Digital Humanities – DigitalKoans

"An Approach to Assess the Quality of Jupyter Projects Published by GLAM Institutions"

Jupyter Notebooks have become a powerful tool to foster use of these collections by digital humanities researchers. Based on previous approaches for quality assessment, which have been adapted for cultural heritage collections, this paper proposes a methodology for assessing the quality of projects based on Jupyter Notebooks published by relevant GLAM institutions. A list of projects based on Jupyter Notebooks using cultural heritage data has been evaluated. Common features and best practices have been identified. A detailed analysis, that can be useful for organizations interested in creating their own Jupyter Notebooks projects, has been provided. Open issues requiring further work and additional avenues for exploration are outlined.

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24835

Knowledge Exchange Report: "Alternative Publishing Platforms. What Have We Learnt?"

From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring "alternative ways" of doing things.

Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment — the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

https://tinyurl.com/59eknvy6

"An Investigation in the Interdisciplinary Nature of Digital Humanities: A Bibliometric Analysis"

The current study is an endeavor to understand the linkage of the digital humanities with other disciplines in the universe of knowledge so that researchers from multiple subject backgrounds can carry out research on digital humanities in a more vivid manner. . . . The results infer that the highest number of authors active in research activities in the digital humanities belong to computer science followed by art and humanities and library and information science disciplines. The journals preferred for publication of research on digital humanities are also analysed, and it is found that the highest number of journals are from the literature discipline, followed by art & humanities, computer science, history, and library and information science. The publication productivity of journals is also studied, and it is found that "Digital Scholarship in the Humanities" is the most productive journal and that it belongs to the humanities discipline. In the list of the top ten most productive journals, five belong to the discipline of Library and information science. The study of citation and bibliographic coupling displays that the journals "Journal of Documentation" and "Digital Scholarship in the Humanities" are the most cited journals.

https://tinyurl.com/2p9s3wbr

"Finding the Right Platform: A Crosswalk of Academy-Owned and Open-Source Digital Publishing Platforms"

A key responsibility for many library publishers is to collaborate with authors to determine the best mechanisms for sharing and publishing research. Librarians are often asked to assist with a wide range of research outputs and publication types, including eBooks, digital humanities (DH) projects, scholarly journals, archival and thematic collections, and community projects. These projects can exist on a variety of platforms both for profit and academy owned. Additionally, over the past decade, more and more academy owned platforms have been created to support both library publishing programs. Library publishers who wish to emphasize open access and open-source publishing can feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of available academy-owned or -affiliated publishing platforms. For many of these platforms, documentation exists but can be difficult to locate and interpret. While experienced users can usually find and evaluate the available resources for a particular platform, this kind of documentation is often less useful to authors and librarians who are just starting a new publishing project and want to determine if a given platform will work for them. Because of the challenges involved in identifying and evaluating the various platforms, we created this comparative crosswalk to help library publishers (and potentially authors) determine which platforms are right for their services and authors’ needs.

https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:59231/

Washington University Libraries: "New Grant to Preserve Born-Digital Poetry"

The Washington University Libraries were awarded a two-year grant by the Mellon Foundation to support an exploration of essential questions surrounding the acquisition, discoverability, preservation, and use of born-digital poetry collections. The $250,000 award will enable the University Libraries to develop online resources and systems to process, preserve, and steward the collections of a new generation of digital-native poets. . . .

The first of its kind to focus on issues of acquisition, preservation, and wider access to born-digital materials, the project will process a wide range of digital materials from the archive of poet and academic Mary Jo Bang. Consequently, the project will eventually make it possible for students and researchers to access born-digital collections and gain a better understanding and insight into the unprecedented ways in which poetry is created in a digital era. The project also aims to lay the foundation for new benchmarks and guidelines on preservation and access to born-digital archives at libraries and museums and for personal poetry archives.

https://tinyurl.com/3baahaj5

"The Perseus Digital Library and the Future of Libraries"

I write this piece both to offer my views about the future of digital libraries and to do so on the basis of my own past experiences and decisions. These experiences include 35 years of continuous development work on the Perseus Digital Library and 40 years of engagement in what might would now be called the Digital Humanities. The motivations behind the development of what is now Perseus began, however, 50 years ago when I began, in fall 1972, to study Ancient Greek. My experiences and frustrations in the subsequent 10 years as I pursued this subject within the limits of print culture shaped my goals from the earliest days when I embraced the digital turn in 1982 to present and still shape my aspirations for the future.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-022-00333-2

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

WorldFAIR Project (D13.2) Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations Report

Deliverable 13.2 aims to build on our understanding of what it means to support FAIR in the sharing of image data derived from GLAM collections. This report looks at previous efforts by the sector towards FAIR alignment and presents 5 recommendations designed to be implemented and tested at the DRI that are also broadly applicable to the work of the GLAMs. The recommendations are ultimately a roadmap for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to follow in improving repository services, as well as a call for continued dialogue around "what is FAIR?" within the cultural heritage research data landscape.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7897243

Are the Humanities Ready for Data Sharing?

