The Digital Humanities
Encyclopedia
The digital humanities is an area of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities
. Sometimes called humanities computing, the field has focused on the digitization and analysis of materials related to the traditional disciplines of the humanities. Digital Humanities currently incorporates both digitized and born-digital materials and combines the methodologies from the traditional humanities disciplines (such as history
, philosophy
, linguistics
, literature
, art
, archaeology
, music
, and cultural studies
) with tools provided by computing
(such as data visualisation, information retrieval
, data mining
computational analysis
) and digital publishing.
in the traditional arts
and humanities
disciplines like it is done in contemporary empirical social sciences
.
Another goal is to create scholarship that is more than texts and papers. This includes the integration of multimedia
, metadata
and dynamic environments. A dynamic scholarly document would no longer resemble a linear narrative. An example of this is The Valley of the Shadow
project at the University of Virginia
or the Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
at University of Southern California
.
A growing number of researchers in digital humanities are working on using computational tools for the analysis of large cultural data sets. For the examples of these projects, see Humanities High Performance Computing competition sponsored by NEH Office of Digital Humanities in 2008, and also Digging Into Data 2009 Challenge awards.
Digital humanities research can also be categorized in another way. Many humanists want to use computational tools to help them answer already existing research questions. Others are interested in how use of computational analysis can challenge the existing theoretical paradigms, generating new questions and leading to new paradigms.
At present formal academic recognition of digital work in the humanities remains somewhat problematic. Socially this has to do with the slow pace of institutional change. Intellectually it has to do with the curious, poorly understood nature of non-verbal knowledge-bearing objects, or what Davis Baird has called thing knowledge. Curatorially it raises the serious problem of how such knowledge-bearing objects are to be preserved for the long term. Culturally it runs afoul of the low status commonly given to works of popular culture -- multimedia, documentaries, interactive games and other visual media -- which tend to be dismissed as entertainment. The increasing volume of important scholarship in the digital humanities suggests, however, that recognition is unavoidable and that serious attention is urgently needed to the understanding and preserving of these digital objects of knowledge.
tool, or writing a specialised program for a particular task in a single project, the Digital Humanities draws on the existing body of expertise on the topic, and tools that have been made freely available and customizable, to build solutions that can be repurposed and in turn shared with the open source
community.
(ADHO). The alliance funds a number of projects such as the Digital Humanities Quarterly
, supports the Text Encoding Initiative
, the organisation and sponsoring of workshops and conferences, as well as the funding of small projects, awards and bursaries.
ADHO also oversees a joint annual conference, which began as the ACH/ALLC (or ALLC/ACH) conference, and is now known as the Digital Humanities conference
.
Another threat faced is the accompanying inevitable underuse of contextual information, which also means the undervaluation of the fundamental semiotic
aspects of humanities.
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. Sometimes called humanities computing, the field has focused on the digitization and analysis of materials related to the traditional disciplines of the humanities. Digital Humanities currently incorporates both digitized and born-digital materials and combines the methodologies from the traditional humanities disciplines (such as 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...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
) with tools provided by computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
(such as data visualisation, information retrieval
Information retrieval
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
, data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
computational analysis
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
) and digital publishing.
Objectives
Digital humanities work has a number of goals. One goal is to systematically integrate computer technology into their scholarly activities, such as the use of text-analytic techniques; GIS; commons-based peer collaboration; interactive games and multimediaMultimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
in the traditional arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
disciplines like it is done in contemporary empirical social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
.
Another goal is to create scholarship that is more than texts and papers. This includes the integration of multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
, metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
and dynamic environments. A dynamic scholarly document would no longer resemble a linear narrative. An example of this is The Valley of the Shadow
The Valley of the Shadow
This page is about an American Civil war project. For other uses, see Valley of the Shadow The Valley of the Shadow is a digital history project hosted by the University of Virginia detailing the experiences of Confederate soldiers from Augusta County, Virginia and Union soldiers from Franklin...
project at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
or the Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
Vectors is an international online journal produced by the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Launched in March 2005, the journal's current issue is its fifth, titled "Difference". Through all of the issues, Vectors has featured over thirty scholarly new media...
at University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
.
