DH Show and Tell - Friday 1 March, 4-5pm

We're holding our first DH reading group session for 2013 next Friday 1 March at 4pm.

• When: 4pm-5pm
• Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

Here are three things you need to know:

1. It's a DH show and tell.

We haven't seen each other for a while so our first session will be a "Show and Tell". Instead of a reading, you are welcome to share a DH project that has impressed you recently (the 2012 DH Awards nominations list is a great resource to look at), a current project you are working on, a concept for a future project, or an area you would like to learn more about in 2013. James Smith will be joining us (in digital form) via video link from London. He is about to start work on a DH curriculum development project and is also keen to share a concept for a new postdoc project with us.

2. We'll be planning for 2013.

We'll conclude the session by discussing the best way to run the reading group in 2013. Shall we each each 'host' a meeting in 2013 - choosing an article and leading the discussion? I think this would encourage stronger engagement with topics and would allow for a more diverse range of interests to be explored. Interspersed throughout reading sessions we would continue hosting guest speakers and site visits where possible. We are also keen to take advantage of the video link technology in our meeting room to host some international speakers in 2013. We shall also confirm meeting time and date.

3. How we're going to use our blog.

We've created this space to can share links and articles for each week's topic and record interesting outcomes from our discussions. The blog includes summaries of each meeting of 2012 so you can go back and review readings and resources. It's your blog and we would love your contributions. If you would like admin access to write blog posts just send Colin Yeo or Jo Hawkins an email.

Voting for the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards is now open!

Interested in exploring some of the best publications, tools and projects that the field of digital humanities has to offer? Nominations for the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards have just been announced. Make sure you place your vote.

 You've only got a few weeks! Voting closes at midnight (GMT) on Sunday 17 February 2013.

Digital Humanities Awards are a new set of annual awards given in recognition of talent and expertise in the digital humanities community and are nominated and voted for entirely by the public.  These awards are intended to help put interesting DH resources in the spotlight and engage DH users (and general public) in the  work of the community.

2012 in Review: Big ideas in DH (Week 6)

We've come a long way baby.

When: Friday 2 November 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

"Over the last couple of years, it has become increasingly clear that the digital humanities is associated with a visionary and forward-looking sentiment and that the field has come to constitute a site for far-reaching discussions about the future of the field itself as well as the humanities at large." - Patrik Svensson

The theme of the final session was 'Big ideas in Digital Humanities'. Brett Hirsch and Toby Burrows shared insights into the future of digital humanities at UWA and we asked attendees to contribute their own 'big ideas':

• What opportunities are you most excited about and where do you think they could lead the humanities? 
• How should digital humanists best contribute to discussions regarding the future of the humanities in Australian universities? 
• Does the future contain a digital utopia or will humanists face unforeseen challenges?

The reading reflected our theme of 'Big Ideas'.
Patrik Svensson, 'Envisioning the Digital Humanities', Digital Humanities Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2012.

2012 in Review: MOOCs - optimism or apocalypse? (Week 5)

When: Friday 26 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

It seems like everyone's talking about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)! You may have heard that UWA will be offering three free online courses in 2013.  But just what is a MOOC and what impact might they have on higher education? We met to discuss and cut through the hype.

There has been so much written about MOOCs lately it was hard to know where to start but The Conversation's recent series 'The Future of Higher Education'  was a great place to begin. We discussed a range of viewpoints surrounding the impact of online learning on Australian universities.

Are MOOCs cause for optimism or apocalypse?

• Simon Marginson, 'Online open education: yes, this is the game changer.', The Conversation online, 16 August 2012.
• Stephen King, 'MOOCs will mean the death of universities? Not likely.', The Conversation online, 28 August 2012.
• Jane Den Hollander, 'MOOCs: neither the death of the university nor a panacea for learning', The Conversation online, 1 August 2012.

What is the potential impact on pedagogy?

• Rod Lamberts and Will J Grant, 'Online education at the coalface: what academics need to know',  The Conversation online, 18 October 2012.

How can universities address structural constraints, such as regulatory environments and cultural barriers to change?

• Jane Den Hollander, 'Online opportunities: digital innovation or death through regulation?', The Conversation online, 8 October 2012.

And what specific disciplinary challenges might academics in the humanities face?

• Ruth Morgan, 'Deadset? MOOCs and Australian education in a globalised world', The Conversation online, 16 October 2012.

