In our first workshop we discussed the meaning of Digital Humanities, and there is a lot of them. Amanda Visconti, who we read and discussed, explains it as doing research, teaching, or learning about literature, history, or the arts using digital tools. At the end of her piece she also poses the question, can Digital Humanities be considered scholarship? This made me think a lot about accessibility in scholarship and the elitism and barriers to publishing within the institution. I think that Digital Humanities should be considered scholarship because it furthers understanding and scholarship should not be limited to only papers that can be published.

To me Digital Humanities is the use of digital tools, like websites or recordings or videos, to explore a topic in a deep way. They all still have a main statement, like a thesis statement, that is what the project is about or will work towards proving. Some Digital Humanities projects come to a definite conclusion and some do not come to a definite conclusion. This can either be an understanding goal or an argument that the creator is making. The goal/argument can be broad, like to organize the information and guide the viewer through the information, but ultimately like with papers published in an academic journal it is up to the reader/viewer to come to conclusions about a topic. This falls into how Digital Humanities should be considered academic scholarship, since it is providing information to a viewer/reader with an argument or goal in mind. Digital Humanities allows the information to be organized in many different ways.

My project, exploring the history and architecture features of three old buildings on campus falls into both of these categories of making an argument and having a goal. The goal is to recognize the importance of these buildings, as well as the argument is about why these buildings are important. By recording the history of the building and the features I am also showing why they are important and deserve to be remembered. I am using digital tools like a timeline or a map to record the history of the house and allow it to be explored in a non-linear way. If it was a paper it could only be explored in a linear way. This also makes it more accessible to people, since there are many different types of learners some who don’t comprehend papers the same way that other people do.

My expectations for Digital Humanities are to make information more accessible and to present new ideas through the way that the information is organized and selected. I have chosen these three buildings because of their long history and many different uses. These histories are very reflective of the Gettysburg community and college, the different needs of the community/college were placed on the buildings and reflected in different ways, like how Brua Hall was converted from the chapel to a music building. These different uses are important because they are not just a reflection of the building they are a reflection of the community.

For me, DH is the combination of digital technology and the humanities, using online tools to make literature and other branches of the humanities more accessible. It also offers new mediums with which to present information that formerly only existed in physical form. It allows for widespread collaboration and distribution of information, and gives people the opportunity to work together to create interactive projects that anyone can view. It involves everyone learning from different perspectives while contributing their own. The internet provides a platform for people to experiment with tools that continue to develop and advance every day.

Amanda Visconti’s article discusses how broad and difficult to define the area of DH is. She emphasizes the overlap of different fields of study and the importance of gathering a variety of opinions and experiences to improve research and project development. She also acknowledges how DH embodies open mindedness during the process of continued participation in making additions to on-going projects.

In my case, I’m focusing on how Digital Humanities combines literature and technology through video games (specifically visual novels). Visual novels are an example of taking something that could exist on paper but instead uses digital tools to create a story that exists as an interactive piece of technology. They are an example of how the format of literature has evolved over time. Although many visual novels are released by well-known developers and publishers, there is a steadily increasing amount being made by independent creators who want to share their own ideas and stories with the world, and can do so with relative ease thanks to the wide variety of available technology and information.

I want my project to be a discussion about visual novels and what they offer compared to other forms of story telling. I think that they are an excellent representation of what DH means in my realm of interest, and their existence as a form of interactive media has constructed a vibrant online community and diverse collection of games that are continuously being produced all over the world.

Reflection #1

This first week being a DSSF has been heavily focused on the core values and aspects of the Digital Humanties. The Digital Humanities is a broad term for a genre of scholarly projects that use digital tools as a way of presenting and distributing their research. For my project, I plan to see the digital humanities exemplified through many aspects of my research. By use of interact maps, I can show my findings per area throughout the United States. This mix of scholarly research and information and digital tools is how Digital Humanities is used in my project. Unlike the sciences, digital humanities projects seem to have a more of a wide variety of formats in which the information is presented. For example, my project plans to have text analysis, video analysis, and video presentation to present my research. If this was a science or other STEM related project, then the information is most likely only offered through one platform because the information is often more literal. Digital Humanities is especially interesting to me because it encompasses the same principles of classic research yet it involves modern technologies. In the article by Amanda Visconti, she explains how the digital humanities often take the work and the research of others to a collected source that can be reached on many different platforms such as tablets and laptops. My project definitely does that by taking news articles and collecting them together. The Digital Humanities seem to be a great way to preserve the works of others because once they are uploaded to the web, a second copy of that work becomes preserved. My project will take these news articles and my analysis of them and allow them to be preserved. The digital humanities seems to be like an online library or reserve that holds scholarly sources in a digital database. With my project, I hope that the information I provide about political bias in the news will be in a place that can be easily accessed by all. From what I have read and seen, a core principle of the Digital Humanities is fair access for all. To gain this, my Digital Humanities project will hopefully be compatible with a number of different devices. Similar to a book in a library, this makes my project easily accessible and free. This easy gain of the information is a major part of making a true Digital Humanities project. In the upcoming weeks, I look forward to developing a better understanding of the Digital Humanities and adapting what I learn to my own project. Digital Humanities is still a rather foreign concept to me, and I hope to become more of an expert on the topic. I also look forward to developing a schedule around my project and creating wireframes as well as beginning the actual research. This past week has been a great intoduction to the Digital Humanties, and it has gotten me even more excited about the upcoming work that I have planned.