Digital Medievalist
Encyclopedia
Medieval studies
-Development:The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books like G. G. Coulton's Ten Medieval Studies , to emphasize a greater interdisciplinary approach to a historical subject...
, a sub-field of digital humanities.
History
Digital Medievalist was established in 2003 as an international collaborative non-profit project based at University of LethbridgeUniversity of Lethbridge
The University of Lethbridge is a publicly-funded comprehensive academic and research university, founded in the liberal education tradition, located in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, with two other urban campuses in Calgary and Edmonton. The main building sits among the coulees on the west side of...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
but having executive board members from a number of other countries. Although University of Lethbridge
University of Lethbridge
The University of Lethbridge is a publicly-funded comprehensive academic and research university, founded in the liberal education tradition, located in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, with two other urban campuses in Calgary and Edmonton. The main building sits among the coulees on the west side of...
remains the main host and administrative home, the project now has a technical infrastructure which uses donated services from others including the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
. The project grew out of a recognised need for best-practice advice on a disciplinary level in the creation of digital medieval resources. Although much of the advice and experience of those who would call themselves digital medievalists are applicable to other areas of the digital humanities and specifically academic research projects in this area, around the time of its creation an increasing need for discipline-based communities of this nature was beginning to be recognised. Partly in response to the overwhelming reception the creation of Digital Medievalist received, the Digital Classicist
Digital Classicist
The Digital Classicist is a project and community for those interested in the application of Humanities Computing to the field of Classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the...
project was set up shortly after.
Executive Board
Digital Medievalist as an organization is overseen by the volunteer efforts of a fully elected international executive board. Its bylaws state that its 8-member board are elected by the membership for overlapping two-year terms (thus 4 positions come up for election each year), and that the board chooses a director from amongst its members. Eligibility for election to the executive board is simply demonstrable participation in digital medieval activities or board-sanctioned equivalancies. These bylaws also state its commitment to be a non-profit organization, and its general purposes and objectives.Membership
Membership in Digital Medievalist is free and open to all. The sole criterion for membership is subscription to its free online discussion list 'dm-l'. Membership conveys the right to vote in Digital Medievalist elections, and if they have contributed in some meaningful manner, eligibility to run for election to the Digital Medievalist executive board.Activities of Digital Medievalist
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
and delivered with Apache Cocoon
Apache Cocoon
Apache Cocoon, usually just called Cocoon, is a web application framework built around the concepts of pipeline, separation of concerns and component-based web development. The framework focuses on XML and XSLT publishing and is built using the Java programming language...
.
Mailing List
Digital Medievalist runs an electronic mailing list and discussion forum (dm-l) where members of the community ask for advice, share problems, and discuss issues that affect them. The discussion list currently has around 540 members, many of whom are drawn from widely across the Humanities Computing field. The list traffic is low, with occasional bursts of interest in a particular issue, but is primarily used for announcements of interest to digital medievalists.Journal
Digital Medievalist runs a free peer-reviewed open-access online journal, also called 'Digital Medievalist', which acts as a journal of record for the digital medieval studies field. In many ways this is seen as the most significant output of Digital Medievalist and is where the majority of volunteer effort is directed. The journal has an entry in the Directory of Open Access JournalsDirectory of Open Access Journals
The Directory of Open Access Journals is website maintained by Lund University which lists open access journals. The project defines open access journals as scientific and scholarly journals that meet high quality standards by exercising peer review or editorial quality control and "use a funding...
listed under the fields of both Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
and History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. The Digital Medievalist ISSN number is 17150736, and University of Lethbridge is listed as the official publisher. The journal accepts submissions of articles on things digital and medieval from in the 1000-10000 word range. Submissions should be emailed to editors _at_ digitalmedievalist.org for consideration. The journal appears to release about one issue every year since 2005. It has experimented with different formats of releases, for example issue 3 is a rolling-release that previously submitted articles are being added to over time, while issue 4 was a thematic issue of articles arising out of the work of a cognate organization Digital Classicist
Digital Classicist
The Digital Classicist is a project and community for those interested in the application of Humanities Computing to the field of Classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the...
in memory of a well-known academic in the field of digital humanities, Ross Scaife
Ross Scaife
Allen Ross Scaife was a Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky.-Life:...
