The conceptual ecology of digital humanities

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field’s coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci. Findings Digital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS. Research limitations/implications This paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and “its relationship” to their own intellectual and professional work. Originality/value This paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow.

Digging into data management in public‐funded, international research in digital humanities

“…The field remains capacious, embracing information practices such as archiving, quantitative analysis, tool‐building, visualization, 3D modeling, sonification, curation, manipulation, interpretation, editing, modeling, mapping, reading, mining, gaming, remixing, publishing, critiquing, collaborating, code studies, and databases—often at unprecedented scale and scope (Burdick, ; Davidson, ; Hayles, ; Klein & Gold, ; Poole, , ; Trace & Karadkar, ). Often trained in traditional disciplines, DH scholars may occupy traditional faculty positions, but in addition to or instead of these positions, many undertake hybrid information work involving a wide range of digital data, resources, methods, activities, and tools (Clement & Carter, ; Given & Willson, ).…”

Confluence between library and information science and digital humanities in Spain. Methodologies, standards and collections

“…Wang (2018), meanwhile, describes digital humanities as an interdisciplinary movement and the result of a dynamic dialogue between humanistic exploration and digital means. Authors such as Dalbello (2011), Koltay (2016), Poole (2017) o Robinson et al, (2015) reinforce this idea of common interests, suggesting that DH and LIS complement one another to a very great degree since both disciplines focus on documents and recorded information. Going further, Poole and Garwood (2018b) refer to archivists and librarians as natural allies in DH and their work gives support to the premise that interdisciplinary collaboration online nurtures connections between researchers in LIS and DH to create sustainable knowledge bases which are also more innovative than those which either discipline could produce in isolation.…”

Infrastructures of digital humanities

“…Information DOI: 10.1002/pra2.284 83rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology October 25-29, 2020. Author(s) retain copyright, but ASIS&T receives an exclusive publication license professionals have been discussed as key contributors to these infrastructures (Clement & Carter, 2017;Poole, 2017), not only for their technical skills but also for project management (Tabak, 2017) and for teaching and training others (Rasmussen, Croxall, & Otis, 2017), often across disciplines (Senchyne, 2016;Terras, 2012).…”