Happy New Year!

We thought we would celebrate the New Year with an open forum down at DDH.

Do you have any burning questions about DH? I know I have!

DDH Open Forum is an informal gathering of those curious about humanities, technology and everything in between. Anyone can share great ideas or projects they’ve working on, ask important questions or simply come along to take part or listen to the latest DH chat.If technology tickles your fancy, manuscripts make you happy, or cloudcomputing takes your breath away. Join us on the 18^th Jan at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB (map)and share your ideas and experiences with others.

Date: Tuesday, 18th January 2011
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB (map)

Due to the Jeremy Bentham pub becoming too noisy during previous meet ups, we have changed location to the Wheatsheaf and also have had to ammend the date slightly.  DDH is now on Monday 29th November.

Hopefully the Wheatdheaf will prove to be a good location for our Meet ups, lets find out on the 29th!

Topic: Second Life in Higher Education
Date: Monday, 29th November 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB (map)

Reading: Warburton, S. 2009. Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching

Hope to see you there!

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on:

Date: Tuesday, 19th October 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This month’s topic is Virtual Research Environments.

The reading is: Alexander Voss, Rob Procter, (2009). Virtual research environments in scholarly work and communications.

Hope to see you there!

If you cannot make this date but are interested in future meetings, you can join the the DDH e-list!

Last night we were discussing Alan Liu’s 2003 paper entitled The Humanities: A Technical Profession. Lui raises questions about the concept of Knowledge, of protocols, organisation and information behaviour and the institutional nature of the humanities.  Liu discusses in his paper,  the idea that humanities scholars are now “knowledge workers” and that a distinguishing feature of “knowledge work” is that it is governed by a set of common norms and values in institutional, disciplinary, communicational, and technical protocols.  This raised questions from the group because it was felt that formal norms and values systems are often difficult to apply to humanities research.  This led on to a discussion about what constitutes ‘excellence’ in digital humanities work, as often it is not as quantifiable as ‘pure’ science or computer science.

The discussion raised some very interesting questions with the group and then sparked some lively discussions on twitter.

Here are some of the questions we raised:

• Is there a distinction between research and scholarship?
• Is technology infrastructure like communism? Good idea but actually really prescriptive on the community?
• Digitised humanities vs born digital humanities. who would win? Is there a difference?
• Difference between applying techniques and DH scholarship. What is actually different?
• Is IT now defunct? Would we ever use it as a term now? What for?
• Why do we separate practioners and academics?
• Is humanities actually a science?
• Why do we have so many names and awkward phrases for DH are they different? Is e-humanities the same as DH?
• Evolved semantics? Does it not mean the same thing as it always did?
• Should Programming be mandatory for humanities students?
• Ideas of commodity causing problems in DH?
• Is Language as a tool taken for granted?
• How do we identify excellence in digital humanities scolarship?

A selection of the tweets:

In response to: is technology infrastructure like communism?

sdbeck: Technology infrastructure is only prescriptive when its governed by IT staff, not by end users. User governance works.

clairey_ross: does user governance always work? Wikipedia for example I find quite prescriptive

sdbeck: Wel, Wikipedia might be seen as user-governance run amok. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

sdbeck: On the other hand, if the cyberinfrastructure is only run by technical folks, you only get the tools they understand.

clairey_ross: Is there a non amok example of ‘good’ user governance?

sdbeck: I’m thinking more along the lines of core infrastructures (wikis) not specific applications (wikipedia).

sdbeck: wikipedia is proscriptive because it wants to force consistency and standardization. but Dublin Core gives authors ability to develop their own tools, with guides for interoperability.

imagine if all wikis could readily share data without centralization.

Ajprescott: it is striking how in v capitalist countries (USA, japan) the electrical and other infrastructure is v ramshackle.

In response to: should programming be mandatory for humanities students?

PatParslow: A knowledge of programming or software design should probably be mandatory. Don’t need to be software engineers tho, surely?

benbull: “Programming should be mandatory for humanities students? #ddh” -I disagree. because IMHO programming is a discipline which takes years to learn to do well, and that’s if you’re is CS grad. it’s the principles which take the years to perfect, languages come and go. I do see your point, but I just don’t agree.

