DH Press: Supporting Digital Humanities at UNC

Dr Michael Newton: Digital Innovation Lab

21st-Century Humanities

• There is an avalanche of data now accessible on internet and relevant to humanities research and teaching

• Humanities scholars need tools that are easy to use, affordable and sustainable

• Tasks: locate, annotate, curate, collaborate, analyze, publish, iterate…

• Humanities need to engage with range of audiences – Digital Innovation Lab prioritizes public-facing work

Varieties of DH

• Many varieties of DH tools and applications: crowd-sourcing, textual analysis (i.e., topic modeling), simulations, curated exhibits, …

• DH Press addresses common information structure: projects that consist of a set of discrete items with specific associated features that can be represented as a corresponding visualization

DH Press

• General platform rather than specialized application

• Built on a modular, open source frameworks (plug-in for WordPress)

• Supports fundamental data types in humanities research (place, time…)

• Easy to use (GUI, no coding necessary)

• Public-facing visibility (built into web.unc and accessible via internet)

DH Press at UNC

• OASIS and DIL have integrated DH Press into UNC infrastructure: anyone with web.unc website can activate DH Press plug-in

• DH Press website

• Sample Database about Celtic Europe in Long Iron Age

• Sample Database about Celtic Poets in North America