The big question for week one was: What is digital humanities? The group read and discussed many definitions of “digital scholarship” or “digital humanities” and discovered that the term digital humanities does not really have an exact definition. Digital Scholarship can be both individual and collaborative, traditional and creative. Everyone has their own definition for what digital scholarship is and how to go about producing digital scholarship. If you wanted a simple and unimaginative definition, you could take a textbook approach and say that digital humanities “is an area of research and teaching at the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities”(Yes, that is directly from Wikipedia). Alternatively, you could be creative in your definition and make it philosophical or just plain funny like some of the definitions on http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/.
My own boring definition of digital humanities would be “the interdisciplinary approach to presenting the humanities by using digital tools,” but I also think that the definition of digital humanities depends on your own project and what you want it to achieve. It is extremely hard to define digital humanities because we cannot define its boundaries yet. Digital humanities is so interdisciplinary. It compasses a wide range of ideas, resources, and talents.
One value or definition that was tossed around in our discussions and readings that I thought was a good definition to play with was that digital humanities is collaborative. Whether you are working individually or in a group, there is always going to be some sort of collaboration–either between people, or the collaboration of digital and non-digital tools. I also agreed with the idea that the digital humanities are open. There is a level of openness between digital scholars and the public. This openness directly correlates with collaboration–you need to be open to collaborate. Another value that was expressed was the idea of sharing. You have often heard the phrase “sharing is caring”, in the case of digital humanities I believe that sharing gets things done and accomplished. I would like to see all three of these values embodied in my own practice of digital scholarship. I believe that our group has been embodying these values since day one and will continue to collaborate, share, and be open. Although we are all working on different projects, we share our thoughts regarding our projects and digital scholarship with one another, are open to suggestions and help, and collaborate with one another, constantly asking for or giving advice.
At the end of this ten week fellowship, I will look back on this blog post. I will have some sentimental reasons for looking at this blog post, especially seeing how far we have come as a group or reflecting on the fact that I could still consider myself a First Year at Gettysburg College when I wrote this post. But, I will also look back to see if there was any growth. Have my perceptions of digital humanities changed? If so, why? Why have they not changed? What have I learned throughout the course of this fellowship? Do I have a new definition for digital humanities? _______________________________. The line will remain blank until I answer my self-assigned questions when it is week ten.
Thanks, Keira. “Interdisciplinary” is a good way to approach this, especially since DH/DS changes so much based on projects, cultures, needs, etc. And in order to foster interdisciplinary approaches, openness should be the attitude by default, which you speak to well. DH/DS really should be about breaking down traditional silos of academia, not creating new ones (which happens too often, unfortunately).
I think Sean Moir made an interesting point when he was here. He broke Digital Humanities down into two main paths: the collection and cataloging of data; and the representation of data. They are really two completely different areas, but both have been discussed under the heading of Digital Humanities and Digital Scholarship. This makes the concept of “digital humanities” very hard to pin down, as it has many aspects that are not congruous and yet go under the same title.
This is a lot like computer science, or any new discipline. CS is probably the youngest discipline taught at the college (40 years ago the CS degree was brand new at my undergraduate institution, UDel), and constantly changing. New terminology is still rapidly developing, and the discipline really relies on practitioners understanding concepts, not words. Digital Scholarship is the same, terminology is constantly changing, and words have overloaded meaning. Researchers from older and more well defined disciplines, where words have fixed meanings developed over decades and even centuries, have a real problem with this.
In CS, many words take on multiple meanings, and trying to parse out a sentence of words is less than useful in many CS classes. Students always want to know what a binary heap has in common with heap memory, as both are referred to as “heaps”. The answer is the terms are unrelated. Same with dynamic and static memory, or network static and dynamic routes. The science is evolving, and if you use a term, you have to make sure you understand its context and meaning in that context.
Digital Scholarship is very similar in how words are used. There has not been time to create agreed on meaning. Researchers coin terms as they need them, and the terms often overlap. I personally think DS could learn a lot from CS in how the concepts, ideas, words, and meaning have developed. It could also learn from the rapid life cycle of ideas and products. In CS we are used to thinking in terms of a half life of an idea being 18 months. Getting an idea is more important than always having all the i dotted and t crossed. This is a very different mental attitude.