SdFunkyChick : no, it shouldn’t. I see programming as a particular set of skills & interpretation of humanities subject fields that not everyone can easily get. I see the programming in humanities as a speciality in the field which compliments research by providing tools but … Whether this should be taught to students as compulsory part of their studies, I’m not convinced

In response to: Is IT now defunct? Would we ever use it as a term now? What for?

PatParslow: Technology related to information. I would use it to describe such things, but not what I do, I don’t *do* nouns, per se

re ‘doing’ IT; do you *do* DH? Or do you do things in the conceptual domain of DH?

SimonTanner: sometimes the problem is that we feel IT or DH is “done” to us rather than us doing it ;o)

PatParslow: Does DH take similar grammatical role to “washing up” or “aerobics” there? So it is an activity (a nounal verb??)

SimonTanner: I make my living from IT & DH! But _sometimes_ it’s done cos it’s bright & shiny not cos it benefits R&D outcomes. thus always must focus in on the scholarly benefits & outcomes rather than the tech for tech sake.

PatParslow: you often cannot know what affordances the shiny gives until you play with it. Pedagogy first is rather strange

SimonTanner: research desires objectives – if is “let’s play with tech and see what happens” great, but still needs stating

pedagogy is teaching focussed not research. Research objectives are not in conflict w process of discovery

PatParslow: Pedagogical objectives better not be in conflict with process of discovery either!

SimonTanner: Tech is merely a tool & as such must serve our objectives not dominate them. My concern is dominate = bad research

PatParslow: Research methods, pedagogy – both also only tools (and, indeed technologies)

ernestopriego:…but ‘tech’ can be the object of study itself *and* the tool to study it…

PatParslow: I prefer not to elevate pedagogy (or Res methods) above other tools. Though I may be influenced by shiny 🙂

We raised a lot of questions, if anyone has any answers to them please do let us know.

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on:

Date: Tuesday, 21th September 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This months topic has been suggested by Richard Lewis: The Humanities: A Technical Profession

The reading is: Lui, A. 2003. The Humanities: A Technical Profession

Hope to see you there!

If you cannot make this date but are interested in future meetings, you can join the the DDH e-list!

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on:

Date: Tuesday, 24th August 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This months topic has been suggested by John Levin: The free software movement

Richard Stallman’s The GNU Project

and The General Public License

These texts build on the DDH #4’s discussion on Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, but are less about the process of coding, and more on the programmer in the world.

To read more about John’s selection please visit his blog.

Hope to see you there!

If you cannot make this date but are interested in future meetings, you can join the the DDH e-list!

Times Higher Education today carries a report on UCLDH Deputy Director Dr Melissa Terras’s closing plenary speech at DH2010 on Saturday.

Reporter Sarah Cunnane focuses on Mel’s call for members of the DH community “to sharpen up on the web or lose out” (THE).

This was only one aspect of the 40-minute long plenary, which used the Transcribe Bentham project as a vehicle to highlight achievements and challenges faced by Digital Humanists in the last decade as well as in the future.

The first time the Digital Humanities conference invited a member of its own community to give the closing keynote, the speech received a tremendous response from those present at the time and from those who read Mel’s notes on her blog and / or watched the video on arts-humanities.net You can read the tweets at #dh2010

The issues raised by Mel in her plenary will also be the topic under discussion at the next Decoding Digital Humanities meeting.

Image: Simon Mahony, originally posted to arts-humanities.net

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on:

Date: Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

The Digital Humanities 2010 conference was held at King’s College London and brought to a close on 10 July with a plenary speech by Dr Melissa Terras (UCL). Due to the topical and timely nature of issues raised in the speech, we felt it would make an excellent focus for discussion. The assigned reading for our meetup on the 27th will be:

“Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon”. Text available here.

The video recording of this closing plenary is now also available on the arts-humanities.net website.

From our dependence on primary sources and modern technology to digital identity, and the impact of the economic downturn, the speech provoked a tremendous response (some of which can be seen at Twitter #dh2010). Come tell us what you think over a pint!

RSVP is appreciated but not required.