A growing number of researchers in digital humanities are working on using computational tools for the analysis of large cultural data sets. For the examples of these projects, see Humanities High Performance Computing competition sponsored by NEH Office of Digital Humanities in 2008, and also Digging Into Data 2009 Challenge awards.
Digital humanities research can also be categorized in another way. Many humanists want to use computational tools to help them answer already existing research questions. Others are interested in how use of computational analysis can challenge the existing theoretical paradigms, generating new questions and leading to new paradigms.
At present formal academic recognition of digital work in the humanities remains somewhat problematic. Socially this has to do with the slow pace of institutional change. Intellectually it has to do with the curious, poorly understood nature of non-verbal knowledge-bearing objects, or what Davis Baird has called thing knowledge. Curatorially it raises the serious problem of how such knowledge-bearing objects are to be preserved for the long term. Culturally it runs afoul of the low status commonly given to works of popular culture -- multimedia, documentaries, interactive games and other visual media -- which tend to be dismissed as entertainment. The increasing volume of important scholarship in the digital humanities suggests, however, that recognition is unavoidable and that serious attention is urgently needed to the understanding and preserving of these digital objects of knowledge.
Standards
Because of the interactive and academic nature of digital scholarship, scholars are particularly concerned with open standards and with generic, durable solutions to academic needs of the community. Rather than relying on a proprietaryProprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
tool, or writing a specialised program for a particular task in a single project, the Digital Humanities draws on the existing body of expertise on the topic, and tools that have been made freely available and customizable, to build solutions that can be repurposed and in turn shared with the open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
community.
Terminology
The terminological change from "humanities computing" to "digital humanities" has been attributed to John Unsworth and Ray Siemens who, as editors of the monograph A Companion to Digital Humanities (2001), tried to prevent the field from being viewed as "mere digitization." Consequently, the hybrid term has created an overlap between fields like rhetoric and composition, which use "the methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects," and digital humanities, which uses "digital technology in studying traditional humanities objects".Organizations and Institutions
The field of digital humanities is served by several organisations: The Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), and the Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (SDH/SEMI), which are joined under the umbrella organisation of the Alliance of Digital Humanities OrganizationsAlliance of Digital Humanities Organizations
The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, or ADHO, is a digital humanities umbrella organization formed in 2005 to coordinate the activities of the , the , and the .-History:...
(ADHO). The alliance funds a number of projects such as the Digital Humanities Quarterly
Digital Humanities Quarterly
Digital Humanities Quarterly is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities. The journal is also a community experiment in journal publication....
, supports the Text Encoding Initiative
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....
, the organisation and sponsoring of workshops and conferences, as well as the funding of small projects, awards and bursaries.
ADHO also oversees a joint annual conference, which began as the ACH/ALLC (or ALLC/ACH) conference, and is now known as the Digital Humanities conference
Digital Humanities conference
The Digital Humanities series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of digital humanities. It is hosted by Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and has been held annually since 1990. It attracts hundreds of international attendees...
.
Problems and limitations
The development of digital humanities enforces the building up of digital resources of humanist data, but this also leads to the appearance of legal issues. Due to the (direct or indirect) sensitivity of some of this data more and more restrictions to access of the databases or their parts are going to be introduced.Another threat faced is the accompanying inevitable underuse of contextual information, which also means the undervaluation of the fundamental semiotic
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
aspects of humanities.
Centers
- Center for History and New MediaCenter for History and New MediaThe Center for History and New Media at George Mason University was established by Roy Rosenzweig in 1994 to research and use digital media and information technology in historical research, education, digital tools and resources, digital preservation, and outreach.- Digital preservation...
- Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Loyola University, Chicago
- Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London
- Digital Humanities at Oxford University
- Institute for Advanced Technology in the HumanitiesInstitute for Advanced Technology in the HumanitiesThe Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is a research unit of the University of Virginia, USA. Its goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, IATH provide Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications...
