Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Digital Humanities, SPEC Kit 326, which provides a snapshot of research library experiences with digital scholarship centers or services that support the humanities (e.g., history, art, music, film, literature, philosophy, religion, etc.) and the benefits and challenges of hosting them. The survey asked ARL libraries about the organization of these services, how they are staffed and funded, what services they offer and to whom, what technical infrastructure is provided, whether the library manages or archives the digital resources produced, and how services are assessed, among other questions. . . .

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec-326-web.pdf.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

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This peer reviewed document reflects on the centrality of Research Infrastructures (RIs) to the Humanities. It argues that without RIs such as archives, libraries, academies, museums and galleries (and the sources that they identify, order, preserve and make accessible) significant strands of Humanities research would not be possible. After proposing a wide-ranging definition of digital RIs—with the aim of reflecting on the meaning of infrastructure in the Humanities rather than on those parts common to other domains of science—it attempts to relate physical RIs to digital ones. By drawing on a number of case studies—chosen to showcase the variety of research around existing or emerging infrastructures—it demonstrates that digital RIs offer Humanities scholars new and productive ways to explore old questions and develop new ones.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

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Last week I presented at the Great Lakes College Association's New Directions workshop on digital humanities (DH), where I tried to answer the question "Why the digital humanities?" But I discovered that an equally important question is "How do you do the digital humanities"? Although participants seemed to be excited about the potential of digital humanities, some weren't sure how to get started and where to go for support and training.

Building on the slides I presented at the workshop, I'd like to offer some ideas for how a newcomer might get acquainted with the community and dive into DH work. I should emphasize that many in the DH community are to some extent self-taught and/or gained their knowledge through work on projects rather than through formal training.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The author provides a summative and recent overview of the use of digital technologies in classical studies, focusing on classical Greece, Rome, and the ancient Middle and Near East, and generally on the period up to about 600 AD. The report explores what projects exist and how they are used, examines the infrastructure that currently exists to support digital classics as a discipline, and investigates larger humanities cyberinfrastructure projects and existing tools or services that might be repurposed for the digital classics.

| Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the guidelines:

This program is designed to fund the implementation of innovative digital-humanities projects that have successfully completed a start-up phase and demonstrated their value to the field. Such projects might enhance our understanding of central problems in the humanities, raise new questions in the humanities, or develop new digital applications and approaches for use in the humanities. The program can support innovative digital-humanities projects that address multiple audiences, including scholars, teachers, librarians, and the public. Applications from recipients of NEH's Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants are welcome.

Unlike NEH's start-up grant program, which emphasizes basic research, prototyping, experimentation, and potential impact, the Digital Humanities Implementation Grants program seeks to identify projects that have successfully completed their start-up phase and are well positioned to have a major impact.

Proposals are welcome for digital initiatives in any area of the humanities. Digital Humanities Implementation Grants may involve:

• implementation of computationally-based methods or techniques for humanities research;
• implementation of new digital tools for use in humanities research, public programming, or educational settings;
• efforts to ensure the completion and long-term sustainability of existing digital resources (typically in conjunction with a library or archive);
• studies that examine the philosophical or practical implications of the use of emerging technologies in specific fields or disciplines of the humanities, or in interdisciplinary collaborations involving several fields or disciplines; or
• implementation of new digital modes of scholarly communication that facilitate peer review, collaboration, or the dissemination of humanities scholarship for various audiences.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography | Google Books Bibliography | Institutional Repository Bibliography | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant of $300,000 to the Shelley-Godwin Archive, a digital resource comprising works of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Humanities scholars, curators, and information scientists from The New York Public Library (NYPL), the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and the British Library will collaborate on the archive's creation. They will be led by Elizabeth C. Denlinger, Curator of the Pforzheimer Collection of the NYPL. Neil Fraistat, director of MITH, a renowned scholar in both the digital humanities and Shelley studies, will act as co-Principal Investigator.

The Shelley-Godwin Archive will draw primarily from the two foremost collections of these materials, those of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at NYPL, which together hold an estimated 90 percent of all known relevant manuscripts worldwide. With the Archive’s creation, manuscripts and early editions of these writers will be made freely available to the public through an innovative framework constituting a new model of best practice for research libraries. First among these is the manuscript of Mary Shelley's iconic novel of 1818, Frankenstein; and second will be the working notebooks of P.B. Shelley, which are scattered amongst the five partner institutions from California to England. MITH will create the project’s infrastructure with the assistance of the New York Public Library’s digital humanities group, NYPL Labs.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement.

The Office of Digital Humanities is happy to announce twenty-two new awards from our Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant program from our October 5, 2010 deadline. These awards are part of a larger slate of 216 grants just announced by the NEH.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program supports projects that provide an essential foundation for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects. Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.