2012 in Review: “Universities in 2020 - will we need them? MOOCs and their impact” (Week 5)

Universities in 2020 - will we need them?  
An Inquiring Minds Lecture by Associate Professor David Glance
Tuesday 23 Oct October 2012

"The availability of free online university courses from the world’s most prestigious institutions threatens to bring about radical change in the way the world accesses education. The first course offered by Stanford University in this way attracted 160,000 students. For the first time, anyone with an internet connection in any part of the world can take a university course and receive a credit for it. With this access comes the possibility of millions of people who could only dream of taking courses at Harvard or MIT being able further their education and with it the range of possibilities in their lives."

2012 in Review: Linked data & metadata (Week 4)

Linked data in action - the Civil War Data 150 Project

Friday 19 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

According to Mashable, the world’s information is doubling every two years. How does this challenge us as researchers? As well as creating new knowledge, do we have a responsibility to help make sense of this river of information by curating and creating connections?

Toby Burrows, manager of eResearch Support at UWA, spoke to us about meta data (data about data) and linked data – which provide ways for us to connect information, data and knowledge in a rapidly expanding digital universe.

It was a great chance to learn more about UWA's eResearch Support and Digital Developments Unit. Based in the Reid Library, Toby's team offer training and advice on research data management, advice on open access publishing, digitising collections and manage the UWA's Research Repository - among other things!

Toby suggested some links for those of us who wanted to learn more:

• Probably the first service (2004) was MuseumFinland: http://www.museosuomi.fi/  (mainly in Finnish – but with a tutorial in English)
• This later evolved into: CultureSampo: http://www.kulttuurisampo.fi/?lang=en
• There’s a whole lot of information from the research group which put these services together at: http://www.seco.tkk.fi/applications/
• Europeana is now doing a lot of development in this area – but it’s still in a pilot phase (and different from the main Europeana site, which is a fairly conventional large-scale database of digital objects). 
• An interesting starting-point is: http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/thoughtlab/new-ways-of-searching-and-browsing
• This builds on an earlier project called MultimediaN: http://e-culture.multimedian.nl/
• The Pelagios project is working on something similar for the classical world: http://pelagios-project.blogspot.com.au/p/about-pelagios.html
• The British Museum is also doing something similar, called ResearchSpace: http://www.researchspace.org/home
• A couple of US services with some similar features and technologies:
• ViewShare (Library of Congress): http://viewshare.org/
• Freebase (now owned by Google): http://www.freebase.com/
• Alan Liu’s RoSE system is at: http://rose.english.ucsb.edu/ 
  (you need to register and get a login)

2012 in Review: More DH case studies (Week 3)

When: Friday 12 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We continued to share experiences and examined two additional case studies from UWA.

Patricia Alessi (@Patricia_Alessi) outlined how she is creating repertoire lists of 17th century English opera singers/actresses using DH resources such as the Restoration Theatre Song Archive and explained how this process had inspired ideas for a future DH project.

Robin Adamson, a UWA humanities computing pioneer, explained how she used computers in her analysis of Albert Camus’ L'Étranger in 1966. Robin was one of the first people at UWA to practice digital humanities and she brought in some amazing artifacts associated with the project.

We also spoke about the Popular Romance Project (@PopularRomance) - a fantastic DH study that explores the "the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance" - discussing Jack Elliott's recent blog post: "Around the World". Jack is a PhD student at the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing (University of Newcastle) and is using a statistics program called 'Breiman and Cutler’s Random Forests' to examine regional differences between romance novels originating from the Antipodes, Europe and North America (among other things).

2012 in Review: DH projects @ UWA (Week 2)

The Digital Renaissance Editions

When: Friday 5 October, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We examined some outstanding DH projects from UWA - using case studies to bring theory & application to life.

Brett Hirsch shared insights into his Digital Renaissance Editions project and computational stylistics work he is conducting to identify patterns and trends in early English drama.

Rebecca Banks spoke about the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East Project (@APAAME).

See APAAME in action...

We also selected two (short) readings to discuss:

William G. Thomas, 'What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities', Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No.1, Winter 2011.

Andrew Prescott , 'An Electric Current of the Imagination: What the Digital Humanities Are and What They Might Become', Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 2012.

2012 in Review: Demystifying DH (Week 1)

When: Tuesday 18 September, 1pm – 1.45pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We hosted a short lunchtime Q&A session, discussing how the field of Digital Humanities is defined, why it’s growing so rapidly, how it offers new opportunities to organise, analyse and communicate research - and why you don’t need to be a computer programmer to take part in it.

James Smith delivered a lively 20-minute presentation, which was followed by a Q&A session where attendees could voice questions, concerns and ideas for future sessions.

Suggested reading:
Charles Ess argues that the use of computing technologies in the humanities isn't so new after all.
Charles Ess, '"Revolution? What Revolution?" Successes and Limits of Computing Technologies in Philosophy and Religion', in (eds) Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth, A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004.