The White House, responding to a We the People petition from May 2012, announced Friday that federal agencies with more than $100 million in research will make federally funded research and data sets freely available to the public within 12 months of publication. The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), which contains many of the same provisions, is still moving through Congress, and its passage is important to make permanent the gains achieved through the White House memo. ACRL Insider has a good post with many helpful links. While many details are still unclear, and the status of FASTR is still in the air, this is a major step forward for open access in the US. Huzzah!
Category: dh+lib review
DIGITAL PROJECT: Lincoln Logarithms: Finding Meaning in Sermons
Lincoln Logarithms, a new project from the Digital Scholarship Commons at Emory University, uses four text analysis tools, MALLET, Voyant, Paper Machines, and Viewshare, to examine 57 full text sermons given on the occasion of Lincoln’s assassination. Interesting enough in its own right, the project also explicitly addresses some the major obstacles in DH projects:
- Can digital tools always make our research more innovative–or sometimes, do they just get in the way?
- Would the digital programs offer new insights and save us time? Or would they clutter up an otherwise straighforward textual analysis?
- Digital tools can help us hone in on what questions to ask. They are a way to help us arrive at questions and results, but they aren’t results.
RESOURCE: Your Local DH
Last week we mentioned the Boston DH Consortium’s new site. Since then, local DH groups have popped up in NYC and Chicago. Here’s our running list, let us know if we’ve missed your town.
New York City: https://twitter.com/nycdh
Chicago: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chicago-dh
Philadelphia: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/phillydigitalhumanities
Washington DC: http://www.meetup.com/Digital-Cultural-Heritage-DC/
Boston: http://bostondh.org/
Southern California: http://dhsocal.blogspot.com/
RESOURCE: Linking Things on the Web: A Pragmatic Examination of Linked Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums
A new paper by Ed Summers (Library of Congress) on linked data for cultural heritage organizations. Here’s the abstract:
The Web publishing paradigm of Linked Data has been gaining traction in the cultural heritage sector: libraries, archives and museums. At first glance, the principles of Linked Data seem simple enough. However experienced Web developers, designers and architects who attempt to put these ideas into practice often find themselves having to digest and understand debates about Web architecture, the semantic web, artificial intelligence and the philosophical nature of identity. In this paper I will discuss some of the reasons why Linked Data is of interest to the cultural heritage community, what some of the pain points are for deploying it, and characterize some pragmatic ways for cultural heritage organizations to realize the goals of Linked Data with examples from the Web we have today.
CFP: ACRL Preconferences at 2014 ALA Annual Conference
ACRL is looking for applications for half-day or full-day preconferences for the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. ACRL is looking for programs that focus on interactive learning using a variety of presentation styles and offer practical tips. Deadline is March 27, 2013. Who’s doing the session on DH and libraries?
POST: Born Digital Folklore and the Vernacular Web: An Interview with Robert Glenn Howard
This interview of Robert Glenn Howard (University of Wisconsin) by Trevor Owens (Library of Congress) offers a helpful introduction to the topic of born-digital folklore. Howard defines folklore as “the informally shared knowledge that we perceive as connecting us to each other,” and the two examine how this engagement has changed in a networked world. The discussion covers theoretical aspects of folklore, theorizing the web, and current content that should be preserving for future folklorists.
CFP: Composing In/With/Through Archives: An Open-Access, Born Digital Edited Collection
The Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative at Michigan State University invites essays (8000 words) and case studies (3000 words) for a digital, OA edition that will examine, among other topics:
- How are we theorizing digital archives?
- How are we drawing from the work of digital archivists as we build our own archives and conduct digital archival research?
- How do digital archives mediate how we write?
- How do we differentiate between digital archives/repositories/libraries? Why are these distinctions important?
Abstracts due by April 30.
CFP: Day of DH 2013
Day of DH 2013 is April 8. The project brings together scholars interested in the digital humanities from around the world to document what they do on one day, answering the question, “Just what do digital humanists really do?” We’d love to see a strong turnout from librarians!
The process is simple: before April 8, register at the Day of DH blog, answer the question, “How do you define DH,” and write an About Me post. On April 8, document your activities through text and images, and be sure to take a minute to look at the interesting things your colleagues are doing.
OPPORTUNITY: NEH Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute
The year’s summer institute, June 17 – July 6 in Jonesboro and Fayetteville, Arkansas, will address the issues surrounding the:
“academic use of game engines, including the balance of immersion with accuracy, strategies for storytelling and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in ‘serious’ games, and questions of power and appropriateness in using video game conventions to represent non-contemporary or non-Western cultures.”
The institute accepts 20 applicants, and each received a stipend of $2700. Deadline for applications is March 15.