Applications may be submitted for projects that address one or more of the following activities:

• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art, and material culture;
• providing conservation treatment (including deacidification) for collections, leading to enhanced access;
• digitizing collections;
• preserving and improving access to born-digital sources;
• developing databases, virtual collections, or other electronic resources to codify information on a subject or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials;
• creating encyclopedias;
• preparing linguistic tools, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora, and reference grammars (separate funding is available for endangered language projects in partnership with the National Science Foundation);
• developing tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographic information systems (GIS); and
• designing digital tools to facilitate use of humanities resources.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

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Humanities scholars are often perceived in very traditional terms: spending a lot of time working on their own and collaborating only informally through highly-dispersed networks. Unlike most scientists, they have no long tradition of working in formal, close-knit and collaborative research groups. Humanities scholars have also sometimes been presented as "depth" rather than "breadth" researchers, preferring to spend significant amounts of time with a few items, rather than working across a broader frame. In terms of information sources, text and images held in archives and libraries tend to dominate, with less of an association with new web-based technologies (although this is changing with the increasing visibility of digital humanities).

This report suggests that such perceptions may be out of date. In each of our case studies we found researchers working with new tools and technologies, in increasingly collaborative environments, and both producing and using information resources in diverse ways. There is a richness and variety within humanities information practices which must be recognised and understood if we are to provide the right kind of support for researchers.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Digging into Data Challenge asks researchers these provocative questions: How can we use advanced computation to change the nature of our research methods? That is, now that the objects of study for researchers in the humanities and social sciences, including books, survey data, economic data, newspapers, music, and other scholarly and scientific resources are being digitized at a huge scale, how does this change the very nature of our research? How might advanced computation and data analysis techniques help researchers use these materials to ask new questions about and gain new insights into our world? . . .

Due to the overwhelming popularity of round one, the Digging into Data Challenge is pleased to announce that four additional funders have joined for round two, enabling this competition to have a world-wide reach into many different scholarly and scientific domains. The eight sponsoring funding bodies include the Arts & Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom), the Economic & Social Research Council (United Kingdom), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (United States), the Joint Information Systems Committee (United Kingdom), the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States), the National Science Foundation (United States), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (Netherlands), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada).

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Eligible projects include:

• the development of technical standards, best practices, and tools for preserving and creating access to humanities collections;
• the exploration of more effective scientific and technical methods of preserving humanities collections;
• the development of automated procedures and computational tools to integrate, analyze, and repurpose humanities data in disparate online resources; and
• the investigation and testing of new ways of providing digital access to humanities materials that are not easily digitized using current methods.

NEH especially encourages applications that address the following topics:

• Digital Preservation: how to preserve digital humanities materials, including born-digital materials, for which there is no analog counterpart;
• Recorded Sound and Moving Image Collections: how to preserve and increase access to the record of the twentieth century contained in these formats; and
• Preventive Conservation: how to protect humanities collections and slow their deterioration through the use of sustainable preservation strategies.. . .

The maximum award is $350,000 for up to three years. Applicants whose projects focus on any of the three areas of special interest noted above may request up to $400,000.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Here's an excerpt:

This report reflects the growing concern in the scholarly and cultural communities, and beyond, regarding the sustainability of Canada's digital knowledge and heritage. Canada's digital advantage is only of value if it can be carried into the future. Canadians must meet the challenge of preserving and enhancing scholarly and artistic knowledge production and our culture in a digital environment. This report reviews the current state of knowledge about the sustainability of digital scholarship and related cultural activity in Canada and identifies research opportunities that emerge from consideration of the literature.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We’re excited to announce the redesigned website for and public release of The Text-Image Linking Environment (TILE), a web-based tool for creating and editing image-based electronic editions and digital archives of humanities texts. This initial release of TILE 0.9 features tools for importing and exporting transcript lines and images of text, an image markup tool, a semi-automated line recognizer that tags regions of text within an image, and plugin architecture to extend the functionality of the software.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia Library and the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University are pleased to announce a collaborative "Omeka + Neatline" initiative, supported by $665,248 in funding from the Library of Congress.

The Omeka + Neatline project's goal is to enable scholars, students, and library and museum professionals to create geospatial and temporal visualizations of archival collections using a Neatline toolset within CHNM's popular, open source Omeka exhibition platform. Neatline, a "contribution to interpretive humanities scholarship in the visual vernacular," is a project of the UVa Library Scholars' Lab, originally bolstered by a Start-Up Grant from the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Omeka is an award-winning web-publishing platform for the display of cultural heritage and scholarly collections and exhibits, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

This two-year initiative will allow CHNM and the Scholars' Lab to expand and regularize a partnership that developed informally between the two centers over the course of the past year. Collaboration has already resulted in improvements to the core functionality of Omeka by CHNM and has led the Scholars' Lab to produce a number of prototype plugins making Omeka a more attractive and viable option for scholarly partnerships with larger libraries and cultural heritage institutions. These include: improved data import (including EAD, a common archival standard); Solr-powered searching and browsing; and Fedora-based repository services. Further development will improve existing plugins, add preservation workflows, and refine the Neatline toolset for integration and sophisticated editing and scholarly annotation of historical maps, GIS layers, and timelines. Enhancements to Omeka's core APIs, improved documentation, regular "point" releases, and a new Exhibit Builder will strengthen Omeka's already large and robust user and developer communities.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The National Humanities Alliance has posted two items about this issue: "Republican Study Committee Leaders Unveil Spending Reduction Act of 2011" and, on the DuraSpace Blog, "Proposal to Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities in U.S. Congress."

You can use the NHA's Legislative Action Center Contact Form to send messages to your Congressional representatives. The form includes suggested bullet points that you can include in your message.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |