Back by popular demand, THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) will return to the Center for History & New Media at George Mason University on June 27-28, 2009. Timed to follow the Digital Humanities 2009 conference being hosted by our colleagues at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, the second annual THATCamp will strive to recreate the collegial atmosphere and innovative spirit of last spring’s event. At the same time, we hope to build on the strengths of THATCamp 2008 and make THATCamp 2009 even better. Responding to the tremendous outpouring of interest we received in the first THATCamp, we will expand the number of campers this time from 70 to 100. We will streamline the application process to allow pre-conference discussions to begin earlier and flow more freely. And we will open up our “unconference” format even further, encouraging even more spontaneous discussion and organic scheduling.
Stay tuned to the THATCamp blog for a more formal announcement and application guidelines. Jeremy, Dave, Dan, and I look forward to seeing you in June!
Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb continues his must-read series on design process for digital humanities with some notes (and code) for Front End Development.
Again on front ends and again via Clioweb, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has unveiled a new “dashboard” user interface, a numerical, widgetized overview of how IMA’s online collections, programs, and social networks are being used.
The National History Coalition reports the welcome launch of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative, a collaborative effort by a dozen federal agencies “to define common guidelines, methods, and practices to digitize historical content in a sustainable manner.” Anyone thinking of applying for federal funding in the next few cycles would be wise to keep an eye on this initiative. The standards established by this group are sure to turn up shortly in NEH, IMLS, NHPRC and other grant program guidelines.
Many thanks to Elisabeth Grant and Rob Townsend of the American Historical Association for mentioning my recent post on “Making It Count” in the latest edition of their “What We Are Reading” series. Elisabeth and Rob make the great suggestion of reading a new report from the American Council on Education alongside my post. Entitled “Too Many Rungs on the Ladder? Faculty Demographics and the Future Leadership of Higher Education,” the report argues that the current dearth of twenty- and thirty-something tenure-track faculty members will translate into a dearth of candidates for senior administrative positions in just a few years’ time. There are, the authors say say, only three solutions to the impending crisis:
If the current model will not work for those entering the leadership pipeline today, then higher education must find ways to bring more young people into the permanent faculty and advance them through the academic ranks more quickly, alter the career ladder so that people can skip rungs and rise to the presidency with fewer years of experience, or become more open to individuals from areas other than academic affairs.
Personally I vote for all of the above. As I wrote last week, the nature of academic work is changing, and the terms, conditions, and models of academic employment and career advancement will have to change along with it. We don’t have to relegate old models of tenure and promotion to the chopping block. But nor should we stubbornly insist on their unique primacy or fool ourselves that they’re somehow eternal and unchanging. Whether we are the ones seeking or bestowing the promotions, we need to recognize that an institution as diverse and kaleidoscopic as the modern research university can, should, and will accommodate more than one employment model and path to advancement and leadership.
Over the summer there was much discussion among my colleagues about making digital humanities work “count” in academic careers. This included twofantastic threads on Mills Kelly’s Edwired blog, a great post by Kathy Davidson, and an informal chat on our own Digital Campus podcast. As usual the topic of tenure also undergirded discussions at the various digital humanities workshops and conferences I attended during June, July, and August. The cooler weather and tempers of autumn having arrived, I’d like to take a quick look back and commit to writing some of the thoughts I offered on our podcast and at these meetings.
Let me use Mills’ “Making Digital Scholarship Count” series as a starting point. For those of you who weren’t following his posts, Mills argues that if scholars want digital scholarship to count in traditional promotion and tenure decisions, then they have to make sure it conforms to the characteristics and standards of traditional scholarship (though Mills points out that some of those standards, such as peer review, will have to be modified slightly to accommodate the differences inherent in digital scholarship.) At the same time Mills suggests that we have to accept that digital work that does not fit the standards of traditional scholarship, no matter how useful or well done, will not count in traditional promotion and tenure decisions. Essentially Mills makes a distinction between digital “scholarship” and other kinds of digital “work,” the first which bears the characteristics of traditional scholarship and the second which does not. The first should count as “scholarship” in promotion and tenure decisions. The second should not. Rather it should count as “service” or something similar.
I more or less agree this, and I’m fine with Mills’ distinction. Communities have the right to set their own standards and decide what counts as this or that. But this situation does raise questions for those of us engaged primarily in the second kind of activity, in digital humanities “work.” What happens to the increasing numbers of people employed inside university departments doing “work” not “scholarship?” In universities that have committed to digital humanities, shouldn’t the work of creating and maintaining digital collections, building software, experimenting with new user interface designs, mounting online exhibitions, providing digital resources for students and teachers, and managing the institutional teams upon which all digital humanities depend count for more than service does under traditional P&T rubrics? Personally I’m not willing to admit that this other kind of digital work is any less important for digital humanities than digital scholarship, which frankly would not be possible without it. All digital humanities is collaborative, and it’s not OK if the only people whose careers benefit from our collaborations are the “scholars” among us. We need the necessary “work” of digital humanities to count for those people whose jobs are to do it.
