**Update 5/10/12: Added links to DH books and another DH-focused journal issue **

So you don’t have to wade through the Twitter archive to find a link to something, here is a round-up of the documents, projects, tools, and publications shared via Twitter during THATCamp OSU. If there’s anything I missed, feel free to leave it in the comments.

The first group contains links to the Twitter archive, a blog post about the event, and Google docs for a few sessions. The second (below the fold) is a jumble of other stuff.

Documentation:

• Twitter archive
• Post about THATCamp OSU on Michelle Aubrecht’s HASTAC blog
• Twitter Resources for THATCamp OSU with Jen Michaels
• Google doc for session on emotion and technology
• Side projects (Google doc)
• Notes from plenary session with Julia Flanders

Other links:

• Computers and Composition Digital Press
• When you die on Facebook, The Huffington Post
• Geoffrey Rockwell’s presentation on Planning Digital Projects
• DH journals:
• Journal of Digital Humanities (also see this introductory post on DH Now)
• Digital Humanities Quarterly
• DH issue of Culture Machine
• Kate Hayles on hyper and deep attention
• Against thinking, Peter Stallybrass
• The Curator’s Code
• Content Curators are the New Superheroes of the Web
• Kill Peer Review or Reform It?
• Planned Obsolescence
• Books on the spatial humanities
• The Spatial Humanities
• GeoHumanities
• Past Time, Past Place
• Placing History
• Other books on digital humanities
• Gold, Matthew K., ed. Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2012. Print.
• A Companion to Digital Humanities
• Cool DH projects
• Mapping projects
• America’s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66
• The Virtual Morgantown Project
• Journalism’s Voyage West
• Hypercities
• Historypin
• Mapping the Republic of Letters
• Quijote Interactivo
• Links to educational game resources
• How Video Games are Changing Education
• Free Art and Technology Lab
• Carmen Instructor Tutorials Online
• Open Heat Map
• Possible next steps
• “Networks” at OSU
• Working groups at the Humanities Institute

The schedule for the day is on Google Docs, and can be found here: docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoJbCe8J2_t2dDg2UFEwNzNzQm0tSVJ3VkJGQUt4Nnc

I’d like to propose a general discussion session about teaching online and hybrid classes that are not explicitly about DH but that would be enriched through incorporating DH approaches and methodology. I taught my first fully online class–a GEC survey of American Literature–last summer, and I fell into what is probably a common trap: cramming a fairly traditional f2f course into an online medium. Moreover, I found the students uninterested in learning any new technology to enhance the experience. It was a revelation to learn that these particular students didn’t want to have an innovative experience; they wanted to tick the course off their list of requirements. So how do we use the digital humanities to make online learning something other than the educational equivalent of Jiffy Lube?  My hope for this discussion is a kind of “show and tell” in which participants share strategies and philosophies for enhancing online classes in a variety of disciplines. This can take the form of demonstrating the technologies through which courses were constructed (as well as finished products), along with discussing the pedagogical considerations motivating individual choices. How do we create collaborative and individual assignments that incorporate DH approaches into online and hybrid courses? How do we do so while maintaining a balance between conveying content and teaching the technologies necessary to utilize DH strategies? How do we create “buy in” from students, especially nontraditional or technologically inexperienced ones? As a novice in this area, I have lots of questions and very few answers, but I’m willing to share whatever I can.

Hi, all. While reading through all of the session proposals submitted to date, one of THATCamp OSU’s organizers decided it might be fun and (OK, this next descriptor might be a stretch) heuristically valuable to create a Wordle from all of the session proposals (titles + text):

We’ve been mostly leaving the (blog) floor to the session proposals, but the Modern Language Association just released the first update in 12 years to its Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media, and I thought it warranted a mention.

How to evaluate digital scholarship is a hot-button issue in DH. It is an area of concern both for promotion and tenure committees tasked with evaluating scholarship in non-traditional formats, as well as for authors, reviewers, and editors interested in exploring the possibilities of the digital environment for improving the evaluation process. Those of you who are interested in evaluating digital scholarship should also check out:

• Les Tannenbaum’s proposal for a Session on Peer Review
• The NINES Summer Institute on Evaluating Digital Scholarship
• Digital Humanities Now, which is, among other things, “an experiment in how we evaluate new scholarship.”

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.

