Archive for December, 2009

MITH
December 11, 2009
Digital Dialogues
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December 15th Digital Dialogues Bonus Edition!

The Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI) and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are pleased to co-sponsor a Digital Dialogue with Georgina Goodlander of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Tuesday, December 15, 12:30-1:45 pm MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B013

FREE and OPEN to the PUBLIC

"Ghosts of a Chance: A Museum-Based Alternate Reality Game" by GEORGINA GOODLANDER

The Smithsonian American Art Museum implemented the world’s first museum-based Alternate Reality game titled “Ghosts of a Chance” in 2008. The game ran for three months, both on-line and in the real world, and attracted over 6,000 players. Goodlander will present an overview of the game, from a tattooed bodybuilder to the display of fake artifacts, with a discussion of the successes and failures encountered along the way. The talk will also include a sneak peak at the museum’s plans for a future ARG.

GEORGINA BATH GOODLANDER is the Interpretive Programs Manager of the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. She is responsible for all operations of the Center, including developing and overseeing a regular schedule of public programs, updating interpretative information, maintaining audiovisual installations, coordinating the selection and installation of collection objects in cases in the Center, and supervising staff. In 2008, she managed the creation of Ghosts of a Chance and developed a module version of the game, which is available to the public on a regular basis.


MITH
December 2, 2009
ELO, Research
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Announcing the Deena Larsen Collection

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is very pleased to announce the release of a new Web site showcasing the Deena Larsen Collection we house and maintain:

http://www.mith.umd.edu/larsen/

Deena Larsen, whose best-known works include the hypertexts Marble Springs and Samplers (both published by Eastgate Systems), has been active in the creative electronic writing community nearly since its inception in the early 1980s. She has also been a collector and de facto archivist for that community, amassing what she has described as electronic literature’s “Great Library of Alexandria.” In May 2007 she gave MITH the extraordinary gift of her personal collection of early-era computers, software, and digital files.

The collection includes not only Deena's own extensive literary output, but original and sometimes unpublished material by nearly every author in her circle, effectively making it a cross-section of electronic writing during its key formative years (roughly 1985-1995). The hardware in the collection consists of five Mac Classics, two Mac SEs, and a Mac Plus, and associated accessories; the physical media includes some 800 diskettes, as well as nearly 100 CD-ROMs and Zip disks. The collection also contains manuscripts, newspaper clippings, books, comics, manuals, notebooks, syllabi, catalogs, brochures, posters, conference proceedings, and ephemera. According to Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Director of MITH and Associate Professor of English at Maryland, “The arrival of Deena's collection at MITH furnishes us with invaluable source material which will further our in-house research in digital curation and preservation, as well as function as a unique resource for the growing number of researchers interested in early hypertext and electronic literature.”

The site, built with Omeka, was designed by Amanda Visconti of the University of Michigan under the auspicies of the IMLS-funded Digital Humanities Model Internship program, which places iSchool students in working digital humanities centers. Kari Kraus, director of the program and Assistant Professor in Maryland’s iSchool and English department, comments: “Amanda’s work is a great example of the kind of collaboration and mutual exchange we’re working to promote.”

With this announcement we are also opening the collection to scholars on a limited basis. Researchers interested in visiting Maryland to work with the Larsen materials on site should write to us at mith at umd dot edu.


MITH
December 1, 2009
Community
1 Comment

MITH Welcomes Dave Lester

Dave Lester

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is very pleased to welcome Dave Lester to its leadership team as an Assistant Director.

Dave Lester has been employed by George Mason University’s Center for History & New Media where he coordinated software development outreach for the Omeka Web publishing system used by libraries, museums, and archives. He was responsible for prototyping mobile applications for museums, fostering a collaborative open source community, and co-organizing THATCamp, an annual Digital Humanities “unconference” bringing together practitioners to collaborate and share their work. Prior to Mason, Dave was a Crossroads Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship, and helped redevelop the American Studies Crossroads Project Web site. He is also a HASTAC scholar, and his ongoing research focuses on place-based computing and the engagement of the public in crowdsourcing local history.

“I’m excited to be a part of the growth of Digital Humanities at the University of Maryland, and look forward to helping create and manage digital projects at MITH,” says Lester. Neil Fraistat, Director of MITH, adds, “Dave's extraordinary range of skills, creativity, and energy make him a perfect addition to MITH's management team. He has gained invaluable experience during his time at George Mason and will forge one more link between our two centers. We are delighted to welcome him to MITH!”

Dave will start with us in early January. Be sure to stop by and say hello!