Now I’m not arguing we bestow tenure in the history department for web design or project management, even if it’s done by people with PhD’s. What I am saying is if we’re going to do digital humanities in our departments, then we need something new. It can’t be tenure-track or nothing. With the emergence of the new digital humanities, we need some new employment models.
I myself do relatively little work that would fit traditional definitions of scholarship. Practically none of my digital work would. Because of that I am more than willing to accept that tenure just isn’t in the picture for me. With my digital bent I am asking for a change in the nature of academic work, and therefore I have to be willing to accept a change in the nature and terms of my academic employment.
That said, I am not willing to accept the second-class status of, for instance, an adjunct faculty member. My work—whether it is “scholarship” or not—wins awards, attracts hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding, turns up periodically on CNN and in the New York Times, enables the work of hundreds of other academics, and is used every day by thousands of people, scholars and non-scholars alike. That may not make it tenureable, but it’s certainly not second class. My work requires a “third way.”
Fortunately I’m at an institution committed to digital humanities and willing to experiment with new models of academic employment. Technically I have two titles, “Managing Director of the Center for History & New Media” and “Research Assistant Professor.” That puts me somewhere between an untenured administrative faculty member and an untenured research faculty member. It is a position which would frighten some of my tenure-track colleagues terribly, and I can, indeed, be fired from my job. Sometimes that worries me too. Then I remember that probably 99% of the rest of working Americans can also be fired from their jobs. I also remember that just like that other 99%, if I do what’s expected of me, it probably won’t happen. If I continue to win grants and awards from panels of my peers and continue to produce quality, well-received, well-used digital humanities products, I’ll probably continue to have a job. If I exceed expectations, I’ll probably advance.
Just as important to note are the benefits my job has over more traditional scholarly career paths, some of which are pretty serious. I’m not terrorized by the formalized expectations that accompany traditional P&T decisions. I won’t perish if I don’t publish. I also don’t have fixed teaching obligations. I can focus full-time on my research, and I have greater freedom and flexibility to explore new directions than most of my tenure-track colleagues. I get to work on lots of things at once. Some of these experiments are likely to fail, but as long as most succeed, that’s expected and OK. I manage my own travel budgets and research schedule rather than being held hostage to department committees. I get to work every day with a close-knit team of like-minded academics rather than alone in a library. I have considerably greater freedom to negotiate my pay and benefits. And to the extent that it advances the mission and interests of the Center for History & New Media, this blog “counts.”
Mine is not a tenure-track position, and based on the work I do, I don’t expect it to be. Nor do I care. There are some downsides and some upsides to my position, but it’s a reasonably happy third way. More importantly, I believe it is a necessary third way for the digital humanities, which in Mills’ terms require not only digital “scholarship” but also digital “work.” I’m lucky to be at an institution and to have colleagues that make this third way possible. Other institutions looking to build digital humanities capacity should follow suit. If digital humanities are going to flourish in the academy, we need both to accept and advocate for new models of academic employment.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism launched the Pictures of the Year International Archive over the weekend using CHNM’s Omeka web publishing software. The Archive, which contains nearly 40,000 historic photographs arranged by collection, chronicles more than fifty years of journalism history, including striking images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Jack Ruby’s shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. In future the Archive will feature thematic, museum-style exhibits using Omeka’s exhibit builder functionality. The POYi Archive features an elegant original Omeka theme and offers a good example of the kind of customizations and display choices Omeka enables. It also provides another example of the range of collections-based research being published with Omeka. Check it out!
Congratulations to the Omeka dev team (especially Jeremy Boggs, Kris Kelly, Dave Lester, and Jim Safley), which today announced the release of version 0.10 alpha, the first major release of Omeka since February’s 0.9.0. For those of you who don’t know about Omeka, it is CHNM‘s next generation web publishing platform for collections-based research, one that puts serious web publishing within reach of all scholars and cultural heritage professionals.
The alpha version includes a major reworking of Omeka’s data model to support unqualified Dublin Core and a complete overhaul of Omeka’s theme and plugin APIs. Omeka 0.10 alpha allows us to start work on a set of interoperability and data migration tools for CONTENTdm and other widely used repository and collections management software and stabilizes Omeka’s APIs to make it easier for community developers to build new plugins and themes. A gorgeous new admin theme will make using Omeka even easier for site administrators.
Omeka 0.10 alpha is available through the Omeka dev list for testing purposes only. We strongly discourage using version 0.10 alpha on a production site. We’re aiming for a stable public release of Omeka in late October. Stay tuned!
It’s hiring time again at CHNM. This time we’re looking for people with web programming and multimedia experience. As reported earlier, we’re also hiring a tenure-track digital historian. We’ll be announcing additional openings in the next several weeks, so stay tuned.
Web Developers
The Center for History and New Media is seeking one or more entry-level web developers to work on award winning digital humanities projects such as Zotero, the National History Education Clearinghouse, and Omeka. These are contract-funded, one- to two-year positions that are particularly appropriate for people with a combined interest in technology and the humanities. Knowledge of some combination of the following would be particularly helpful: PHP, MySQL, Drupal, WordPress, JavaScript, CSS, XML, and object-oriented programming. Ability to work in a team is very important.
