Yesterday was the Day of Digital Humanities. This project, running since 2009, aims to “bring together digital humanists from around the world to document what they do on one day, March 27th this year. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together the journals of the participants into a picture that answers the question, “Just what do computing humanists really do?” Participants will document their day through photographs and commentary in a blog-like journal.” (Day of DH 2012 Wiki)

Naturally, most of UCLDH took part, so, ever the librarian, I thought it would be useful to collate the links to our pages here:

• Day of Claire Warwick (Co-Director)
• Day of Melissa Terras (C0-Director)

• Day of David Beavan (Research Manager)
• Day of Oliver Duke-Williams (Events Manager)
• Day of Simon Mahony (Programme Director, MA/MSc Digital Humanities)
• Day of Julianne Nyhan (European Liaison Manager)
• Day of Claire Ross (PhD Student Representative and Researcher)
• Day of Anne Welsh (Digital Identity Manager)

• Day of Lorna Hughes (University of Wales, National Library of Wales, Research Associate at UCLDH)
• Day of Stan Ruecker (University of Alberta, Visiting Researcher at UCLDH)
• Day of Edward Vanhoutte (CTB-KANTL, Research Associate at UCLDH)

As usual on Day of DH there are a few people who have signed up but not filled in their day yet. If you are one of those people and you are a member of UCLDH, drop me an email when you’re done and I’ll add you into the list here.

As the clock ticks to midnight, I thought I would start the Day of Digital Humanities with a post about Playing the Margins, a public engagement project led by MA LIS students Paris O’Donnell and Sian Prosser. Sian and Paris have both taken Digital Resources in the Humanities and Historical Bibliography, and we are delighted to see them putting their learning (and previous experience) into practice in this project, funded by UCL’s Train & Engage Scheme.

Paris and Sian write:

The aim of Playing the Margins is to bring drama students and actors into UCL Special Collections to engage with early printed books relating to their interests. The project is being supported by the Public Engagement Unit and Special Collections at UCL. The workshops concentrate on readers’ marks and annotations, and give participants insights into how earlier readers left traces of their engagement with dramatic (as well as non-dramatic) texts. Inspired by our studies of digital humanities and historical bibliography at UCL DIS, Playing the Margins is an experiment in using digital tools to explore reading practices and dramatic performance.

In the workshop, participants will be invited to reflect on their own marking practices in scripts and play-texts, and to think about taboos or proscriptions relating to writing in books. Then, participants are presented with examples of interesting annotations, ownership marks and other readers’ marks taken from UCL’s Special Collections, so they can explore the continuities between their reading/annotating practices and those of early readers. The workshop concludes with participants inscribing virtually a photographic image of a text they have encountered, using a digital tablet which captures handwriting. Their recorded hand-written engagements will form the basis for an online blog and exhibition, which will also showcase participants’ further written and/or spoken reflections on the workshop.

We’re really looking forward to hearing more about Sian’s and Paris’s experiences and findings through the project, and especially, to following the blog that they are in the process of setting up. Watch this space (and Sian’s Day of DH blog) for more.