When and where should I show up? We will be convening in the Thompson Library in room 165 (first floor, west side). Doors open at 8:30 for sign-in, coffee, and mingling. We will start the program at 9:00. A more detailed schedule for the day can be found on the About page.

What should I bring? You should bring a notebook or tablet computer if possible (see this post for more details), a travel mug and/or water bottle, and, if you don’t like sticking things to your clothes, a nametag holder. (One of the organizers apparently has about a dozen of them leftover from conferences. Maybe you do, too!)

Tell me more about food. We will be providing coffee and tea all day, and lunch. Any other snacks or beverages will need to come with you, or be purchased at the Berry Cafe on the ground floor. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to provide breakfast – maybe next time.

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

Here are some technology-related details about the day and things to keep in mind as you propose sessions and prepare to attend THATCamp OSU:

Where we will be and what to bring: We will be using a variety of spaces in the Thompson Library, all of which should allow for wireless internet access on OSU’s network. We encourage everyone to bring a laptop or tablet computer if possible.

Proposing sessions: Our home base will be room 165, but we will be using 150 A&B and other smaller rooms as needed for sessions. Each side of 150 has a dedicated PC for the a/v system. Other rooms have a laptop hookup or no a/v capacity. As you propose a session, please think about what kind of technology will be required. Would participants need a laptop or other device? Do they need to install software? Do you need to project something for everyone to see? Include as many details as possible in your proposal and contact the organizers with questions. We haven’t yet figured out what kind of tech support will be available to us, so have a backup plan in case something goes wrong! (For example, screen shots instead of live internet, data on a flash drive instead of your hard drive, etc.)

Twitter: Twitter is a helpful tool at a THATCamp – it allows for real-time communication about schedule changes and other administrativa, as well as communication between attendees at the same session or different sessions. (Since THATCamps are informal, participants are encouraged to move between sessions as they like. The Twitter stream can tip you off to a discussion happening elsewhere that you might want to join in on.) It can also form a record of important concepts or discussions, which will help us as we write up the results of the day. If you have never used Twitter, we encourage you to create an account and play around with it. We have set up a Twitter hashtag for the event (#THATCampOSU) – just include it in your THATCamp-related tweets and use it to search to see what other people are saying. (The Twitter feed on the right is based on the hashtag, so feel free to try it out and look for your tweet there.)

Today is the 2012 Day of Digital Humanities, “a collaborative publishing project for digital humanists around the world to document what they do.” Started in 2009, Day of DH is another way for digital humanists to explore the scope of their field and document the wide variety of work they do on a daily basis. The participants will document what they do throughout the day in words and photos, and will post the results in journal format. Watch the site throughout the day and in the coming weeks as the content grows and is refined into an online publication. Learn more and see previous years on the wiki.

The NEH recently announced 22 new Start-Up Grants. Collectively, the projects provide an interesting cross-section of DH work in progress.

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.

Digital Humanities as a field resists definition – for all kinds of very good reasons. Sometimes, however, you only have a couple of sentences (or 30 seconds in an elevator) to tell someone what it’s all about. Those moments are tricky for DHers.

In the interest of helping us all wrap our heads around the topic we’re coming together to discuss, I wanted to share a brief definition of DH I just came across in a very nice post by Jentery Sayers at the University of Victoria, “Making Things in the Digital Humanities.” (With apologies to Mr. Sayers for pulling this particular quote out of a post with a much broader focus and no intention of defining DH in a tidy way. Sorry – it was too good to ignore!)

And in the interests of transparency, I’ll also cough up the definition I typically provide when teaching DH courses at the University of Victoria (UVic): “Digital humanities is the combination of technical competencies in computing with critical thinking in areas such as history, literary criticism, cultural studies, textual studies, media studies, geography, musicology, and information studies.”

I call what I’m doing “digital humanities” when I shift from treating technologies as objects of inquiry (e.g., a cultural history of magnetic recording) to actually expressing my work through them (e.g., using a platform like Scalar).

What do you think, THATCampers? Does this definition make sense? Does it apply to work you do?

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.

Wow! We have hit our 60-participant limit for THATCamp OSU, a full 7 weeks before the event. Thanks to everyone who has registered – we are really excited to spend the day with you all, and we look forward to seeing your session proposals on the site.

