- What insights do you have about working in digital public humanities as a result of this experience?
The first thing I have recognized about Digital Public Humanities is the ignorance and confusion about it among the public and in academia.
When I introduce myself or attempt to explain my project, colleagues and acquaintances have difficulty both with the concept of “Humanities” as a multi-disciplinary subject and as an academic field of research. I remind them of longer standing multi-disciplinary areas: American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, Labor Studies, etc. Explain that “Studies” allows the individual the opportunity to draw from many disciplinary perspectives: History, Language, Literature, Psychology, Sociology, Religion, in order to form a fuller interpretation and understanding of a topic or society. Then comes the inevitable follow up question, “What makes it “digital”? Visual interpretation, academic interaction across media, crowd interaction and using new tools based to access massive data bases (Big Data, GIS and Public Records) allow us to aggregate and reconstruct our interpretations of human activity and expression.
Another perception is that a ‘discipline’ or ‘area of study’ it is needed, but the “Humanities” aspect, even more importantly the “History” aspect needs to be affirmed as integral to the field.
Academics seize on the “new tools” and think the field is strictly about learning how to use or create programs. The idea of the impact of tools on interpretation is not “new” in American History, Charles & Mary Beard had to defend their “new” methods. Socially, we have adopted computers as aids to searching and collecting, but just as we have discovered ‘scientific medicine’ has biases and unintended consequences; we are just in the infancy of discovering how computing will shape and inform our culture.
“Professionalization” in the field is running ahead of its articulation of itself. I attended a digital humanities conference this past summer (which I will not publicly defame). It claimed design to facilitate the merging of technical skills and disciplines; but sessions skewed technical, discipline based or ‘sponsored’ by organizations with an agenda. Cross disciplinary dialogue and integration was limited. I have also noticed that already a “boiler plate” has been adopted by Human Resource Professionals, who have been charged with creating job descriptions for this new unfamiliar field. In the short term (3 years) I have been studying the field, already an extraordinary number of Digital Humanities job openings are requiring Library Science degrees. Library Science certainly aligns well, but for many projects, the analysis and interpretation of the humanities based disciplines is critical to meeting the goals of creativity, human insight and the creation of new knowledge.
Like any other Humanities discipline, research requires time and money.
Knowledge does not come cheap. Research is a journey in detection. Uncovering or following the threads of an idea require time-consuming investigation. In Digital Humanities, a portion of the cost is in new tools: creating, gaining experience with or licenses. Presentation requires preparation time and resources. As we move from text-based to visual culture, the cost of digitizing must be incorporated. Access to text has become cheaper, faster, but compilation, resolution, transference of images, while less cumbersome is still evolving. Storage is still an issue.
Finally, ‘It Takes a Village!”
Historians have always relied on communities; archivists & librarians that lead us to materials, experts that share insight or stories pertaining to streams in our topics and other artists, poets and scholars. Digital Public Humanities requires a broader inclusion of technical skills, technicians and new emphasis on artistic and commercial skills.
2. What new questions or ideas do you have as a result of this experience?
Can Historians continue to capture and make ‘human experience over time’ relevant? As the digital age has overtaken us, a culture of “immediacy” has also emerged. Students and ‘the public’ want information that is immediately relevant, aesthetically designed and easy to digest. “Pondering the Past” is not in fashion. ‘Looking back’ to search for answers is devalued in the face of creating new solutions, methods and future goals. Even the short 400 years of American Experience is being condensed or eliminated in our schools in favor of teaching more “applicable” skills. I came to Digital Public Humanities in my search to make my discipline; that emphasizes reflection on the past, interpreting the deeper meanings of human experience and tracking historic patterns and forces to foster richer and strategic decision making, more relevant and accessible. I am still asking, “How can I help people recognize the value of their past?”
