Spectrum of DH
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 If we were to sort the Digital Humanities into a spectrum based on Mullen’s definition of DH:
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 Category One would involve the people whose focus is on using digital tools to research the humanities in a new way. This is the most obvious use of Digital Humanities and perhaps it holds the origins of DH. Projects in this category would include text-mining or evaluating the demographic audience of a certain book through multiple levels to interpret what that says about the book’s appeal or even the current culture. C1 would not require many difficult skills beyond that of simply using the tools already out there; knowing how to utilize search tools or read graphs or even use Excel would be most helpful.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Category Two would include people focused on the idea of sharing and collaboration, such as digital review. Mark Sample would most likely fit into this category since his argument was that the DH should have sharing as their main goal. C2 projects would include a new dissertation-sharing platform or, as Sample suggests, an independent online publisher. It could include initiatives to have conversations about the Humanities occurring on popular social media sites like Facebook or Twitter or trying to use photographs or videos (on Instagram and/or YouTube) to further critical thinking in the general public. This category is especially important because the Humanities have such a failing reputation with the public right now. Like C1, skills required would just be knowing how to use the platforms, from WordPress to Snapchat. C1 and C2 can also create tools to further their purpose but they would then either become C3 people as well or collaborate with C3 people.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 2 Category Three would be the most technically skilled people; those who know how to code. In Ramsey’s definition of Digital Humanities, C3 people would definitely be in. C3 people do not have to be C1 or C2 people, meaning that their focus does not have to be on literature theory or on collaboration/sharing. C3 people may create anything they want as long as it relates to the DH, which has already been established to have a broad definition. Projects from this category could include making a new text mining software that will look for word patterns instead of individual words (C1), or writing a code that could tell you what kind of people visit your blog so you can better advertise (C2), or even pioneering a project to digitalize ancient Greek texts. C3 can be a mix of C1 and C2, either one, or neither. This is the most versatile group in terms of purpose but the technical skill is higher than that of C1 or C2. In a sense, C3 would be the mechanics while C1 or C2 people would be the engineers.
No names for your categories?
I can see just from this first category that you are going to build up in terms of skill and involvement. I organized my post from the top down. Just an interesting observation.