(Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.)

* As a developer, I’m interested in collaborative development practices and in the new kinds of scholarly products enabled by APIs, Linked Data, social media, and other new technologies.

* I’ve been out of the humanities research arena for quite a while, would like to get a picture of where things are going. I’ve been working on an idea to harvest OAI repository record sets with an eye to making a sort of freely downloadable corpus of bibliographic records — an OAIster you could run/play with/analyze locally. Also would like to discuss NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, CouchDB) as a platform for an institutional repository software system.

* I’d like to learn to create Zotero translators. I tried it using available tutorials and got stuck. I am the chief Zotero support person on my campus but have very limited programming skills (learned HTML in 1997, have taught myself a little CSS, do NOT know Javascript or Java or Flash programming)

* I would like to become more fluent in TEI and learn its extensive capabilities, and learn more about creating web content in order to build archives and databases for texts and alternate-media translations of those texts. I would also like to explore a programming language, since I have almost no experience in that realm. Since I am applying to graduate programs in digital humanities for next year, I am particularly eager to meet and start building connections with new and long-time members of the field through this THATCamp.

(Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.)

* Our college recently challenged all faculty to do more integration of technology in our teaching. As we are a small liberal arts college, the resources for training are limited. As a historian, I find myself behind the curve on many of the digital resources out there. I hope to learn what is out there for me and my students and how to use it.

* I’ve been designing digital projects for educational enterprises and would like to learn more about how to design projects more closely related to me individually both as a scholar and a teacher.

* I’m trying to develop curriculum for information skills for graduate students and advanced undergrads in language/lit. studies. I’m interested in getting suggestions on what would make up a basic tool-kit for the budding digital humanist; suggestions on how to keep up to date; and input on how to structure on online, modular sequence that would help individuals develop their skill-set.

I would like to talk about various options for mapping and georeferencing. We have dabbled with Google maps and Hypercities and are exploring other options. I would like to have a better understanding of what open-source software will work well enough and when the more advanced features of commercial software are needed. I would like to learn what software people have been using for what projects and the level of expertise required for the software.  I would also like to talk about open-data in mapping projects and also having data in open formats to archive (even if the data is not openly shared).

I’ve never actually managed to get this idea off the ground at THATCamp but I thought I’d try it one more time.

This is a totally half baked idea but it keeps popping up in my little head and maybe you all can help me deal. I’m basically thinking about the challenge of applying my humanities-trained mind to data driven projects.

The challenge isn’t that I am skeptical of quantitative stuff but that I know how easy it is to make mistakes with it if you don’t know what you’re doing or get easily confused by big numbers (I am guilty of both). I also know how easy it is to be dazzled by big numbers and beautiful visualizations (no offense Hans Rosling).

I started thinking about this while reading the first of the New York Times stories about digital humanities. Patricia Cohen wrote:

Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have.

The idea of a “data turn” in the humanities has been tossed around but it is not as if data are somehow a-political or outside of ideology, right? In this session I want to hear people’s ideas about strategies for approaching Big Data. On the one hand, the idea of being able to search for patterns across vast sets of historical and cultural data is very exciting. On the other hand, I can’t unread Foucault (or Marx for that matter). I know all of this data exists in a context but I don’t know how to keep that in perspective when I’m dealing with Big Data.

Anyway, this is just a thought on the table. I would love it if someone wants to pick it up and build an actually coherent session proposal out of it.

Stewart

(full disclosure: I totally copy-and-pasted that from another THATCamp blog post I wrote over the summer)

(Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.)

* Our library is beginning to support digital humanities projects and I want to learn more about what people are doing, what people need to know and what support is needed.

* One of my jobs at Emory is managing the DH center we are building in the library so I am looking forward to talking with attendees about the kinds of projects they want to work on and possibly identifying new tools for working on them. In particular, I want to hear more about text mining and strategies for managing collaborative work. I am also deeply – and selfishly – interested in talking through strategies for sustainability and preservation or possibly rethinking what we mean when we use those terms. Does everything need to be sustainable? Do we have to preserve all of it?

* I was just hired into a new position librarian position at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa library in August. Part of my new responsibilities will be managing the digital Arts and Information Gallery located within the library. The purpose of the gallery is to showcase the work of OU-Tulsa students, faculty, and staff and to promote collaborative learning across campus. THATCamp Kansas will be provide an excellent opportunity to interact with and learn from other professionals involved in digital learning.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

My interests in the digital humanities have, up to this point, been rather theoretical. At the KU THATCamp, I am hoping to gain some more in-depth knowledge of how management of digital humanities assets actually works in real-world applications. I am personally interested in promoting and pioneering radical approaches to writing and reading, combining hypertext, programmable media, Web design, video, film, and net culture. I believe the cross-pollination of computational poetics with traditional literary traditions is where the future lies in terms of creative and scholarly work in the humanities.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

As a Rare Books and Manuscripts librarian, I am interested in exploring how the materials held by special collections libraries are being mobilized for and integrated into digital humanities projects. In particular, I am interested in investigating:

a) collaboration between different special collections institutions and subject specialists on digital humanities projects [and, particularly, how we might best fulfill researchers’ desire for pooled subject-oriented resources that span institutions]

b) the types of functionality that researchers in the humanities want from digitized books, manuscripts, and artifacts

c) the latest trends and tools in the digital humanities.

It his my hope that discussing these matters will help me generate better digital projects at my own library as well as forge productive partnerships with other THATCamp attendees.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

I am preparing a new research project that will involve text analysis. I expect this initiative will involve archival documents and a few digitized documents as well. I am interested in learning about how best to plan for and execute this project. My specific questions center on: organizing the data, selecting the most appropriate analysis tools, sharing the data with others, and presenting results.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

I am an American literature scholar, and I want to develop with others in my field an online digital archive devoted to Louisa May Alcott, her works, her circle, and research materials related to her career, life, and times. I am hoping that the camp and conference will provide both professional development as well as inspiration as I work with others in the planning of this digital project.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

The art museum continues to pursue new ways to integrate new technologies into understanding our collections and providing new platforms for our audiences (university, community and virtual) to engage with our objects and programs. Improving my knowledge of the technology landscape, the possibilities and interests (esp. among faculty at KU) would be immensely helpful so that we pursue avenues that align with the goals of our audiences as well as help us reach new audiences. I am also curious and excited to learn more about the interesting activities of my colleagues and new possibilities.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

I’m interested in exploring ways for people to share personal, family, and community history using digital tools. I’d like to gather and share ideas to help record, preserve, celebrate, and communicate the stories of our ancestors, communities, and organizations using digital/online media.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

I am particularly interested in the design of digital humanities resources: there are plenty of powerful software and web tools for analysis and presentation in the humanities, but not many that are designed for portability/reuse, ease of use by non-technologists, or beauty of presentation. I want to build streamlined digital humanities tools that:
-apply state-of-the-art principles of MVC (Model-View-Controller) development, web design and typography to the display of complex humanities data;
-intelligently hide information based on context, to avoid overwhelming users (the dynamic, digital equivalent of end notes vs. foot/marginal notes);
-allow non-experts to explore texts and their digital reincarnations, in depth and in a manner as aesthetically pleasing as print reading.

Other interests: taxonomic information encoding vs. contrapuntal textual movement.

–[Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.]–

I’m launching a study this fall to examine how humanities scholars work with digitized materials from digital collections in their scholarly research. I have a couple initial research questions that I think would be good points of discussion for a THATcamp session: What are the features and services that would optimize a digital collection for scholarly research? How do scholars use digital collections in their research workflows? Also of note: this study is initially being conducted as a sub-project of the Bamboo Technology Project (www.projectbamboo.org/), a multi-institutional research partnership that is developing an e-research environment for humanities scholars. This study will assist us we prepare to develop digital collections for research within the Bamboo e-research environment and I’d be happy to talk about what we’re doing with that too.

–(Proposals and areas of interest from participants as indicated on the THATCamp registration form.)–

I’d like to explore the question of whether individual scholarly repositories have a place in humanities scholarship. Such repositories are becoming increasingly popular in the sciences and, to some extent, the social sciences through services such as Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), Papers (www.mekentosj.com/papers), and Colwiz (www.colwiz.com). Some possible sub-topics for discussion: Do humanities scholars use such services? Are there missing features that would make such services more attractive? How could such services fit into a library’s technology offerings?

I’m already teaching a workshop on this topic, but I’d love to see a session on the place of undergrads in the digital humanities.  Our workshop, Integrating Digital Humanities Projects into the Undergraduate Curriculum, covers one aspect of that integration, integrating an existing DH project into a class.  But, there are many more issues to discuss.

• How do you train students in digital humanities?
• Which methodologies do you teach and how?
• How can we create a pipeline to graduate school or should we?
• Which texts should you use?

I’m sure we can come up with more questions and some answers, too.

In a recent whitepaper, “Divided and Conquered: How Multivarious Isolation Is Suppressing Digital Humanities Scholarship,” Quinn Dombrowski and I argued that isolation is a major challenge for the digital humanists, especially at the small liberal arts colleges that are members of the NITLE network, at primarily undergraduate institutions, or at other institutions without a digital humanities center.  Isolation is especially problematic since much digital humanities work is collaborative.  How can you effectively engage in digital humanities if you are the only digital humanist on your campus?  I would be interested in a session that discusses how to combat isolation in the digital humanities.

This session might include successful strategies and remaining challenges.  Regional THATCamps like this one help, as does social media.  Currently, we are also working on a project to combat that isolation by developing a project registry to link potential project collaborators.  DHCommons, short for Digital Humanities Commons, seeks to ameliorate the isolation that impacts digital humanists by developing an infrastructure that facilitates both collaboration and awareness of existing digital humanities projects. Although isolation from digital humanist colleagues and information about activities in the field is felt most acutely at smaller or non-research institutions that lack a digital humanities center, even scholars at institutions with well-supported centers may need reliable channels for connecting with potential collaborators beyond their institution, or discovering extramural projects without the resources for extensive outreach efforts. These disconnects between potential collaborators and existing projects result in duplicated effort. Rather than building on one another’s work or combining complimentary resource pools (e.g., skilled student labor on one side, and institutional funding on the other), scholars end up repeating or nearly repeating existing projects or redeveloping existing tools. To address these challenges, DHCommons will build an online project repository that provides faceted searching and browsing, where project leaders can post needs (e.g. technical assistance, beta testing, or content development), and potential collaborators can post their interests and availability. This tool will form the centerpiece of a larger effort to break down silos in the digital humanities community by changing practice.  What silos do you see and how can we break them down?

As newcomers to our respective fields (Mike Hernandez is an English MA student, Mackenzie Brooks is new librarian), we are interested in a general discussion and recommendation-giving on the topic of designing and implementing a humanities based digital resource, especially for use in the classroom. We are in the beginning stages of creating a Drupal-based website that will serve as an encyclopedic introduction to science-influenced approaches to the literature. We are interested in discussing such questions as:

-What features do you look for in a digital resource?
-What elements make you consider using a digital resource in a class and in what capacity?
-In your discipline, how would you go about creating and marketing a digital resource? What gap would you fill with it?
-What are examples of successful projects and how have you used them in your research or courses?
-What are some known stumbling blocks for web-based resources?

I’m not in a position to teach how to create a Zotero translator or citation style, but I’d very much like to learn.  I do not have any background in Javascript but would hope to learn just enough to do these two things.  Is anyone else interested in this topic?