Eleanor Dickson (University of Illinois) and Elizabeth Kelly (Loyola University New Orleans) are the founders and co-chairs of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Digital Library Pedagogy group, launched in late 2015 with the goal of building a community of practice around teaching with and about digital collections. In this post, Dickson and Kelly report on the activities of the group, sharing themes that have emerged and offering opportunities to participate in next steps.
The DLF Digital Library Pedagogy group’s founding reflects a growing interest within the DLF community in teaching with and about digital libraries. Many sessions at both the 2015 Liberal Arts Colleges Preconference and the DLF Forum in Vancouver centered on issues relating to instruction and digital libraries. Discussions surrounding these sessions prompted the formation of the group, largely through word-of-mouth after the DLF Forum. Over 150 members have joined since the group formed in December 2015.
Several overarching themes emerged from the chats:
Teaching & Pedagogy
The first was, unsurprisingly, aspects of teaching and pedagogy as they relate to digital libraries. Members of the email list vary in their professional affiliations and responsibilities, but many are librarians at academic institutions who are responsible for providing information literacy and technology instruction that often fall under the umbrella of digital humanities or digital scholarship. Others are library school faculty teaching a future workforce of digital librarians. Participants wanted to learn how to teach with resources that can be found in digital libraries including digitized museum and archives/special collections material, web archives, and social media content. Additionally, Tweeters expressed an interest in teaching digital stewardship[1. An excellent discussion of the difference between digital preservation, curation, and stewardship can be found at the Library of Congress Digital Preservation blog.], the process of creating, preserving, curating, and disseminating digital materials.[2.Especially appropriate as the DLF is now the host of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA).] Finally, the group mentioned the importance of digital library teaching resources that speak to diversity and inclusivity. As archivists and librarians work to acknowledge the role that bias plays in how we collect, preserve, and describe collections, we must consider how these biases are reflected and addressed in library instruction.
Resource Sharing & Skills Development
To better support teaching, the Digital Library Pedagogy group would like to engage in resource sharing and professional skills development. Ideas for sharing resources included the creation of a lesson plan or sample assignments âcookbook,â as well as class sharing or co-teaching, an exciting possibility for librarians and faculty with limited instructional opportunities interested in gaining experience in the classroom and receiving mentorship from more experienced practitioners. Group members need opportunities and support for developing professional skills. These could take the form of tutorials, webinars, workshops for learning how to use particular tools, developing lesson plans, and evaluating instruction.
Outreach
Finally, there is a need for best practices for outreach and collaboration. Library instruction and digital humanities/digital scholarship projects are often partnerships between librarians, archivists, teaching faculty, technologists, students, and others. How do successful collaborators initially make connections, and how do they maintain those connections? How can those who successfully cooperate with colleagues both inside and outside of their institution impart that knowledge and expertise to others?
Subgroups are currently forming around these three concepts. Those interested in joining a subgroup can add their name to a sign-up list, and be sure to join the Google group for up-to-date information. You can read more about the most recent Twitter chats in either the spreadsheet or Storyfied versions. Our next Twitter chat will be Tuesday, July 12 at 2PM and 8PM EST using the hashtag #DLFteach, and you can follow us at @ElizabethJelly and @EllieDickson. The full schedule of future Twitter chats is posted on the Digital Library Pedagogy webpage.
Librarians have a long history with the digital humanities. And yet, here we are: four years after the first meeting of the ACRL Digital Humanities Interest Group, three years after digital humanities in libraries was framed as an âemerging trendâ in a special issue of the Journal of Library Administration, two years after ACRL crowned it a âtop trend,â one year after the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations formally recognized a library-oriented special interest group. The formerly-scarce literature on digital humanities and librarianship is now checkered with special issues, edited volumes, and articles, and itâs no longer rare to find (or hire) Digital Humanities or Digital Scholarship Librarians. As our professional field progresses from nascent to established, has our scholarship kept pace with our concerns? dh+lib is seeking new works that examine the intersection of digital humanities and librarianship (writ large) for inclusion in a special issue to be published in July 2016.
Keeping with the experimental spirit of our project we invite submissions that complicate existing narratives and pose big questions to the field. Where are we, and where might we be going? Who are âweâ? dh+lib is looking to feature provocative ideas about the state of dh/libraries and get a sense of what our community thinks are the issues at stake in the dh/library world. New voices and submissions from grad students or junior scholars are especially encouraged. Perspectives from outside the U.S. are particularly welcome.
Submissions may take the form of short essays (between 750 and 1500 words long) or responses in other media that are of comparable length. Possible topics include:
Whatâs in a name: digital humanities or digital scholarship or digital libraries or digital archives?
How is LIS education approaching digital humanities? How should it?
How are the digital humanities incorporating LIS areas of research and inquiry? Are they?
Digital humanities, digital pedagogy, and library instruction: where do they intersect?
Have the digital humanities prompted librarians to think differently about issues of access, inclusion, or ethics in digital libraries?
Whose voices are missing from digital humanities & libraries discussions?
How have librarians from all over the library organization (technical services, reference, special collections) been involved in the digital humanities? How might they be?
How have challenges with time, resources, and/or expertise affected digital humanities activities in libraries?
Is there a labor problem in digital humanities?
Please send your proposals in the form of a 250-word abstract and a brief biographical statement to the Editors at dhandlib.acrl@gmail.com by April 18, 2016.
Do you ever wonder what digital humanities (DH) programs are simmering at other institutions? How others got involved with DH or libraries and archives? What emergent theory is guiding this area? How galleries and museums are encountering and implicated by DH (and vice versa)?
dh+lib is pleased to introduce Scene Reports, a series that aims to tell the broader story of DH and galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) through short interviews or write ups, looking at the theorists and practitioners, the communities and scenes, that make up the larger picture of GLAM DH.
At a moment when our community is growing and shifting in both subtle and substantial ways, Scene Reports constitute a lightweight, collaborative ethnographic effort to represent the diversity and reach at the intersection of GLAM and DH. The series kicks off with a look at the people and work coming out of liberal arts colleges, as represented by attendees at the 2015 Digital Library Federation Forum’sLiberal Arts Colleges Preconference (#dlfLAC).
dh+lib seeks to publish reports from all different types of institutions and individuals: we want the full scope of our community to be represented here. We expect to be collecting Scene Reports on a rolling basis, with intermittent calls for participation.
The Editors would like to thank three wonderful colleagues: dh+lib Contributing Editor Josh Honn (Northwestern University), who suggested the framing of Scene Reports, and Laurie Allen and Kelcy Shepherd, enthusiastic and insightful pilots of the process.
In July 2013, the Humanities and History team at Columbia University Libraries announced a new project to reskill librarians for digital scholarship in a post on dh+lib. Now, the Developing Librarian team has announced the launch of their collaborative project, Morningside Heights Digital History, an Omeka-based online exhibit. We’ve reproduced their announcement below as a follow-up to that initial post, to close the loop on one library’s efforts to “bridge the gap between IT and subject librarianship.” âthe Editors
Two years ago we in the Columbia University Libraries for the Humanities & History Division announced a professional development program. In our first iteration of the Developing Librarian project or, as we refer to it on social media, the #devlib project, our goal was to build a common project using an adaptation of the Praxis model for professional librarians. Today, the Developing Librarian team is proud to announce the launch of our site, Morningside Heights Digital History, or MHDH.
After an initial round of “introductions” to the technologies and skills needed to design our site, we divided into teams: design, editorial, management and development. For a more detailed breakdown of our different roles visit our credits page. The project was built on the Omeka platform, using the Neatline plugin for the interactive map and an interactive tour of the Butler Library Mural, and the Exhibit Builder for our different exhibits. We chose the Berlin theme, and modified it to suit our needs. The research was done individually, but we shared bibliographic and archival resources. We documented the process throughout on our Developing Librarian blog.
When we set out to do this as a team, we wanted to accomplish much: to expand our ability to support and consult in digital humanities, to hone our research skills, to bridge the gap between IT and subject librarianship, and to bond as a team by sharing a common project. We feel we have accomplished all of these and more. In particular, we find all aspects of our work as a team have benefited from developing a project together. Learning to build consensus around difficult issues will have a lasting effect on all we do in the libraries and on campus.
We have many people to thank for this project: our technology team and library administrators in the Columbia University Libraries, who have seen the importance of flexibility in the technical infrastructure for our training efforts. We are also appreciative of all the conversations and feedback from colleagues at many universities, including University of Indiana, University of Minnesota, University of Virginia, University of Florida, New York University, and Duke University.
Following this first phase of our project, we will continue our professional development through a series of targeted training sessions for and by our team and others at Columbia University Libraries. We will continue to share what we learn on our blog. We have grown as individuals and as a team during the past three years of this project. In the next phase, we will expand this model to enhance our own research (for example, one team member will be using digital tools to assess variant versions of an unpublished play by Tennessee Williams), following a model pioneered by Trevor Muñoz and MITH in their Digital Humanities Incubator for libraries.We will also be partnering with faculty to create and co-teach digital labs attached to traditional humanities courses, to improve our digital pedagogical skills. We have always emphasized process over product in this training, but we are excited to share our web exhibit and this model for future professional development at Columbia and elsewhere.
How are the Digital Humanities finding their way into art libraries? In this post, Sarah Long (Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) reviews a DH workshop preceding the ARLIS/NA annual conference. Â
The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), a professional organization of librarians in the arts, holds a week-long conference of sessions, workshops, tours, and meetings. The 43rd annual conference in Fort Worth, TX, explored the theme ânew frontiersâ of librarianship and the arts. Shining bright on the horizon is digital humanities, which made several appearances during conference week. Although I couldnât attend these twosessions, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop, The art of DH: an introduction to digital humanities tools for art librarians.
Workshop instructors Sarah Osborne Bender (Visual Resources Curator, American University); Sarah Falls (âHead of the Fine Arts Library, Ohio State University); and Jenna Rinalducci (Art and Art History Librarian, George Mason University) structured the event around an introductory group discussion, followed by experimentation with tools. Osborne Bender distributed two articles in advance of the workshop: Micah Vandegrift’s “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in the Library?” (2012) and James Cuno’s “How art history is failing at the Internet” (2012). Vandegrift’s article acted as a primer for the questions, complexities, and the future of DH and libraries while Cunoâs article set the tone of the workshop – emphasis on collaboration and the use of born-digital material in research that the tools will explore.
The tools presented were grouped into three categories and approaches: multimedia and interactive tools for presentation and library instruction, collections and data analysis tools for organization and visualization, and lastly, reverse image search tools for research and image analysis.
In the first part of the workshop, Rinalducci shared three programs – Animoto, ThingLink, and StoryMap – for using and presenting images in a more powerful way by creating interactive links and dynamic slideshows. These tools allow the user to tell moving stories and teach engaging lessons.
You may be familiar with Animoto, an elder statesman at nine years old. With this tool users can upload video, images, music, and text to create thirty-second video slideshows, which are easily exported to YouTube. Because you can create via the app, it is great for quickly presenting ideas.
ThingLink lets users create interactive images by annotating with live links, text, video, and audio. The application is easy to use and supports quick creation. The image is presented as a link that can be embedded, shared or posted with the annotations. I was able to create two ThingLinks during class time and tweeted them through @arlis_na:
— Art Libraries Society of North America (@ARLIS_NA) March 20, 2015
ThingLinkâs basic and educator accounts are free, with âproâ and âVIPâ account options available for a fee.
StoryMap is an impressive free tool that is supported by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University. More involved than the other presentation tools, it maps events and creates interactive and dynamic timelines. Users can track current or historical events or share images corresponding to geographical locations by embedding links, text, pictures, videos, and even links from other websites such as Twitter, Vine, SoundCloud, and Flickr. The main StoryMap website shares news outlets who have used the tool to enhance their stories. The Gigapixel option lets users navigate an image such as a work of art or custom map. An example from the website uses Gigapixel to show Arya Starkâs journey across Westeros (Game of Thrones spoilers). One major downside: it is not compatible with Internet Explorer. One feature, SnapMap, takes the last twenty geo-tagged images from an Instagram account and creates a map of your own journey.
Moving along from tools aimed at custom image presentation, Osborne Bender demonstrated Photogrammar, a site that searches photographs created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information, as an example of how data can be organized and reimagined. The site allows you group the results by county (photographs) or dots (photographers).
Osborne Bender then presented two open source tools to visualize and analyze data. We began with a brief description of how unstructured and structured data can be analyzed. With unstructured data you can track word use, see words in context, extract names, or compare contrast multiple texts. Voyant took our unstructured text file and gave us word clouds and instances of a word in text. With Voyant you can upload multiple texts to compare. Structured data enables you to identify variations and duplicates, and visualize data. ViewShare takes structured data in the form of CSV or XML MODS files and allows the user to organize and refine the data with different views and charts. We uploaded data from a museum collection and played around with the options. To get your data clean enough to use ViewShare, Osborne Bender mentioned tools like OpenRefine, but we did not have a chance to explore it.
For the final part of the workshop, Falls took us through several tools for conducting a reverse image search and image recognition ranging from the general, TinEye and Google, to the more specialized function sites, ImageRaider and RevImg. TinEye is a reliable resource, returning exact matches sorted by size, date, and relevance and can be used to ascertain the origin or occurrences of certain images. Google Image Search digs a little deeper with the results, with the focus on identification and research. It not only âguessesâ the subject of the image and provides a range of similar images, but the first few links relate to the subject matter with occurrences following. ImageRaider is an image recognition tool that promotes its strength in helping artists find unauthorized use of their work. Options include long-term monitoring and repeat searches. The idea behind RevImg is that a part of an image can be searched against an encyclopedia. Canât identify that flower? Isolate the plant in the image and search botanical indices. James Cuno states “with new improvements in image recognition software, we should be experimenting with ways of compiling archives of formal and iconographic incidents across hundreds and thousands of imagesâŠâ, but currently the number of websites and galleries sharing with RevImg is very limited.
Workshops like this aim to not only share and discuss new tools and ideas and their application to libraries, but also to introduce them to librarians who are curious about the role of digital humanities in their own community. Conferences and workshops always have a way of reinvigorating my enthusiasm for my job. Seeing what my colleagues have discovered and implemented, sharing what I have learned, and in this case, finding a whole lot of new and fun tools that I can experiment with, in the name of library instruction and art research.
Attending Digital Humanities 2015 in Sydney and interested in how libraries, archives, and museums contribute to global digital humanities? Join dh+lib, ACRL’s DH Interest Group, and the conference launch and reception (ending at 7:30) on Tuesday, June 30, 7:45-9:45pm, at Le Pub.
Attending the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and interested in how libraries, archives, and museums contribute to the “teaching, research, dissemination, creation, and preservation” of the digital humanities? Join dh+lib for an informal gathering on Tuesday, June 9, 6-8pm, at Smugglers Cove Pub.
Review Editor Caitlin Christian-Lamb will be there as the meetup organizer and dh+lib representative, but we’re counting on you to bring the conversation, merriment, and community!
For HASTAC 2015 attendees trying to decide what panels to go to, I’ve compiled a list of HASTAC sessions that mention libraries, archives, or museums in their descriptions – check it out, and feel free to add to it!
In this post, Chad Gaffield (University of Ottawa) reflects on the Association of Research Librariesâ 2014 Fall Forum.
The compelling, timely, and provocative title of the ARL Fall Forum 2014 could have been articulated several different ways. Rather than “Wanted Dead or Alive: The Scholarly Monograph,” the title might well have been “Wanted Dead or Alive: University Presses” or even, “Wanted Dead or Alive: Research Libraries.”
These alternatives came to mind during a stimulating and, at times, both inspiring and discouraging discussion of the rapidly changing and uncertain landscape of scholarly communication. I had the good fortune to be part of the closing panel that brought together highly respected leaders representing university presses, research libraries, and major funders.
My own contribution to this urgent and complex topic draws upon two professional experiences: first, as a professor of History (with related research and professional activities over the years); and as President and CEO between 2006 and 2014 of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the major funder of campus-based research, including support for knowledge mobilization such as scholarly monographs.
[pullquote]Even though the destiny of scholarly monographs may not determine the destiny of libraries or university presses, they all currently share many of the same underlying drivers of change[/pullquote]
One of the key strengths of the ARL Fall Forum was its explicit effort to use the focus of scholarly monographs to make connections among all those involved in its production, use, and preservation. Over the years, I have had many occasions to see a much more segmented approach involving separate meetings of publishers or librarians or funders or academics.
In fact, it has often surprised me to learn that leaders from the same post-secondary institution have each left campus without the knowledge of their colleagues to develop strategic plans with their counterparts at other institutions. The resulting plans of librarians, publishers, scholars, provosts, or research vice-presidents have sometimes overlapped but more often have exposed competing and contradictory assumptions that defy integration at the institutional level.
For this reason, the ARL Fall Forum rightly focused on the urgent need for a common understanding of the desired eco-system of scholarly communication within which different participants can identify their specific and complementary roles, contributions, and responsibilities. Even though the destiny of scholarly monographs may not determine the destiny of libraries or university presses, they all currently share many of the same underlying drivers of change.
[pullquote]We do not live in a technologically-driven age but we do live in a technologically-enabled age that is proving to be paradigm-shifting, with DH often leading the way[/pullquote]
My perspective first situates the question of scholarly monographs within the larger campus contexts of professorial careers, institutional imperatives, and fiscal conditions. In turn, I place these contexts within the profound conceptual changes that are being enabled, accelerated, and influenced by digital technologies, as illustrated by the field now called Digital Humanities (DH). We do not live in a technologically-driven age but we do live in a technologically-enabled age that is proving to be paradigm-shifting, with DH often leading the way.
One of the most insightful texts about these deep changes was published fifty years ago. In a substantial report entitled Libraries of the Future, J.C.R. Licklider presented the results of a two-year inquiry into how computers could be used in “library work â i.e., the operations connected with assembling information in recorded form and of organizing and making it available for use” as described in the foreward by Verner W. Clapp of the sponsoring organization, the Council on Library Resources Inc. Interestingly, the Councilâs motivation for this inquiry was the perception that “research libraries are becoming choked from the proliferation of publication, and that the resulting problems are not of a kind that respond to merely more of the same â ever and ever larger bookstacks and ever and ever more complicated catalogues.”
Lickliderâs early 1960s perception that “more of the same” was not the answer to the “proliferation of publication” may seem quaint given the subsequent avalanche of new journals and books, but his proposed solution resonates with current discussion of new not-of-a-kind models for scholarly communication.
Licklider began by emphasizing the “‘passiveness’ of the printed page” which limits severely the interaction of humans with the pageâs content. He reasoned that “If books are intrinsically less than satisfactory for the storage, organization, retrieval and display of information, then libraries of books are bound to be less than satisfactory also.” In turn, “if human interaction with the body of knowledge is conceived of as a dynamic process involving repeated examinations and interconnections of very many small and scattered parts, then any concept of a library that begins with books on shelves is sure to encounter trouble.” By imagining computer-enabled “precognitive systems” for information storage, organization, and retrieval by the year 2000, Licklider moved the focus from the medium (e.g. a book) to the substance (knowledge, information, insight).
A half-century later, we are still struggling to perceive with clarity the full implications of focusing on content rather than container. One example from my experience as SSHRC President illustrates the value of embracing this new focus. Our challenge was to update support for high-quality learned journals that, for many years, had been eligible for an operating grant calculated, in part, on the number of subscribers to an annual production of several print issues. In an Open Access and on-time digital knowledge environment, this approach was no longer appropriate.
The new approach focuses exclusively on the value-added of filtering and curating the communication of research results. SSHRCâs adjudication committee examines only the scholarly quality of the past three years of work made available by the journal editors (thereby taking an agnostic approach to the medium of the work). The grant covers a set amount of $850 (Can) for each scholarly article with a maximum of $30,000 per year for each journal. The amount reflects an estimate of the cost of the scholarly filtering and initial editorial work. The assumption is that institutional hosts will support the other editorial, dissemination, and preservation costs. This approach has made it possible for journal editors to move completely online and to adopt gold OA (without page charges) if the host institution (usually a research library) can provide the needed complementary infrastructure.
If this model is extended to books, we could rephrase the question at hand to ask: Who will help authors create, share, and preserve long-form scholarly content?
The DH community has in recent years contributed profound insights as well as innovative policies and practices that embrace the value of content over the specific medium of expression. In this way, DH perspectives address (admittedly, more implicitly than explicitly) current questions about scholarly monographs, university presses, and research libraries. Rather than retaining these categories, Ray Siemens and his colleagues aptly call for the creation of “new knowledge environments” that transcend twentieth-century definitions of scholarly communication. Toward this end, the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) collaborative has been hosting an annual conference that showcases a variety of projects designed to âtransform scholarly productionâ in the Digital Age.
[pullquote]… no speaker suggested that the scholarly monograph should, or even will, die; rather, the focus was on renewal and sustainability of long-form content in a rapidly changing context[/pullquote]
From this perspective, the ARL Fall Forum 2014 was aimed at helping redefine and reposition the content of the 20th century scholarly monograph in the new knowledge environment of the 21st century. Indeed, no speaker suggested that the scholarly monograph should, or even will, die; rather, the focus was on renewal and sustainability of long-form content in a rapidly changing context.
What was the added value of the 20th century scholarly-monograph content and what aspects of this should endure today? What new value is possible and appropriate? And what policies, practices, and financial support are required to realize the potential of a redefined and repositioned scholarly-monograph content?
These questions rightly assume that the drivers of change are not, in the first instance, either technological or financial. New technologies are important to the extent that they are enabling deep conceptual changes that probe to the heart of higher education and that would be transforming campuses (albeit more slowly) even in a continued print culture. Similarly, financial pressures are accelerating efforts (rather than creating them) to embrace new ways of thinking that would be (and are) inspiring new policies and practices even on wealthy campuses.
In order to continue making progress in creating the new knowledge environments of the 21st century, institutions of higher education (especially the leading research universities) must bring together their university presses, vice-presidents academic and research, their CIOs, and their university librarians in order to develop a single strategic plan. These senior academic leaders must embrace in theory and in practice the new digitally-enabled ways in which their operations are becoming interdependent and, indeed, intertwined components of a single scholarly infrastructure that, in turn, contributes to larger scholarly infrastructures both locally and globally. The result of this new approach should be the development of an integrated institutional plan that aims to create a robust digitally-enabled knowledge environment that supports all learning on campus (by students, professors, and research partners) while also contributing to the larger knowledge environment (requiring, therefore, adherence to, and contribution to, standards).
In undertaking this work, institutions would do well to involve digital humanists both for domain expertise in creating knowledge environments and for experience in working across 20th century boundaries. Digital humanist collaborations have characteristically included those in diverse departments, libraries, campuses, and countries. While a great deal of work is ahead, the success of such collaborations thus far should inspire optimism among all those like the participants of the ARL Fall Forum who seek to benefit from the past while building a better future.
In the last few years, few fields of inquiry have given way to so much debate as the Digital Humanities (DH). DH has come to be known as a locus of discussion for the place of the Humanities in private and public universities and other public institutions, as well as of the place of the book in the digital world and the worldwide editorial crisis, the scientific turn in humanistic inquiry, among others. Up until now, many of these debates had been contained in the Anglo-American academic context that has pushed forward the DH field in the last couple of decades. A global turn, discussions about the North and the South, and the very growth of the field of DH, have impacted these debates positively and opened up the floor for discussion. RedHD (Red de Humanidades Digitales) and other organizations from the global South have been key contributors. Furthermore, Spanish and Portuguese speaking DHers across the globe have bonded together as the emerging âperipheralâ community producing exciting projects, initiatives, and organizations. Some examples are AsociaciĂłn Argentina de Humanidades Digitales, Associação das Humanidades Digitais (AHDig), Humanidades Digitais, GrinUGR, Humanidades Digitales HispĂĄnicas. Sociedad Internacional, DĂa HD/Dia das Humanidades Digitais 2013 and 2014, MapaHD, to name a few. We have recognized institutional, economic, social, and other contextual differences through fruitful debates.
[pullquote]we have been working for almost four years to âpromote and strengthen work on humanities and computing, with special emphasis on research and teaching … better communication between digital humanists in the region … [and] promote regional projects and initiatives on an international levelâ[/pullquote]
As the archives in the RedHD blog show, as an organization we have been working for almost four years to âpromote and strengthen work on humanities and computing, with special emphasis on research and teaching […] better communication between digital humanists in the region [… and] promote regional projects and initiatives on an international levelâ (RedHD, âAboutâ). Although largely based in universities and other academic institutions, in that time, the network has grown and greatly diversified in interests, expertises, and expanded location wise. We have also established collaborations with DH groups in Latin America like AAHD, AHDigitais mentioned above, and global South initiatives like GO::DH. RedHD has had many achievements over the years, but we are widely aware that there is still much work and reflection to do around the place/relevance/role of Digital Humanities in Mexico and other Latin American countries, beginning with the question, what is our place in Latin American DH? This is a concern we continue to work on at RedHD both within Mexico and abroad.
[pullquote]For RedHD the very exercise of translating our work into English (and other languages) during Translate DH in 2014 was a strategic move of self-representation[/pullquote]
We can therefore perhaps see these thinkers from Mexico and other locations in Latin America as offering the gift of their work, understanding, language and translation to English-speaking readers of Culture Machine all over the world. For this particular issue, the Spanish-speaking writers have all made their texts available in English, in recognition of the present readership of the journal â but also in recognition of the fact that a number of scholars based in the Spanish-speaking world are already part of the mainstream discourses and debates in the global west and north, precisely because so many of them are able to navigate comfortably between different languages and different academic conventions. (The willingness and ability to do so is unfortunately not always reciprocated, we are ashamed to admit.)
[pullquote]Mendez Cotaâs insistence on the importance of digital humanists, and all humanists for that matter, questioning the concepts of knowledge production from the Northern âexpertâ have been in our focus since RedHD was first founded[/pullquote]
[pullquote]DH in Mexico (or anywhere for that matter) was not born all-knowing and whether inside or outside of academia, it should not be mistaken with an overarching solution to the problems of North/South knowledge production[/pullquote]
We donât believe there is one single way of doing DH in Mexico. There is, therefore, not a single way in which DH can answer these questions and/or contribute to the opening of debate spaces, but it is one other place where âthe complexity of setting up a dialogue between incommensurable cultural and historical intellectual traditionsâ (p. 9) canââand doesââ take place. DH in Mexico (or anywhere for that matter) was not born all-knowing and whether inside or outside of academia, it should not be mistaken with an overarching solution to the problems of North/South knowledge production. It has taken us years to get to the point where we are now as an organizationââwhere we can look at the work we individually published three or five years ago and recognize aspects or concepts that have changed along the way. It has been a lot of work to sustain debates amongst RedHD members and engage with others in Latin America, the global South as well as the North, but they have led us to grasp a broader understanding of what we do in the face of the work done by others. It will surely take us time to elaborate these dialogues and make them fruitful, but this can only be done if everyone is given their due and the space for self-representation.
This written work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images and graphics may retain other licenses.
