Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins. – Mark 2:22 Since the time of my first foray into digital humanities as a newly minted graduate working on a project [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Favorites'
New Wine in Old Skins: Why the CV needs hacking
May 27th, 2010 · 7 Comments
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites
Why Digital Humanities is “Nice”
May 26th, 2010 · 6 Comments
One of the things that people often notice when they enter the field of digital humanities is how nice everybody is. This can be in stark contrast to other (unnamed) disciplines where suspicion, envy, and territoriality sometimes seem to rule. By contrast, our most commonly used bywords are “collegiality,” “openness,” and “collaboration.” We welcome new [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites
THATCamp Groundrules
May 24th, 2010 · 3 Comments
After giving my “groundrules” speech for a third THATCamp on Saturday, I realized I hadn’t published it anywhere for broader dissemination and possible reuse by the THATCamp community. So here they are, THATCamp’s three groundrules: THATCamp is FUN – That means no reading papers, no powerpoint presentations, no extended project demos, and especially no grandstanding. [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites
Where’s the Beef? Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?
May 12th, 2010 · 8 Comments
The criticism most frequently leveled at digital humanities is what I like to call the “Where’s the beef?” question, that is, what questions does digital humanities answer that can’t be answered without it? What humanities arguments does digital humanities make? Concern over the apparent lack of argument in digital humanities comes not only from outside [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites · History of Science · Tools
Rethinking Access
March 31st, 2010 · Comments Off
[This week and next I'll be facilitating the discussion of "Learning & Information" at the IMLS UpNext: Future of Museums and Libraries wiki. The following is adapted from the first open thread. Please leave any comments at UpNext to join in the wider discussion!] In addition to the questions posted on the main page for [...]
Tags: Favorites · Libraries · Museums
“Soft” [money] is not a four-letter word
March 26th, 2010 · 3 Comments
I will be the first to say that I have been, and continue to be, extremely lucky. As I explained in an earlier post, I have managed to strike a workable employment model somewhere between tenured professor and transient post-doc, expendable adjunct, or subservient staffer, a more or less happy “third way” that provides relative security, creative opportunity, and [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites · Management
3 Innovation Killers in Digital Humanities
October 16th, 2009 · No Comments
Here’s a list of three questions one might overhear in a peer review panel for digital humanities funding, each of which can kill a project in its tracks: Haven’t X, Y, and Z already done this? We shouldn’t be supporting duplication of effort. Are all of the stakeholders on board? (Hat tip to @patrickgmj for [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites · Management
Thinking the Unthinkable
March 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Clay Shirky’s widely circulated post, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, has got me thinking about the “unthinkable” in humanities scholarship. According to Shirky, in the world of print journalism, the unthinkable was the realization that newspapers would not be able to transfer their scarcity-of-information-based business model to the internet. It was publishers’ inability to imagine [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites
Brand Name Scholar
February 26th, 2009 · 6 Comments
Scholars may not like it, but that doesn’t change the fact that in the 21st century’s fragmented media environment, marketing and branding are key to disseminating the knowledge and tools we produce. This is especially true in the field of digital humanities, where we are competing for attention not only with other humanists and other [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites · Libraries · Management · Marketing · Mozilla · Museums · Open Source · Twitter
Making It Count: Toward a Third Way
October 2nd, 2008 · 7 Comments
Over the summer there was much discussion among my colleagues about making digital humanities work “count” in academic careers. This included two fantastic threads on Mills Kelly’s Edwired blog, a great post by Kathy Davidson, and an informal chat on our own Digital Campus podcast. As usual the topic of tenure also undergirded discussions at [...]
Tags: Digital Humanities · Favorites · Management

