I like Bryan's answer as well. I've heard a lot of comments and jokes
about the difficulty of defining digital humanities; this site gives a
different definition each time you refresh the page:
http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/
Nick
Nick Szydlowski
Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Boston College Law School
617 552-4474
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 3:04 PM, McAulay, Elizabeth <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Bryan's answer is very well thought out and jibes with my understanding of
> this topic, too.
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Bryan
> Brown <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 11:49 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Definitional Question
>
> Hi Matt,
>
> I work in the Technology & Digital Scholarship department of Florida State
> University Libraries, and I spent my first few months trying to come up
> answers to those exact questions. Here's what I came up with:
>
> Digital humanities is the act of doing humanities scholarship using
> research methods enabled by new technology. The archetypical digital
> humanities project in my mind is text mining. If you are coming up with
> humanities "data" and using data analysis tools on it, you are probably
> doing DH work (IMHO).
>
> Digital scholarship is the idea of DH, but extended outside of DH to all
> scholarship. How does new technology affect scholarship in psychology?
> biochemistry? law? A big problem that I see with "digital scholarship" is
> that I have yet to hear anyone outside of libraries or DH communities use
> it. The humanities havent always been so digital, so the term "Digital
> Humanities" is a semi-useful term to differentiate this specific form of
> research from more "traditional" methods. The "digital" prefix has less
> utility outside of humanities; science has always been pretty digital out
> of necessity and other fields have adopted digital methods as they go. I've
> heard librarians use the term e-science sometimes, and it reminds me of the
> term "e-business" back in the 90's but now almost all business is
> e-business so the term no longer makes much sense. Most scholarship these
> days is digital, which makes defining digital scholarship as something
> special a bit difficult.
>
> In our department we use digital scholarship to refer to parts of the
> scholarship process that are more technology-oriented where faculty might
> not be aware of general best practices. Data management, research metadata,
> altmetrics, web publishing and licensing are some areas that we try to
> focus on supporting faculty. We aren't a huge department and we're learning
> as we go, so discussing what digital scholarship means and how we can
> provide value to faculty members is a big point of discussion (although I'm
> sure we all have our own definitions and ideas).
>
> Just one person's opinion, I hope that doesn't confuse things further.
> -Bryan Brown
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Natalie Meyers <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > this title may be of interest :
> > Defining Digital Humanities A Reader Edited by Melissa Terras, Julianne
> > Nyhan and Edward Vanhoutte December 2013 978-1-4094-6963-6 $44.95
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Matt Sherman <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > This is a bit more philosophical question which might only apply to a
> few
> > > people but I am trying to work out some definitions for my own
> > > edification. So for those in the digital scholarship and digital
> > > humanities subset I would be interested in getting some thoughts on
> these
> > > three questions:
> > >
> > > 1) How would you define digital scholarship?
> > >
> > > 2) How would you define digital humanities?
> > >
> > > 3) Are they the same thing and why or why not?
> > >
> > > Any thoughts are appreciated as I am trying to think through this
> myself.
> > >
> > > Matt Sherman
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *Natalie K. Meyers*
> >
> > *E-Research & VecNet Digital Librarian*
> >
> > *Hesburgh Libraries*
> >
> > *University of Notre Dame*
> > 1136A Hesburgh Library
> > Notre Dame, IN 46556
> > *o:* 574-631-1546
> > *f:* 574-631-6772
> > *e: *[log in to unmask]
> >
> > <http://library.nd.edu/>
> >
>
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