Guide, which points you to books, articles, events, tools, and databases on the matter.
But what are Digital Humanities, anyway? Matthew Kirschenbaum asked that same question in his highly cited chapter What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?, part of the book Defining Digital Humanities, edited by Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan and Edward Vanhoutte.
“As a way of identifying digital interests and efforts within traditional humanities fields, the term “digital humanities” identifies, in general terms, any kind of critical engagement with digital tools and methods in a humanities context. This includes the creation of digital editions and digital text or image collections, and the creation and use of digital tools for the investigation and analysis of humanities research materials. It also includes the aggregation and arrangement of digital resources and tools in order to present humanities material to students, and other forms of broader dissemination. Finally, the term can be used to refer to tools, processes, and projects that expand access to the source materials of scholarship and teaching such as primary source texts, images, representations of artifacts, objects of study, and secondary source materials.” (Flanders & Mylonas, 2017, p. 1287)
Doing more digital Humanities, includes publications by well known Canadian Digital Humanities practitioners and scholars, and is a great “how to guide” to get you started on your projects.
Want to learn more about text analysis in a safe space? Collaborate with the Data Sitters Club, a feminist collective of Digital Humanities practitioners and researchers. One might ask: “Is that really necessary?”. Unfortunately, it is, as authors point out that equity is far from reality in books like:
Transformative digital humanities : challenges and opportunities, edited by Mary Balkun and Marta Deyrup
Intersectionality in Digital Humanities, edited by Barbara Bordalejo and Roopika Risam
New digital worlds: postcolonial digital humanities in theory, praxis, and pedagogy, by Roopika Risam.
UBC has several exciting tools and resources to support Digital Humanities initiatives, such as:
Abacus dataverse, a data repository collaboration between UBC, SFU, UNBC and UVic.
The Database of religious history, an encyclopedia of religious cultural history.
Downtown East Side – Reseach Access Portal (DTES-RAP) , which makes DTES related resources more accessible.
Geodisy, a platform for geospatial Canadian open research data.
UBC Library Open Collections, with over 240.000 digital objects.
Want to learn more? The Research Commons offers several Digital Scholarship events and workshops.
REFERENCES
Flanders, J., Mylonas, E. (2017). Digital Humanities. In J. D. McDonald, M. Levine-Clark (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (4th ed.). doi: 10.1081/E-ELIS4
Public Humanities Hub. (2020) Digital Humanities Conference Banner [digital image]. Digital Humanities Conference. https://dhconference.sites.olt.ubc.ca/conference-info/
