William G. Thomas III (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) offers a typology for digital scholarship in the humanities, which will be discussed in greater depth in the upcoming revised edition of Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Humanities. Thomas notes that the definitions “are not meant to exclude or restrict the definition of digital scholarship. Indeed, I hope these definitions might provoke some further discussion about how to undertake reviews of digital scholarship.”
The types, in brief, are:
Interactive Scholarly Works
“These works are hybrids of archival materials and tool components, and are situated around a historiographically significant or critical concern. These works often assert a methodological argument as well, demonstrating that the combination of tools and materials serves as a method worthy of applying to the problem.”
Digital Projects or Thematic Research Collections
“Combining tools and archival materials framed around a historiographically significant or critical problem, these projects are sprawling investigations into a major problem.”
Digital Narratives
“These scholarly works are born-digital, and they primarily feature a work of scholarly interpretation or argument embedded within layers of evidence and citation. They do not and presumably cannot exist in analog fashion.”
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