I’d like to propose a session that would address the question of how to ensure that born-digital humanities scholarlship–books, journals, web sites–is made easily and reliably discoverable; for instance, through library catalogs.

I work in the OSU Libraries Digital Imaging Division.  As someone who produces digital images, primarily from materials in the Libraries’ collections, I’m interested in knowing what it is that Digital Humanities scholars want/expect/hope for/require from digital surrogates of physical items.  I figured I’d just show up at THATCamp and spend the day lurking, as a way of finding out what’s most important to those who study scholarly materials.  But, as there are so many questions–and possible answers–involved in even the simplest digitization effort, I decided this issue could generate its own discussion session.

So, when you think about digitization of a book, manuscript, illustration, 3D object, or other item, what is most important to you?  Reading text?  Studying images?  Examining surface detail?  Exposing properties that lie under the surface?  Reproducing the reading experience online?  Leveraging digital capabilities to go beyond traditional reading practices and invent something new?

Whether your ideas are simple or elaborate, highly articulated or barely formed, I look forward to hearing them.

I am not proposing a game of Capture the Flag where those of us who teach in the Humanities use strategy and guile to avoid being imprisoned by old methodologies.  Instead, I am proposing a session where we talk about ways to invigorate the curriculum through the visual.  Students today are less inclined to read.  Educators in composition and literature fields of study generally acknowledge that the curriculum satisfies students well when courses use visual and other multimedia in the classroom.  As one model, I will teach a 500-level English class this summer on the Graphic Novel.  The proposed session will be fluid in nature.  I imagine that, after a general introduction, participants will cluster into pairs, small groups, and the like to talk and brainstorm independently.  One thread begun at Ohio State’s recent INNOVATE! conference was growing use of mobile technologies in secondary and higher education classrooms (e.g., Digital Storytelling using the iPhone and iPad).  I expect that participants in the proposed session will:  a) talk about students’ interests and proficiencies with one another; b) share Real World stories, projects and templates; and c) brainstorm new ideas during the day that may potentially update the curriculum in Humanities.  When individuals and small groups reconvene as a large group, I will facilitate sharing the following:  learning and talking points, technologies to explore, and questions for further consideration.  One of the outcomes I anticipate may be creation of a Virtual Network in the Humanities (contact list) or website where people share ideas and discuss ongoing projects, research, emerging technologies and best practices.

What’s the best DH project you know?  How do you talk about how great it is?  What comes after “that’s cool”?  Let’s find out what really moves us, and how to get more of it.  Share some links and conversation at this General Discussion session.

This is a discussion session about the use of virtual realities (simulated realities as some call them) in academics – from teaching and meetings to collaborations, and any other ideas and applications.

The Ohio State University already has its own island called Minerva in Second Life for use by faculty and students. You need a Second Life account (free) and a Second Life Viewer program (also free) to access it.

No experience of prior knowledge of Second Life or other virtual worlds is needed to participate in this open discussion.

We have gotten a few questions about session proposals that aren’t covered on the Proposing a Session page or in the original FAQ, so here’s a follow-up:

• How can I see all the sessions that have already been proposed? The easiest way is to go to the home page and click on ‘Sessions’ under Categories. It should pull up all sessions and session ideas.
• What should I include in my session proposal? We would suggest that your proposal contain, at minimum, a brief description of the topic; some information about the session format (Is it a discussion? Will you be working collaboratively? etc.); and an idea of what you want to come out of the session with (progress on a project, a new proposal, some new friends, etc.). You should also tag your post in the ‘Sessions’ category.
• Will you look at my session proposal before I post it? It’s really not necessary. The program is driven by the participants, and we will have a chance to tweak proposals during the first session of the day. If you really want to run your idea by someone, you can email it to one of the organizers and ask us to look at it. Of course, the longer you wait, the less likely it is that we will have time to do so.

Any other questions? Contact the organizers (Melanie Schlosser or Louie Ulman) or leave a comment.

I was intrigued by an article on Fast Company’s blog titled “Content Curators Are the New Superheros of the Web.” The author describes the fast growing trend of curation, as demonstrated by the increasing popularity of Pinterest. He defines curation as “the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what’s interesting, happening, and cool in their focus. Curators tend to have a unique and consistent point of view–providing a reliable context for the content that they discover and organize.”

Isn’t this, at least in part, what has been happening in the digital humanities and in libraries and archives for years now? How does the popularization of content curation help our field? How does it hurt? Is there a wave we can catch?