Monday night saw our Decoding with a twist meet up.  There had been a lot of discussion following the Launch of the Centre for Digital Humanities so we followed it up. Setting three readings which looked at  the value and differences between paid for and free content and software.  What does copyright, paywalls, and open source mean for the Humanities, educational institutions and cultural content?

Many thanks to all who came, including the lovely students from the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, New York who are taking part in the DIS e-publishing Summer School.

The topic provoked quite a lot of discussion and the majority was captured by the wonderful Ernesto Priego producing a real time tweet account of the disscussion. Ernesto has kindly allowed us to reproduce his Twitter feed here in order to provide a view of the discussion.

I have used Twapper Keeper to capture the tweets, which is a brilliant service, but it seems the times of tweets are a bit out of sync, but the content remains the same.

ernestopriego	The hashtag for Decoding Digital Humanities is #ddh	Mon Jun 21 01:45:52 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	The crew gets together at the Jeremy Bentham pub… #ddh	Mon Jun 21 01:45:54 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Academia 2.0 at #ddh @UCLDH http://twitpic.com/1yrr6d	Mon Jun 21 01:45:55 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Participants introducing themselves. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 03:15:52 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Computer science art history library science humanities all well represented at #ddh	Mon Jun 21 03:15:57 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@kathrynpiquette introduces the first topic on copyright and open access. How are information and creativity made available? #ddh	Mon Jun 21 04:45:57 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Difference between open source and free content explained #ddh	Mon Jun 21 04:45:59 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@melissaterras on the myth that creating content is cheap/free #ddh	Mon Jun 21 04:46:00 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@clhw1 a real problem with the lack of model to keep content available #ddh	Mon Jun 21 04:46:02 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@clhw1: commercial resources are available but the academic resources are not #ddh	Mon Jun 21 04:46:03 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@clhw1: we need a model to update digital content #ddh	Mon Jun 21 05:46:04 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Questions of license and money need to be addressed #ddh	Mon Jun 21 05:46:05 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.kathrynpiquette on the models of the cathedral and the bazaar; cites the Bentham project directed by @melissaterras #ddh	Mon Jun 21 05:46:09 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@clhw1: at the moment cultural organisations do not see digital preservation/curation as part of their responsibilities #ddh	Mon Jun 21 07:46:03 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Who gets the money from publishing in academic journals? #ddh	Mon Jun 21 07:46:04 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Should scholars charge for the peer review process? [do they?] #ddh	Mon Jun 21 07:46:06 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	[Journalists panicking about lack of new business models for journalism but scholarly publishing seems in more trouble! #ddh]	Mon Jun 21 09:16:01 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Very interesting discussion about the future of journalism and new business models for digital publishing in #ddh	Mon Jun 21 09:16:03 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Refreshment break! #ddh	Mon Jun 21 09:16:04 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Ale-sourcing the Digital Humanities @UCLDH #ddh http://twitpic.com/1ys4u2	Mon Jun 21 09:16:06 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	At #ddh @clairey_ross @lewisrichard @tiedeu @virtualdutch @schopflin @janrito @melissaterras @clhw1 @caitefa @babeelibrarian @volume_knob	Mon Jun 21 09:16:07 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	At #ddh @bravadoavocado @briansuldo @kathrynpiquette	Mon Jun 21 10:46:13 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	and of course @simon_mahony ! #ddh	Mon Jun 21 10:46:15 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @anterotesis: @ernestopriego and @anterotesis is at #ddh	Mon Jun 21 11:46:03 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @anterotesis @ernestopriego and @anterotesis is at #ddh <–yes! 🙂	Mon Jun 21 12:15:56 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Now discussing ways in which publishers and scholars can collaborate #ddh	Mon Jun 21 12:15:57 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Thinking @ChandosTweets would have lots to say in this conversation! #ddh	Mon Jun 21 13:30:02 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	…and between librarians archivists and scholars #ddh	Mon Jun 21 13:57:38 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@simon_mahony on the ironies of academic libraries the cutting of funds for e-journals e-journals seen as peripheric publications #ddh	Mon Jun 21 14:20:23 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	We need an academic pirate bay! -@anterotesis  #ddh	Mon Jun 21 14:23:12 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@clhw1 on manuscript circulation in the 16th century a social networking #ddh	Mon Jun 21 14:42:48 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @canadiancat: @ernestopriego I feel as if I’m missing out on something #ddh. The pace of work has been busy and tweeting has slowed v …	Mon Jun 21 15:15:52 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	How do public libraries deal with the transition to digital? #ddh	Mon Jun 21 15:15:54 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @epriani: RT @ernestopriego: We need an academic pirate bay! -@anterotesis  #ddh  // si…	Mon Jun 21 15:15:55 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@simon_mahony on the flawed logic of News Corp #ddh	Mon Jun 21 15:18:25 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	#ddh now on the