Having recently returned from the Keystone Digital Humanities Conference organized by UPenn and hosted in the beautiful Kislak Center for Rare Books and Special Collections, I thought I would put together a list of a few projects that intrigued me for their innovative approach or problem-solving capacity. The conference provided an opportunity for many scholars, librarians and developers to share their work, and while I met many wonderful and interesting people, the following projects may be particularly relevant to the work at the Digital Scholarship Unit at UTSC and those interested in the digital humanities more broadly. Not all of the following were necessarily presented at the conference; some were cited within talks, for example. However, all are fascinating work happening in this field!
Tools:
Collections or thematic projects:
- The Knotted Line Challenging the notion of interface!
- InstaEssays Archive
- Moveable books. I took a freebie example and put it on my desk.
- Software Studies’ On Broadway project, along with many others.
- Computers on Law & Order. This one intrigued me not so much for the subject matter, but the innovative approach to creating an arduino-based physical tool and script to take 5 screenshots & post one on the Tumblr by hitting a small piece of a wooden board.
- Maps are Territories book.
- Freedom and Imprisonment in American Literature This is a class taught by Charlotte Nunnes at Southwestern that relates a lot to my professional and personal interests in oral histories and where technology can fit to teach us something new about narratives.
Initiatives:
- Hamilton College’s Digital Humanities Initiative – well thought-out, documented and organized approach to generating digital scholarship at a liberal arts college. Amazing.
- Penn and Michigan State have partnered up to build an open-source open-access collaborative peer-reviewed journal platform for the Public Philosophy Journal. However, once built, the platform can be suited to other disciplines and fields, and has a whole lifecycle of review, collaboration, sharing, etc. I particularly appreciated the inclusion of “collegiality index” as the factor in the review process!
- DiRT Directory of DH tools and resources
Miriam Kemper’s Keynote address can be found here.
I also went on a couple of tours around UPenn Libraries and Temple Libraries and took some pictures.
1. UPenn Information Commons and Media lab & UPenn Education Commons
2. Temple University’s Digital Scholarship Center
Lydia Zvyagintseva 