Preparing for the New Year

This last year has been busy and fun. Based on conversations I've had with others in the Digital Humanities Program, 2009 looks to be at least as busy and interesting. We've come quite a ways since I was hired in November, 2007.

I've been to five conferences evangelizing what we are doing here at TAMU in the digital humanities, ranging from workshops in the digital humanities (DHSI) to impromptu gatherings of scholars (THATCamp) to industry conferences.

I've published two Perl modules, one for managing knowledge bases as Resource Description Framework (RDF) documents and one for easily building data processing scripts. Both of these are part of the Digital Resources Workbench, a sandbox environment for faculty wanting to play around with computational tools.

I gave one workshop on how to approach a mountain of material so that you can map out where you can go and at the same time decide where you want to start. I plan on fleshing this workshop out into a general workshop on building narratives from data with a look on structured exploration that allows the reader/viewer more freedom than a monograph provides.

The easiest way to convince someone to provide funding is to show a working example of what you're wanting to do. We are in the process of rolling out new computer resources designed to help faculty get started in a DH project without having to provide funding for such simple and common things as web space or small-scale data processing.

We are making plans for several workshops in the spring, including a repeat of the workshop on how to approach your materials and see what you can build from them. Additional workshops will include an introduction to data processing and the tools we are making available, how to build a narrative from data (or data from a narrative), as well as the TEI workshop being organized by Maura Ives (rescheduled after Hurricane Ike came ashore).

Finally, we're starting the new year with new website software and capabilities. Look here for continued blog postings and news updates. Join the community on the e-mail lists. Attend the lectures and workshops.