I propose this as a General Discussion session with a potential outcome to decide if there is some action we might want to take. (Pretty vague – almost, but not quite, a Grab Bag session.)

Disucss this chart: www.onlinecolleges.net/2011/08/25/how-video-games-are-changing-education/

News from Online Colleges, August 25, 2011

Topics: using video games to teach, what’s taught in game and out of game, discussions or assignments & online affinity spaces and how to create them.

I am the coordinator for a video game project funded by the NEH. (meet-the-earthworks-builders.posterous.com/) This game will be part of a website that also provides content in the form of simulations and interactives, possibly mini-games and a badging system which is receiving funding from HASTAC (earthworks-badges.posterous.com/). My interest is in creating a self-sustaining learning community through social networking, crowd-sourcing grading among peers, peer teaching, peer mentoring, informal and formal learning environments and game based learning. I am also interested in assessment issues related to crowd-sourcing grading – in the case of my project – crowd-sourcing the award of a badge, and especially embedded assessment – how to tie what a learner does in the game environment that indicates mastery or at least understanding of the learning objectives, thus, eliminating the need to test, but maybe not the need for outside assignments that demonstrate transfer. Figuring out how to best assess this requires a good research study with excellent pre and post tests – another area for discussion. Finally, a general discussion about using games in the classroom could be great. who’s doing it, how, what is a game, what is a simulation, what place do these have in higher ed. I have created a wiki in Carmen: carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/gamingeducation/Home

I recently attended a workshop at OSU with Joe Lambert of the Center for Digital Storytelling (who’s been to OSU several times and from whom I’ve several previous workshops.)  This one was focused on stories of place, using mobile devices, in this case iPhones and iPads.  I found this mode of film-making  to be much simpler and thus more freeing than I’ve ever felt with a laptop, while still maintaining all the story-creation and the community-building aspects of the OSU Digital Storytelling Program which I’ve been a part of for the last seven years.  I think it be possible to teach the techology in a workshop at ThatCamp for those who are interested.  Those who are interested would need to come prepared with a brief (for this purpose no longer than 1-minute script/poem/etc.) and a short list of free/cheap apps and either an iPhone 3/4/4S  or iPad2/3.  I think several other who took the workshop will be attending so if anyone else wants to collaborate that would be great.  Anyone else who knows iMovie will catch on quickly.  Believe me, this is almost fool-proof.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, in the first chapter of her highly stimulating book, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (which is available online), argues that peer review is at the center of all the work of humanists in the academy, outlines problems with the present system, and then goes on to propose ways in which digital technology can be used to make peer review more transparent, productive and rewarding.  I think that it would be useful to have a group conversation to discuss the problems of peer review and ways in which people in the Digital Humanities here at OSU can work to remedy them.

I’ve been working on collecting digital stories from Columbus community members since the spring of 2009. The Knowledge Bank folks have been very generous and provided a portal for the work completed in the Hilltop area of town and will, no doubt, be willing to set one up for other neighborhoods if a grant I submitted allows for work in Old Town, East; Linden; and the University Area (District). Other colleagues around the country in English studies and related areas are doing similar work and looking for a national archive to which we can all submit work. In addition, the director of the Center for Digital Storytelling <www.storycenter.org>, Joe Lambert, indicated several months ago that he too is interested in an archive of this nature: that one did not already exist. (Lambert will be in town for the Innovate conference next week. I’ll touch base with him again.)

The characteristics of such an archive are to be determined but should include a simple submission process, a long-term archival plan for many media types, IRB approved permissions, Creative Commons-type IP assignments, interactive components, a “spacialized” interface, etc.

Questions that participants in a session of this type might address collectively include

• Does such an archive already exist? (I haven’t found it.)
• Would OSU and the OSU Libraries be interested in this type of systems development?
• Are the OSU library’s dspace or OJS installations sufficient for all or part of this effort?
• What other HE, state, or national institutions might want to contribute to an effort of this type?
• What grant opportunities are their for a multi-institutional development team?
• Can the “tool” being developed be of use to other disciplines not as tied to story telling?

Dickie Selfe.3

Digitization, text mining, creating and using open-source software…digital humanities work is full of potential copyright issues. If you’d like to talk about the rights implications of DH work at THATCamp, we would be happy to set up a workshop or discussion session. If you are interested, just leave a comment on this post. If you have a particular topic in mind, tell us that, too.

It is fitting that the Libraries is the primary sponsor of THATCamp OSU, since libraries are a major player in the digital humanities world. Many DH centers are located in libraries, and librarians often serve as project partners or PIs. The best model for library involvement in DH is still an open question, however. We certainly hope that there will be some discussion at THATCamp of how the Libraries can best support DH at OSU.  Keep reading for some resources and session ideas.

Resources

• Tom Scheinfeldt, “Nobody cares about the library: How digital technology makes the library invisible (and visible) to scholars,” Found History blog post, 2/22/12. About library invisibility – good and bad- and how digital humanities can bring scholars and librarians into closer collaboration.
• Miriam Posner, “Digital Humanities and the Library: A Bibliography.” A heck of a bibliography on the subject. Visit for lots of further reading.
• Ben Showers, “Does the library have a role to play in the Digital Humanities?,” JISC Digital Infrastructure Team blog. Identifies possible roles for libraries in DH work, including digitization and curation, and discovery and dissemination.
• The Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Humanities Discussion Group, a low-traffic email list that is only a few months old, but has already hosted some interesting discussion on the intersection of DH and libraries.

Session ideas

• A general discussion session on how the Libraries can/should support DH work at OSU.
• Project planning session introducing an item or collection held by the Libraries that could form the basis of a collaborative DH project.

The CIC Digital Humanities Summit is being held the week before OSU THATCamp and a few of us will be attending both events.  The purpose of the Summit is to form a stronger CIC faculty community and networks in digital humanities and identify potential collaborative research opportunities in digital humanities that cross CIC universities.  This working session will offer an opportunity for those attending the Summit and THATCamp to share what happened there with OSU colleagues and hear what you think about opportunities and gaps for engaging in cooperative projects with other institutions. In the context of what we learned at the Summit, Louie Ulman, Harmony Bench and I will be asking you to help us identify where the OSU community might engage with other CIC institutions and where there might be a leadership role for us. 

“Problem”:  How might OSU engage and lead digital humanities initiatives in the CIC.

Questions: 

• Are you collaborating with other CIC institutions on any of your digital humanities projects?  How have those cooperative efforts gone?
• What might be preventing you from reaching out to your colleagues at other institutions to start up, be included in or include others in a project?
• As University leadership asks those of us who attended the Summit to report back on opportunities and gaps, what do you want to make sure they know about collaborating with the CIC?
• What could the University do to encourage you to participate or lead a cooperative project?

In addition to gathering information to include in our evaluation of the Summit, we hope that this session will get participants to reflect on the nature of collaborations and ways to ensure their success.

[I’ve had this post in the works for a couple of days now, and Blake Wilder beat me to the punch with an interesting session proposal. I hope the thoughts and links below will inform his and other sessions. –Melanie]

Digital Humanities is a highly collaborative field. There are some practical reasons why this is the case – DH projects tend to be large and complex, and they often require skill sets as diverse as humanities research design, digitization, programming, and organization and description of digital resources. However, the collaborative nature of DH is also a result of its interdisciplinarity. A DH project may involve cutting-edge work, not only in the humanities, but also in computer science, library science, the social sciences, etc. Keep reading for more thoughts on collaboration in DH and some ideas for THATCamp OSU sessions on the topic…

While I think we can all agree that collaboration is good in a motherhood-and-apple-pie kind of way, it does present challenges. This is especially true in academia, where the single-author article or monograph is king, and where the idea of the individual scholar toiling in solitude holds a lot of power. One challenge presented by collaboration is how to give credit to collaborators. (Also see the FairCite initiative for work in this area.) Another is how to go about working together in the first place. A fascinating recent New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer debunks some common misconceptions about the best ways to collaborate and offers some interesting examples of successful collaborations. Some takeaways from the Lehrer article:

• Brainstorming doesn’t work, but criticism does
•  Spaces where different people are thrown together are most effective at producing innovative ideas
• The best work is done by teams with some familiar faces and some new ones

THATCamps are collaborative by nature, but we could see some sessions specifically devoted to exploring collaboration in our environment. Here are some ideas:

• An ‘idea generation’ session where a group of people come up with solutions to a problem or ideas for a project, using one or more specific collaboration techniques
• A discussion about how to encourage collaboration and cross-pollination at OSU

Other thoughts on collaboration or ideas for collaborative sessions?

I’ve been using both iMovie and prezi as platforms for composition assignments in my classes. I’m wondering if we could get a a group together and collectively compose some short project in one of these platforms. Obviously there would be several issues:

First, captaining such a ship of fools. According to the “propose a session” post, I would be responsible for chairing. I believe I could handle this. I’ve been in numerous student organization, where I have been responsible for making a decision happen without making the decision myself. I’d be managing editor and we would have no editor-in-chief.

Second, the subject. With limited time, I think we’d have to jump straight into composition choices. So we’d need to have big picture content issues decided ahead of time, via commenting here I presume. My suggestion for content is actually THATcamp itself. If we have this session late in the day, our composition can share our collective experience of the un-conference. We’d probably also want to decide which platform ahead of time.

Third, technology constraints. I think we’d be pretty safe with Prezi. But if we decided on a short movie, there’s importing/exporting time constraints as well as the gathering of raw footage. If this session goes forward, perhaps people planning to attend could check out flipcameras in the morning and shoot bits during the day. As managing editor, I could collect these at the lunch, or at least sometime before the session begins, and start importing. We could export at the close of the session. This way, we could spend the majority of the session selecting clips, sequencing, adding titles, and other editing details.

I’d like to hear thoughts on which platform people would prefer to work with, if it even seems feasible to try to work with iMovie, and also about the content. We could decide content live in the room as this is certainly part of the composition process. I’m just afraid that too much time spent in initial brainstorming wouldn’t leave us enough time to do the actually composing and editing.

**4/24/12: We have added an additional FAQ post.**

As you can see from the Participants page, THATCamp OSU is well over half full! We expect more registrations to keep trickling in over the next couple of months, but in the meantime, the floor is open for session proposals and discussion. Unconferences are different from conferences in that all sessions are proposed and led by participants, and the schedule for the day isn’t set until the morning of. We will make a more concerted push for session proposals when we get a little closer to the day, but if you already have an idea, why not throw it out there? It might inspire someone else with an idea or spark conversation about your topic or project. Lots of details about unconferences and proposing sessions can be found on the About and Propose a session pages, but here are some additional frequently asked questions…

1. Do I have to propose a session? No, but you better hope someone does, or we will just sit around and stare at each other all day.

2. I have a great idea for a session, but I don’t want to lead it. Can I propose it and ask for someone else to facilitate? Generally speaking, if you propose a session, you should be prepared to lead it. There are some exceptions, however. If you are willing to put together a session, but feel that additional help or expertise is needed, you are welcome to propose the session and call for a co-facilitator or co-workshop-instructor. Also, your THATCamp organizers have lots of great ideas and can’t be everywhere at once, so we may offer some ideas for sessions that anyone can pick up. This may be a good option for someone who wants to lead a session but doesn’t have a topic in mind.

3. I have an idea for a session, but it’s similar to a session someone else has proposed. What should I do? You have two options. You can either propose your session and just see what happens on the day of (the sessions might be combined, or they might be different enough and each have enough support that we decide to schedule both of them), or you can leave a comment on the other person’s proposal about your idea and how you might collaborate.

4. I don’t have any session ideas yet. What should I be doing? The best thing to do is to participate in the conversation on the site. If there’s a proposal for a session you are interested in attending, leave a comment on it and say why. If you disagree with an idea, let the author know. If there’s something you don’t understand, ask a question – you’re probably not the only one.

If you have a question about proposing sessions not covered here or elsewhere on the site, leave it in the comments or contact the organizers. We will be doing everything we can to make THATCamp OSU a fun, engaging, thought-provoking experience, but at the end of the day it’s up to you. The more thought you put into it, and the more the content is developed ahead of time, the better it will be!

THATCamp OSU will be held from approximately 8am to 5pm on Saturday, April 28th. Most of the day will consist of unconference-style participant-led sessions, but the organizers are setting aside the last time slot for a special plenary session that we hope all of the participants will attend. The plenary will be a discussion session meant to synthesize the results of the day and begin creating two documents – a definition of ‘digital humanities’ that fits our local environment, and a list of desired support for digital humanities work at OSU. These documents will be shared with our sponsors and with OSU administration, and are meant to serve as a jumping-off point for discussion and development of a local digital humanities program.

The plenary session will be led by our guest facilitator, Julia Flanders. Julia is the director of the Women Writers Project at Brown University, and a member of Brown University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship. The Women Writers Project is “a long-term research project devoted to early modern women’s writing and electronic text encoding.” (Learn more about the Project here.) Julia is also the Editor in Chief of Digital Humanities Quarterly, an open access, peer-reviewed journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities, and has held leadership roles in the Association for Computing in the Humanities and the  Text Encoding Initiative Consortium. We are very excited to work with Julia at our THATCamp, and are grateful to the OSU Libraries for providing the support for us to bring her here.