Digital humanities and the museum

Dr Elycia Wallis

Professional Historians AssociationHistorically speaking

July 2012

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/1721448/stereograph-federation-celebrations-illuminated-exhibition-buildings-h-myers-melbourne-victoria-1901

Introduction

Digital humanities – values, tools, trends

Museums, Libraries, Archives – resources

Projects

@elyw

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/245425/window-stained-glass-ferguson-urie-circa-1872

Digital humanities values, tools and trends #Musethanks to:

@jamesinealing @erodley @mia_out @leoba @rahtz @jamescummings @annettestr @CriticalSteph @bestqualitycrab @ericdmj @jenguiliano @wragge

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/1216698/quilt-martha-bergin-1843

What are the digital humanities and what does it value?

Digital humanities is about the use of technology to advance research in the humanities.

It’s about connectivity, commmunity and collaboration.

Lisa Murray, AHA2012 in Stumbling Through the Past3 parts to digital humanities: Digital tools that give us new ways to answer

traditional questions: new tools to examine traditional texts and images

The traditional questions of the humanities, applied to help us understand the contemporary digital world

Public digital humanities which are new forms of outreach using the web and other digital tools.

Steven Lubar, 1 July 2012 in Steven Lubar on public humanities

What are the digital humanities and what does it value?They are traditional humanities combined with IT; making

them both history and future orientated.

The things historians care about, such as archives, interpretation, meaning and historiography don’t disappear just because you’re using technology. The technology is used as the mechanism for discovery.

Digital humanities emphasises collaboration as a virtue. The ‘lone wolf’ scholar is less the norm.  Sharing ideas, resources, community allows practitioners to go further and learn more than they would working alone.

Is digital humanities just for geeks?

Digital humanities is something all researchers can be part of; it’s not just for large institutions and IT geeks.

You don’t have to learn coding but a bit of scripting can be useful.  It’s also a way of thinking – working with getting messy data into a structure, or trying some scripting, helps develop computational thinking

Digital humanities means *open* data!

Digital humanities researchers value collaboration and partnerships – and to make the most of these they promote publishing data with unrestrictive licenses for reuse, and utilising linked open data principles.

Plan, from day one, to publish the data as well as the book. Make that data linked and open, even if the synthesis comes much later.

If research is funded by public money it must be open, no excuses.

Digital humanities means *open* data!

Digital humanities researchers value collaboration and partnerships – and to make the most of these they promote publishing data with unrestrictive licenses for reuse, and utilising linked open data principles.

Plan, from day one, to publish the data as well as the book. Make that data linked and open, even if the synthesis comes much later.

If research is funded by public money it must be open, no excuses.

One thing to say about digital humanities at http://elyw.tumblr.com/

Collections + digitisation = data

Volunteers scanning literature at Museum Victoria’s library, photograph by Joe Coleman

Open licensing

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/

http://www.cooperhewitt.org/collections/data

http://rpmcollections.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/open-data-from-our-collections/

Masses of data online

And over the ditch

http://www.digitalnz.org/

Broadcast

http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/

In Victoria

http://prov.vic.gov.au/research

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/our-collections/

Data from many sources

http://victoriancollections.net.au/

http://www.historypin.com/

But how to find it all?

http://museumex.org/

Once you’ve got the data, what do you do with it?

http://invisibleaustralians.org/

Making tools available to others

http://wraggelabs.com/

http://wraggelabs.com/shed/querypic/

Making tools available to others

http://neatline.org/

Finally a word about Museum Victoria

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/405695/stripper-harvester-model-h-v-mckay-sunshine-harvester-ballarat-victoria-1899

What do you want to see on a Collections Online site?

What data, what media, what images?

What do you want to do with Collections Online?Compile a collection of your own, provide more information or

commentary, talk to others who share your interests?

What do you want to take away from Collections Online?

Data, images, an embeddable link, a citation?

Our questions to you

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/251907/banner-amalgamated-society-of-carpenters-joiners-victorian-branch-1914

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/772511/negative-bill-boyd-boxing-with-his-pet-kangaroo-kanga-joe-nandaly-bimbourie-victoria-1923

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/1249601/photograph-bertie-s-hut-field-naturalists-club-of-victoria-scientific-expedition-to-king-island-1887

Thanks

Dr Ely WallisMuseum Victoriaewallis@museum.vic.gov.au@elyw

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/747432/stereograph-by-r-harvie-studio-circa-1920s-1940s

Resources - blogs

Discontents by Tim Sherratt, (@wragge on Twitter) at http://discontents.com.au/

Historyonics by Tim Hitchcock at http://historyonics.blogspot.com.au/

In the Library with the Lead Pipe http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandthelib/

Ivry Twr by Ryan Hunt (@Ryan_Hunt on Twitter) http://ivrytwr.com/category/digital-humanities-2/

Miriam Posner: Blog at http://miriamposner.com/blog/ Miriam is the coordinator of the Digital Humanities Program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Open Objects by Mia Ridge (@mia_out on Twitter) at http://openobjects.blogspot.com.au/

Steven Lubar on Public Humanities (1 July 2012) In response to a state humanities council question: What are the digital humanities, and what should we do about them? Blogged on Steven Lubar on Public Humanities http://stevenlubar.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/in-response-to-a-state-humanities-council-question-what-are-the-digital-humanities-and-what-should-we-do-about-them/

Stumbling Through the Future. Blog written by Yvonne Perkins but directed towards digital humanities. Has some really good links and posts. http://stumblingfuture.wordpress.com/

Stumbling Through the Past. Blog started by Yvonne Perkins in 2012 (@perkinsy on Twitter). A recent post of interest is about the Australian Historical Association Conference 2012. See http://stumblingpast.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/reaching-out-to-the-public-australian-historical-association-conference-2012/

Resources – links, associations, conferences

Australasian Association for Digital Humanities website is at http://aa-dh.org/

Digital Humanities 2012 conference has just been held in Hamburg. See http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/ (Twitter hashtag #dh2012)

Cuny Academic Commons. The CUNY Digital Humanities Resource Guide – lots of good links http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/index.php/The_CUNY_Digital_Humanities_Resource_Guide

Excellent summary of links about Digital Humanities from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities. Brett Bobley (November 18, 2010) New York Times on the Digital Humanities at http://www.neh.gov/divisions/odh/new-york-times-the-digital-humanities

Johnathon Shaw (May-June 2012) The Humanities, Digitised. Reconceiving the study of culture. Harvard Magazine at http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/05/the-humanities-digitized

Suzanne Fischer (July 13, 2012) Once Upon a Place: Telling Stories with Maps. The Atlantic at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/once-upon-a-place-telling-stories-with-maps/259787/