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 < emcau...@library.ucla.edu> wrote: > 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/> > > >