- Maryland Institute for Technology in the HumanitiesMaryland Institute for Technology in the HumanitiesThe Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities is an internationally recognized, rapidly growing research center that is helping to transform the humanities in an era of new media and global information...
- UCL Centre for Digital HumanitiesUCL Centre for Digital HumanitiesThe UCL Centre for Digital Humanities is a research centre within the Department of Information Studies of University College London. The Digital Humanities is a multidisciplinary field at the intersection of the humanities and information science...
- Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
- Software Studies Initiative, University of California, San Diego
- Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH)
- Center for Digital Humanities, University of South Carolina, Columbia
- Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Journals
- Literary and Linguistic ComputingLiterary and Linguistic ComputingLiterary and Linguistic Computing is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing focusing on digital scholarship in the humanities. It covers all aspects of computing and information technology applied to literature and language research and teaching....
- Digital Studies
- Digital MedievalistDigital MedievalistDigital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities.- History :...
- Digital Humanities QuarterlyDigital Humanities QuarterlyDigital Humanities Quarterly is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities. The journal is also a community experiment in journal publication....
- Southern SpacesSouthern SpacesSouthern Spaces is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal that publishes articles, photo essays and images, presentations, and short videos about real and imagined spaces and places of the Southern United States and their connections to the wider world...
Miscellaneous
- Computers and writingComputers and writingComputers and Writing is the name of a sub-field of college English studies whose members are dedicated to the academic study of how computers, as well as other, related digital technologies, affect literacy and the writing process...
- Computational archaeologyComputational archaeologyComputational archaeology describes computer-based analytical methods for the study of long-term human behaviour and behavioural evolution. As with other sub-disciplines that have prefixed 'computational' to their name Computational archaeology describes computer-based analytical methods for the...
- CybertextCybertextCybertext is the organization of text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997...
- Cultural analyticsCultural analyticsCultural analytics is the exploration and research of massive cultural data sets of visual material - both digitized visual artifacts and contemporary visual and interactive media...
- 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...
- Digital libraryDigital libraryA digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
- Digital MedievalistDigital MedievalistDigital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities.- History :...
- Digital historyDigital historyDigital history is the use of digital media and tools for historical practice, presentation, analysis, and research. It is a branch of the Digital Humanities and an outgrowth of Quantitative history, Cliometrics, and History and Computing...
- Electronic Cultural Atlas InitiativeElectronic Cultural Atlas InitiativeThe Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative is a digital humanities initiative involving numerous academic professors and institutions around the world with the stated goal of creating a networked digital atlas by creating tools and setting standards for dynamic, digital maps.ECAI was established in...
- Electronic literatureElectronic literatureElectronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works of literature that originate within digital environments.-Definitions:N. Katherine Hayles discusses the topic in the online article...
- EpiDocEpiDocThe EpiDoc Collaborative, building recommendations for structured markup of epigraphic documents in TEI XML, was originally formed in 2000 by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Tom Elliott, the former director of the Ancient World Mapping Center, with Hugh Cayless and Amy...
- Humanistic informaticsHumanistic informaticsHumanistic informatics is one of several names chosen for the study of the relationship between human culture and technology...
- Multimedia literacy
- New mediaNew mediaNew media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
- Systems theorySystems theorySystems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
- StylometryStylometryStylometry is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language, but it has successfully been applied to music and to fine-art paintings as well.Stylometry is often used to attribute authorship to anonymous or disputed documents...
- Text Encoding InitiativeText Encoding InitiativeThe 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....
- Text miningText miningText mining, sometimes alternately referred to as text data mining, roughly equivalent to text analytics, refers to the process of deriving high-quality information from text. High-quality information is typically derived through the devising of patterns and trends through means such as...
- Topic ModelingTopic modelIn machine learning and natural language processing, a topic model is a type of statistical model for discovering the abstract "topics" that occur in a collection of documents. An early topic model was probabilistic latent semantic indexing , created by Thomas Hofmann in 1999...
- TransliteracyTransliteracyTransliteracy is The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. The modern meaning of the term combines literacy with the prefix trans-, which means "across;...