To get a sense of trends in data sharing within the humanities, we conducted semi-structured interviews with key personnel at several humanities projects with strong data components. The interviews focused on identifying where and how they planned to share their research data, how they imagined it might be used by others, and their perspective on barriers and opportunities to data sharing in the humanities. The research agendas, skills, and perspectives of the people we spoke with are not representative of most humanities-oriented research. However, the interviews provide important insight into the thinking of humanists who are already working across the cultural divide around data that separate the humanities from most other academic disciplines. We use them here as a springboard for consideration of what humanities data is, how to access and preserve it, and how it fits into the larger goals of creating an open research culture.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.318526

"DH Eh? A Survey of Digital Humanities Courses in Canadian LIS Education"

Library and librarian involvement in digital humanities (DH) has grown over the past few years. However, it is unclear whether current library and information studies (LIS) programs are properly preparing students for this type of work. This study analyzed course offerings at Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs. While Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs offer DH-relevant courses, the number of courses offered and their range/scope vary greatly among institutions. Although many are teaching the technical skills required by the field of DH librarianship, collaboration and project management training remain elusive in most programs.

https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.2.228

"An Open Social Scholarship Path for the Humanities"

Open digital scholarship is significant for facilitating public access to and engagement with research, and as a foundation for growing digital scholarly infrastructure around the world today and in the future. But the path to adopting open, digital scholarship on a national—never mind international—scale is challenged by several real, pragmatic issues. In this article, we consider these issues as well as proactive strategies for the realization of robust, inclusive, publicly engaged, open scholarship in digital form. We draw on the INKE Partnership’s central goal of fostering open social scholarship (academic practice that enables the creation, dissemination, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists in accessible and significant ways). In doing so, we look to pursue more open, and more social, scholarly activities through knowledge mobilization, community training, public engagement, and policy recommendations in order to understand and address challenges facing digital scholarly communication. We then provide tangible details, outlining how the INKE Partnership puts open social scholarship theory into practice, with an eye to a more open and engaged future.

https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.1973

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Data Primer: Making Digital Humanities Research Data Public

This Data Primer was collaboratively authored by over 30 Digital Humanities researchers and research assistants, and was peer-reviewed by data professionals. It serves as an overview of the different aspects of data curation and management best practices for digital humanities researchers. Endorsed by the National Training Expert Group of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.

https://cutt.ly/8MhHFnO

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"The French National 3D Data Repository for Humanities: Features, Feedback and Open Questions"

We introduce the French National 3D Data Repository for Humanities designed for the conservation and the publication of 3D research data in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences. We present the choices made for the data organization, metadata, standards and infrastructure towards a FAIR service.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.04094

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Humanities Commons Launches Mastodon Server Open to Scholars"

In response to community requests and our own recognition of the potential in this moment, we are launching hcommons.social, a Mastodon server open to all scholars (which we take to include: researchers, librarians, instructors, students, staff and anyone else with an active interest in research and education.) While we expect this space to lean Humanities-heavy, we leave it up to users whether it feels like the place they want to be. To start, there will be no limit on sign-ups, though we will review that policy over time as we learn more about the costs and overhead of managing the server.

https://cutt.ly/qN704oa

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Boundaries, Extensions, and Challenges of Visualization for Humanities Data: Reflections on Three Cases"

This paper discusses problems of visualizing humanities data of various forms, such as video data, archival data, and numeric-oriented social science data, with three distinct case studies. By describing the visualization practices and the issues that emerged from the process, this paper uses the three cases to each identify a pertinent question for reflection. More specifically, I reflect on the difficulty, thoughts, and considerations of choosing the most effective and sufficient forms of visualization to enhance the expression of specific cultural and humanities data in the projects. Discussions in this paper concern some questions, such as, how do the multi-modality of humanities and cultural data challenge the understanding, roles, and functions of visualizations, and more broadly, visual representations in humanities research? What do we lose of the original data by visualizing them in those projects? How to balance the benefits and disadvantages of visual technologies to display complex, unique, and often culturally saturated humanities datasets.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03630

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"The Emerging Digital Infrastructure for Research in the Humanities"

This article advances the thesis that three decades of investments by national and international funders, combined with those of scholars, technologists, librarians, archivists, and their institutions, have resulted in a digital infrastructure in the humanities that is now capable of supporting end-to-end research workflows. . . . The capabilities of the infrastructure remain unevenly distributed within and across disciplines, institutions, and regions. Moreover, the components, including the links between steps in the workflow, are generally far from user-friendly and seamless in operation. Because further refinements and additional capacities are still much needed, the article concludes with a discussion of key priorities for future work.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-022-00332-3

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "Where Are They Now? The 2020 Status of Early (1996–2003) Online Digital Humanities Projects and an Analysis of Institutional Factors Correlated to Their Survival"

"A study of fifty-nine websites created with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities Education Development and Demonstration program 1996–2003 reveals a different situation. The data show that 68% of these websites remained online for free use in September, 2020, suggesting an online lifespan of approximately eleven to sixteen years."

https://doi.org/10.1515/pdtc-2022-0011

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |