In my day job I work on digital preservation, that is, ensuring long term access to digital information. Aside from that, I spend a lot of time participating in and listening in on conversations in the digital humanities. I feel digital preservation and the digital humanities aren’t in nearly enough conversation.

There is a lot of work focused on analyzing digitized texts, but there remains surprisingly little focused on the study of a range of born digital materials. Interestingly, the folks doing most of the work with born digital materials often tend to be working in fields like sociology, anthropology and have more of an affinity with the social sciences. So, I’d love to have a session where we talked a bit about the kinds of research and scholarship humanists could do based on born digital materials.

I’ve got a few examples of different kinds of born digital collections to spark you’re imaginations;

• 700,000 restaurant reviews from several major US cities from Yelp
• Collection of 3200 selfies pulled from instagram
• 51,000 Midi Files from the Geocities Archive
• The Internet Archive’s Historical Software Collection
• The Enron Email dataset 
• Salman Rushdie’s Laptop

I figure in the session we can discuss some of these examples, add some more to our list, and think about what kinds of research and perspectives that humanities scholars could bring into analysis and exploration of these and related sources.

I’d like to offer a session on “Workflow for Digital Humanities Publishing,” based on my experience working on the German Historical Institute’s Immigrant Entrepreneurship project, an online collection of biographical articles on German-American entrepreneurs (www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org). We rely on a combination of in-house staff and external authors and editors. It would be great to discuss some of the issues we’ve encountered with people who are working on, designing, or have completed similar projects, whether on a larger scale or a much smaller scale.

Barrie Howard has been involved in grant-funded digital humanities projects on both sides of the table for a decade. He will lead a breakout session on a range of issues from grant seeking to grants administration and project management. In the spirit of the THATcamp unconference format, he would like input from session participants on the format of the session as to whether it manifests as a Make, Talk, or Teach event. Barrie has created a dataset on grants funding of digital preservation projects from ca. 2000 to the present, and is interested in ways to expand and share the data.

If you are interested in how technology is changing—or can change—the work of scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences, then we invite you to attend the first ever THATCamp on Saturday, April 26th at the George Washington University. THATCamp, or The Humanities and Technology Camp is an international phenomenon, bringing students, scholars, librarians, and technologists of every skill level together to learn how to integrate digital technology into their teaching and research and explore ways to see their work differently. Topics covered may include academic blogging, social media in the classroom, digital research methods, web-based class projects, digital portfolios, quantitative humanities, scenarios and gaming, 3D modeling, primary source digital repositories, coding, crowd-sourced transcription, data visualization, activist-archivists, and online publishing.

THATCamp is an “un-conference” where participants propose sessions and the agenda is prepared in the first hour. If you want to host a workshop on a tool or platform, or run a session on Wikipedia to correct or create entries, or participate in crowd-sourced transcription projects, that is fine. You may wish to propose sessions to talk about challenges and opportunities for new scholarship, to reflect on recent experiences, to share tips on using new media or tools effectively, to exchange methodologies for interdisciplinary innovation, or discuss the digital divide and social justice issues related to open source or internet access. Reading long papers out loud is not permitted, but you may sign up to present your project in 3 minutes during the “Dork-Shorts” session in the morning. The THATCamp agenda is participatory and created on the spot, so come prepared to pitch an idea for a session to TALK, MAKE, TEACH, or PLAY, or propose one in advance on our blog.  THATCamp is free and open to everyone, but participants must register at dc2014.thatcamp.org by April 19.  We are particularly interested in undergraduate and graduate student participation.

We’re currently accepting applications from students, faculty, librarians, technologists, museum professionals, archivists, and anyone else who is interested in the digital (and the) humanities (in the broadest sense of the word, including social sciences). We’d appreciate it if you’d pass this message on, and post the attached flyer if you can.

Event Date: Saturday, April 26, 2014, from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Location: The George Washington University, Funger 108 and 207-210

To Register:  dc2014.thatcamp.org/register/

• What is a THATCamp?
• What are the Ground Rules?
• I’m curious – show me some examples of sessions.

I’m in – now what? Check our website for more details on our THATcamp on April 26.

AGENDA:

8:30-9:15 Registration and breakfast in Funger Hall 108

9:15-10:15 Plenary: Proposals and agenda-building

10:15-11:00 Dork Shorts (lightning round open-mic talks) while we build the board.

11:15-12:00 Session 1 in Funger 207, 208, 209, and 210

12:15-1:00 Session 2

1:00-1:45 LUNCH

1:45-2:30 Session 3

2:45-3:30 Session 4

3:30-4:00 Group Debrief and Closing in Funger Hall 108

Financial support and co-sponsors include the GW Digital Humanities Institute, the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Stephen Ehrmann,  and the Office of Karim Boughida, Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Content Management. A hearty thank you. If your department or unit would like to contribute and co-host, please contact Prof. Diane Cline, History Department.

Organized by the students of HIST 3001 Digital Humanities and the Historian, Spring 2014.

read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.

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