Bryan's answer is very well thought out and jibes with my understanding of this topic, too.
________________________________________ From: Code for Libraries <CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU> on behalf of Bryan Brown <bjbr...@fsu.edu> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 11:49 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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 <natalie.mey...@nd.edu> 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 <matt.r.sher...@gmail.com> > 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: *natalie.mey...@nd.edu > > <http://library.nd.edu/> >