disappearance of books hops and records shops	Mon Jun 21 16:18:51 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Now media specificity is discussed… the role of experience #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:19:26 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	‘the more you digitise the more you want to see the real object’ -@clhw1 #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:43:38 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	What are all the other values not just the monetary value we give to content? -@kathrynpiquette #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:46:16 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Assessment_Exercise now discussed #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:53:10 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	The http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/ discussed #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:56:04 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@simon_mahony: irony of citation metrics: ‘if I disagree with you if I cite you your ranking will go up’ #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:57:22 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	the different temporality of citation in the humanities and the sciences #ddh	Mon Jun 21 16:58:29 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	.@virtualdutch now on ‘Publish or Perish’ based on Google Scholar http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:00:16 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Summarising the discussion now #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:00:31 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	How accessible is what we do? #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:01:57 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Separation between media concerns and looking at the commercial model and how to find a middle ground #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:02:41 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Do we need to find a way to monetise more what we do? #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:03:46 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	How will we deal with government cuts to research? We need commercial money. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:06:22 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Sources of revenue combined with saving money -@clhw1 #ddh	Mon 21 Jun 2010 17:07:58 +0000
ernestopriego	Getting commercial funding does not mean you will be unethical. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:12:24 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	We must not assume humanities people only consume technology; digital humanities exists because we can teach scientists things #ddh	Mon 21 Jun 2010 17:16:27 +0000
ernestopriego	That last tweet was a quote from -@clhw1 #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:17:47 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Digital humanities is not useless. People need to know that. XML. MS Windows. Invented by Digital Humanities. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:21:44 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Physics and digital humanities. Archeology and digital humanities. Factual realities. Very useful research. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:25:09 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	We need to know how much the humanities contribute to the general economy. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:27:08 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	We cannot quantify everything that we call culture. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:36:21 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	The cultural value of what we do needs to be articulated. We have to learn to demonstrate it. #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:40:17 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	In digital humanities we CAN communicate the positive economic and intangible value of what we do -@clhw1 #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:41:33 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	@samplereality never underestimate the power of the tweet #hackacad #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:42:03 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	Decoding Digital Humanities is every month; started in February this year. Follow @UCLDH and #ddh for updates.	Mon Jun 21 17:42:29 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @SimonTanner: @ernestopriego Higher Ed as a whole generates £59 billion for UK economy and about 680000 jobs – thus Humanities a big chunk of impact #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:43:01 +0000 2010
ernestopriego	RT @mwidner: RT @ernestopriego: [Don’t] assume humanities ppl only consume technology; digital humanities exists b/c we can teach scientists things #ddh	Mon Jun 21 17:43:24 +0000 2010

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meet up will be held on 21^st June, 2010.

Decoding with a twist

There is a slight twist to this meet up.  There has been a lot of discussion following the Launch of the Centre for Digital Humanities so we are following it up! We are going to focus on the value and differences between paid for and free content and software.  What does copyright, paywalls, and open source mean for the Humanities, educational institutions and cultural content?

As before, we have assigned some reading to provide a focus for our discussions:

Murdoch, J. 2010. Tomorrow’s Humanities: Lecture for the launch of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Or you can watch the webcast here

Raymond, E.S. 2005. The Cathedral and the Bazaar

McCracken, R. 2006. Cultural responses to open licences and the accessibility and usability of open educational resources.

Date: Monday, 21st June 2010

Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm

Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This event is open to UCL staff and students, and their guests. RSVP is appreciated but not required. If you cannot make this date but are interested in future events, you can subscribe to the Decoding DH mailing list or send us a quick email .