. In addition to experimenting with different models of publication, the project has taken an innovative stance on the problems of academic acceptance of research articles published online. This the use of so-called 'Ostentatious Peer Review', that is, the accepting editor and the recommending reader who reviewed the article have their name listed as doing so. The theory is that both the editors and reviewers do a better job (since their name is in evidence for everyone to see) and also by attracting big names in the medieval studies
Medieval studies
-Development:The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books like G. G. Coulton's Ten Medieval Studies , to emphasize a greater interdisciplinary approach to a historical subject...
and/or humanities computing community, the online publication of the article may be taken more seriously by academic hiring and tenure committees. While there is informal hearsay evidence that this might be beneficial, and certainly leads to a higher editorial standard than some online journals, there is no hard evidence (yet) that this affects hiring committees.
Wiki/FAQ
Digital Medievalist has a MediaWikiMediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
-based wiki which it uses to store information of interest to the digital medieval research community. Previously the wiki was quite full, but in a recent re-engineering of its technical infrastructure the old wiki pages (much laden with wiki-spam) were removed while upgrading to a new version of mediawiki. Although the intention is to slowly add back this material, the wiki is not as robust as once was.
News Server
Digital Medievalist has a home-grown news server, publishing and storing news using the Atom (standard)Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
. Anyone is allowed to submit a news item which undergoes a moderation process by a member of the executive board before being posted. This News Server can be used to announce new publications, software, or project, issue calls for papers, or promote conferences and congresses. The atom feed is also directly available for inclusion in feed readers.
Conferences and Events
Digital Medievalist as an umbrella group for a community interested in digital methodologies in medieval studies has organized conference sessions many years at the most prestigious academic Medieval studiesMedieval studies
-Development:The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books like G. G. Coulton's Ten Medieval Studies , to emphasize a greater interdisciplinary approach to a historical subject...
conferences in existence. For example, the International Congress on Medieval Studies organized by Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University is a public university located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo, and as of the Fall 2010 semester, its enrollment is 25,045....
and the International Medieval Congress organized by the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
amongst other conferences and events.
See also
- Digital ClassicistDigital ClassicistThe Digital Classicist is a project and community for those interested in the application of Humanities Computing to the field of Classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the...
- Medieval Unicode Font InitiativeMedieval Unicode Font InitiativeIn digital typography, the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative is a project which aims to coordinate the encoding and display of special characters in medieval texts written in the Latin alphabet, which are not encoded as part of Unicode....
- Digital classicsDigital classicsDigital classics is the application of the tools of digital humanities to the field of classics, or more broadly to the study of the ancient world.-History:...
- International Congress on Medieval StudiesInternational Congress on Medieval StudiesThe International Congress on Medieval Studies is an annual academic conference held for scholars specializing in, or with an interest in, medieval studies. It is sponsored by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan and is held during the first half of May...
- International Medieval CongressInternational Medieval CongressThe International Medieval Congress is an annual academic conference held for scholars specializing in, or with an interest in, the study of the European Middle Ages . It is organised and administered by the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds and is held during the second...
- Internet History Sourcebooks ProjectInternet History Sourcebooks ProjectThe Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the Fordham University History Department and Center for Medieval Studies. It is a web site with modern, medieval and ancient primary source documents, maps, secondary sources, bibliographies, images and music. Paul Halsall is the editor, with...
External links
- Digital Medievalist main site
- Intute:Arts And Humanities (formerly Humbul Humanities Hub) entry
- Directory of Open Access Journals entry
- Text Encoding Initiative
- TEI Wiki page on Digital Medievalist
- ABZU entry
- The Labyrinth: Resource for Medieval Studies
- ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies