Archive for February, 2010

MITH
February 15, 2010
Community, Digital Dialogues, Events
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2/16 MITH Digital Dialogue: Dave Lester, “Collaborative Approaches to Digital Humanities: Unconferences and Crowdsourcing”

[Rescheduled from last week.]

A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, February 16th, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

“Collaborative Approaches to Digital Humanities: Unconferences and Crowdsourcing”
by DAVE LESTER

As MITH’s newly-minted Assistant Director and a serial collaborator, Dave Lester will discuss the unconference (barcamp) model and his experience helping organize The Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp) while previously employed at George Mason University’s Center for History & New Media. THATCamp has become an annual unconference hosted by GMU, and inspired regional digital humanities unconferences in France, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, and California. Lester will also draw from his experience engaging existing communities of interest through social networking sites to discuss the changing landscape of crowdsourcing and suggest ways that digital humanists can engage the public to answer research questions.

DAVE LESTER, Assistant Director of MITH, has previously 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.

Coming up @MITH: There are no further talks scheduled until after Spring Break as we anticipate presentations from candidates visiting campus for the College of Arts and Humanities cluster search in Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture.

View MITH’s complete Fall Speakers Schedule here:

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2010.pdf

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).


MITH
February 15, 2010
Events
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Rosenzweig Forum for the Digital Humanities

“Negotiating the Cultural Turn(s): Subjectivity, Sustainability, and Authority in the Digital Humanities”
— a conversation with Tim Powell and Bethany Nowviskie

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 from 4:30 to 6:30pm
Murray Room, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University

Tim Powell directs digital archive projects for the Ojibwe Indian bands of northern Minnesota, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Tim will speak about a project entitled Gibagadinamaagoom (Ojibwe: “To Bring to Life, to Sanction, to Give Authority”) and how the focus on Ojibwe culture affects issues of intellectual property, open access, and the design of the interface, metadata, and database.

Bethany Nowviskie directs the University of Virginia Library’s efforts in digital research and scholarship, and is also associate director of the Mellon-funded Scholarly Communication Institute. She will discuss a number of projects from UVA’s SpecLab, Scholars’ Lab, and NINES research groups related to the expression of subjectivity and perspective in interpretive digital environments.

Together (and as digital humanities scholars practicing outside of the typical tenure-track path), Tim and Bethany will address and open a conversation about issues of cultural authority, intellectual property, innovation vs. sustainability, objectivity, and the need to think outside the academy’s walls.

Sponsored and hosted by the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS).

The Rosenzweig Forum for the Digital Humanities is named in honor of Roy Rosenzweig and is a collaboration of the Center for History & New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University, the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland.

Map and directions here.


MITH
February 11, 2010
News, Research
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Reading for the Snowbound (and the Rest of You)

For any of you who are snowed in or otherwise looking for interesting reading, The Atlantic has a brief piece about the Preserving Virtual Worlds Project, featuring Matt Kirschenbaum and Kari Kraus. The second link is from an online New York Times debate about whether school libraries still need books, featuring Matt Kirschenbaum as one of five respondents.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/archiving-video-games

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/do-school-libraries-need-books/


MITH
February 3, 2010
Community, Digital Dialogues, Events
Comments Closed

2/9 MITH Digital Dialogue: Dave Lester, "Collaborative Approaches to Digital Humanities: Unconferences and Crowdsourcing"

A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, February 9th, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

“Collaborative Approaches to Digital Humanities: Unconferences and Crowdsourcing”
by DAVE LESTER

As MITH’s newly-minted Assistant Director and a serial collaborator, Dave Lester will discuss the unconference (barcamp) model and his experience helping organize The Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp) while previously employed at George Mason University’s Center for History & New Media. THATCamp has become an annual unconference hosted by GMU, and inspired regional digital humanities unconferences in France, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, and California. Lester will also draw from his experience engaging existing communities of interest through social networking sites to discuss the changing landscape of crowdsourcing and suggest ways that digital humanists can engage the public to answer research questions.

DAVE LESTER, Assistant Director of MITH, has previously 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.

Coming up @MITH: There are no further talks scheduled until after Spring Break as we anticipate presentations from candidates visiting campus for the College of Arts and Humanities cluster search in Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture.

View MITH’s complete Fall Speakers Schedule here:

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2010.pdf

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).


MITH
February 1, 2010
Digital Dialogues, Events, News
Comments Closed

Spring 2010 Digital Dialogues Schedule

We are very pleased to announce another semester of Digital Dialogues. In the four year since we have made Digital Dialogues a weekly event at MITH we have hosted over 100 speakers from the College Park campus and beyond (often far beyond) to discuss their work and current issues in digital humanities and new media.

This semester we lead off with a presentation from MITH’s newest full time member of staff, Dave Lester who comes to us from George Mason’s Center for History and New Media as an Assistant Director. Dave is (literally) famous all over the world for the THATCamp phenomenon–something he will introduce to the MITH community on February 9th, when he addresses “Collaborative Approaches to Digital Humanities: Unconferences and Crowdsourcing.” Please join us at 12:30 in the MITH conference room.

View the complete spring 2010 Digital Dialogues schedule here.