If you haven’t yet registered, you have two choices. You can either fill out the registration form and be added to the wait list, or register as a Virtual Camper. Head on over to the Register page for instructions…

Lots of you have expressed an interest in talking about DH in the classroom and teaching with digital media. For a straight ‘teaching with digital media’ discussion, there are some other venues on campus (for example, check out Innovate, the DU’s eLearning Events, and the Exploring Learning Technologies Community), so how might we focus the conversation so that it’s relevant to THATCamp and a discussion of what digital humanities means at OSU?

We might begin with some questions in mind. For starters, what is the current state of DH pedagogy at OSU?

• Where does DH currently appear in OSU classrooms?
• What opportunities do students have at OSU outside the classroom to participate in DH research or learn about it?

Broadening the scope, what does the larger world of DH education look like?

• What does DH education look like at other universities?
• What kinds of instruction/experiences produce humanities graduates who are qualified to do DH work?

Plenty of other people are thinking about this stuff as well, and no one has all the answers. Some places to start:

• Bethany Nowviskie’s guest post on the Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog, It Starts on Day One. It’s “a modest proposal for reforming higher education in the humanities and creating a generation of knowledge workers prepared not only to teach, research, and communicate in 21st-century modes, but to govern 21st-century institutions.”
• Digital Humanities Unplugged, an article in Digital Humanities Quarterly about teaching DH without technology
• Katherine Harris’ poster from the Digital Humanities conference last summer at Stanford: Pedagogy & Play: Revising Learning through Digital Humanities. A quick read about the importance of play in teaching.
• There’s already a ton of good information on Tanya Clement’s new site Teaching DH. Check out the reading list for a huge collection of resources related to DH and pedagogy.
• And some syllabi from DH-related courses in the new Digital Humanities Education group on Zotero

[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?

Your friendly THATCamp organizers received an inquiry from someone who can’t attend the unconference itself, but wants to participate in the discussion on the site beforehand, and stay in the loop on digital humanities developments afterwards. Our response? What a great idea!

As of now, THATCamp OSU is open to a new category of registrants: Virtual Campers. Keep reading to learn more.

You should register as a Virtual Camper if:

• You cannot attend THATCamp OSU in person
• You want to be able to comment on the site and participate in the discussion
• You want to be added to whatever OSU DH interest group comes out of the event (no, we don’t know what that will look like, but we’re sure THATCamp participants will be contacted about future DH stuff on campus)

To register, go to the Register page and fill out the form, making sure to identify yourself as a Virtual Camper. There isn’t a check box or anything since we just made this up, so include it in your answer to why you want to come to THATCamp. Also, please include this sentence as the first line in your Bio: “I am attending THATCamp OSU as a Virtual Camper.” Once you are registered, you will look just like any other participant on the site, so this is the only way others will know you aren’t attending the event in person.

If you register as a Virtual Camper, you will NOT be reserved a spot for the day itself. Registration is limited to 60 people, and we do expect it to fill up, so if you find that you can attend after all, please contact the organizers to see if there is still a space available for you.

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!

Julia Flanders, Director of the Women Writers Project at Brown University (and the facilitator of THATCamp OSU!) recently announced that Women Writers Online will be free and open to the public for the month of March, in celebration of Women’s History Month. She also notes that WWO will be offering a sneak preview of a new WWO interface. Consider sharing your discoveries with other THATCamp OSU participants through a comment.

As registrations are rolling in, how about another post about digital humanities? (If you haven’t yet registered, you can do so here.)

Think Google is a giant, faceless behemoth concerned only with search results and AdSense? You’re only partly right. It turns out Google is a giant, faceless behemoth with an interest in advancing the field of digital humanities! This post is a round-up of Google-initiated or Google-sponsored projects.

1. Google’s best-known contribution to digital humanities is probably Google Books:

OK, it may not fit everyone’s definition of a digital humanities project (note the conspicuous absence of any kind of interpretation), but the Google Books project has made the (published) raw materials of humanities scholarship more accessible than they have ever been before. That’s gotta count for something. Plus, it led to…

2. Google Ngram Viewer

The Ngram Viewer uses the raw data (OCR’d text) from the Google Books project and lets the user search for the incidence of particular words in published books over the last couple of centuries. (Try it, it’s fun!) Compared to the controversy surrounding the Google Books project, the debates around the Ngram viewer have been small potatoes, but they sure make interesting reading for DHers. Dan Cohen wrote a great blog post about it.

3. In 2010, Google announced that it would be awarding 12 Google Digital Humanities Research Awards. The awardees include projects at the University of Michigan, George Mason University, the University of Oxford, and Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In Google’s own words:

We have selected these proposals in part because the resulting techniques, tools and data will be broadly useful: they’ll help entire communities of scholars, not just the applicants. We look forward to working with them, and hope that over time the field of digital humanities will fulfill its promise of transforming the ways in which we understand human culture.

Did we miss any other DH-related Google projects? Let us know in the comments!

***Update: Amanda French at THATCamp.org reports that the bugs in the registration plugin have been fixed as of 2/22, so new registrants should get the appropriate messages and correct passwords. If you are still having problems, please let us know.***

We count ourselves very lucky that the good folks at the Center for History and New Media provide such incredible support for THATCamp, including a very easy-to-use WordPress site template and plugins for managing registration, etc, all completely for free.

That said, the registration plugin is still in development, and there seem to be some quirks. When your registration is accepted, you should get an email that contains your username and password for the site, as well as this message:

Your registration for THATCamp OSU has been accepted! Please visit the site to see who else is coming or to propose a session: osu2012.thatcamp.org. You can also contact the organizers, Melanie Schlosser (schlosser.40@osu.edu) and Louie Ulman (ulman.1@osu.edu). We look forward to seeing you there!

Due to some bugs in the software, however, the email just contains the username and password, and the password doesn’t work on the site. They’re working on it. In the meantime, if this happens to you, don’t worry. You ARE registered, and you can use the ‘forgot password’ link to change your password.

THATCamp OSU will take place Saturday, April 28th, from 8am to 5pm, in William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library. If you are interested in the intersection of technology and the humanities, and enjoy interacting with your colleagues in an informal, unconference setting, please consider joining us for the day. Go here to register, or click ‘Continue reading’ for more details.

Who should attend?

THATCamp OSU is open to anyone, but will be of most interest to faculty and graduate students in the humanities, IT professionals, librarians and library staff, administrators, and anyone else working with technology to support research and teaching. The event is meant to kick off a campus-wide conversation about digital humanities at OSU, so our goal is a diverse set of participants!

What is an unconference?

An unconference is an informal conference that does not have a pre-determined program. Instead, participants propose and lead sessions and the schedule is determined during the first session of the day. (One exception at THATCamp OSU: A special plenary session led by our guest facilitator, Julia Flanders.) Instead of traditional presentations, sessions are focused on discussion and collaborative work.

THATCamp is a program of digital humanities-focused unconferences supported by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

About the day and how to register

Thanks to generous support from the University Libraries, there is no registration fee for THATCamp OSU, and refreshments and lunch will be provided. There is no cut-off date for registration, but participation is limited to 60 people, so register early to ensure a spot.  (See who else has registered here.) Once you have registered and been approved, you will be able to comment on posts and propose sessions.  If you have questions, please contact the organizers, Melanie Schlosser (University Libraries, Schlosser.40@osu.edu) and Louie Ulman (Department of English, ulman.1@osu.edu).

For those of you wondering what digital humanities (DH) is, you’re in good company. Even die-hard digital humanists sometimes have trouble agreeing on a definition of the field. However, since we are going to be talking about what DH means at OSU, your THATCamp organizers wanted to provide some background info to get the conversation started. Over the next couple of months, we will occasionally post thoughts about DH and links to DH resources on the site, and we invite participants to do the same.

To get the ball rolling, here are two DH-related resources. If you prefer your info in text form, we recommend the excellent CUNY Digital Humanities Resource Guide.

If you’re more of a visual person (or if you’re just in a big hurry), Melissa Terras‘ Quantifying Digital Humanities sums up her quantitative research on DH into a beautiful and accessible visualization. You can learn more about the research behind it here. Here’s a sneak peak:

Registration for THATCamp OSU will officially open on February 20, 2012, and the call for participants will go out later that week. In the meantime, save the date (4/28, 8am-5pm), and spread the word!

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.

On Saturday, April 28, 2012, THATCamp OSU will bring together up to 60 OSU faculty, staff, and students in Thompson Memorial Library for a small unconference focused on taking stock of, and planning support for, digital humanities work at The Ohio State University.

See the ‘About’ page for details about the day, as well as more information about THATCamp, unconferences, and digital humanities.

Registration will open soon, so keep an eye on the site and/or #thatcamposu on Twitter. Contact the organizers with questions: Melanie Schlosser (University Libraries) and Louie Ulman (Department of English).