Apply online for position 10411z at http://jobs.gmu.edu/; then e-mail a resume, salary requirements, and a cover letter describing relevant programming projects and experience to chnm@gmu.edu with subject line “Web Developer.” We will begin considering applications on September 2, 2008, and continue until the position is filled. Applications without a cover letter will not be considered.
Multimedia Developer
The Center for History and New Media is hiring a Multimedia Developer to work on a variety of innovative, Web-based history projects. This grant-funded position is particularly appropriate for someone with a combined interest in technology and history. The successful candidate will be an energetic, well-organized person who takes initiative; works well in a team; and learns new skills quickly. Experience with audio editing, video editing, Final Cut Pro and/or Flash preferred.
Please apply online at http://jobs.gmu.edu for position 10412z, then e-mail a cover letter, resume and links to any prior Web-based multimedia work to chnm@gmu.edu with the subject line “Multimedia Developer.” We will begin considering applications on September 2, 2008, and continue until the position is filled.
About CHNM and GMU
The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, which is known for innovative work in digital history, is located in Fairfax, Virginia, 15 miles from Washington, D.C., and is accessible by public transportation. George Mason University is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with national distinction in a range of academic fields. Enrollment is 30,000, with students studying in over 150 degree programs at campuses in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and the United Arab Emirates. GMU was recently named the #1 “Up-and-Coming” university by U.S. News & World Report.
Our friends at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) continue to do great things. This fall’s series of lunch-time “digital dialogues” with leaders in the field looks like a winner … and not simply because I’m on the program 😉
Here’s the schedule:
9/9 Doug Reside (MITH and Theatre), “The MITHological AXE: Multimedia Metadata Encoding with the Ajax XML
Encoder”
9/16 Stanley N. Katz (Princeton University), “Digital Humanities 3.0: Where We Have Come From and Where We Are
Now?”
9/23 Joyce Ray (Institute of Museum and Library Services), “Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries”
9/30 Tom Scheinfeldt and Dave Lester (George Mason University), “Omeka: Easy Web Publishing for Scholarship and
Cultural Heritage”
10/7 Brent Seales (University of Kentucky), “EDUCE: Enhanced Digital Unwrapping for Conservation and Exploration”
10/14 Zachary Whalen (University of Mary Washington), “The Videogame Text”
10/21 Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Pomona College), “Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the
Academy”
10/28 “War (and) Games” (a discussion in conjunction with the ARHU semester on War and Representations of War,
facilitated by Matthew Kirschenbaum [English and MITH])
11/4 Bethany Nowviskie (University of Virginia), “New World Ordering: Shaping Geospatial Information for Scholarly
Use”
11/11 Merle Collins (English), Saraka and Nation (film screening and discussion)
11/18 Ann Weeks (iSchool and HCIL), “The International Children’s Digital Library: An Introduction for Scholars”
11/25 Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information), title TBA
12/2 Elizabeth Bearden (English), “Renaissance Moving Pictures: From Sidney’s Funeral materials to Collaborative,
Multimedia Nachleben”
12/9 Katie King (Women’s Studies), “Flexible Knowledges, Reenactments, New Media”
Dialogues are held Tuesdays at 12:30-1:45 in MITH’s conference room (B0135 McKeldin Library) on the main University of Maryland campus in College Park. All talks are free and open to the public.
New York University’s archives and public history program has posted an exciting opportunity for a qualified digital humanist. In the past few years the NYU program and its students have delved increasingly into the digital side of historical and archival work, and now they are looking for a digital curriculum specialist to help them solidify and formalize that new interest. Here’s the description:
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES/PUBLIC HISTORY PROGRAM
DIGITAL CURRICULUM SPECIALIST
New York University’s Archives and Public History Program (History Department) is now considering applications for a one-year grant-funded Digital Curriculum Specialist. The Program seeks a scholar experienced with the technical and intellectual issues in digital humanities to help the Program incorporate digital technologies throughout its curriculum and internship programs. The successful candidate will work with existing faculty to reconfigure existing courses, develop a digital history track within the program, provide technical services and conduct workshops for student and staff, create a platform for mounting student digital projects, and partner with archival and public history institutions in order to establish digital humanities internships for students. He or she will work closely with NYU’s Information Technology Services and Digital Library staff.
Qualifications: The successful candidate will have an advanced degree in either humanities or computer or information science, with a solid grounding in the issues and technologies relevant for humanities scholarship. Knowledge and experience with XML, XSLT, TEI, PHP programming, and Web 2.0 social networking technologies. Familiarity with archival metadata and digitization standards.
For three decades, NYU has prepared students for successful careers as archivists, manuscript curators, documentary editors, oral historians, cultural resource managers, historical interpreters and new media specialists. The program emphasizes a solid grounding in historical scholarship, intense engagement with new media technologies, and close involvement with New York’s extraordinary archival and public history institutions. For more information on the program, see http://history.fas.nyu.edu/object/history.gradprog.archivespublichistory.html
Salary and Benefits: Competitive depending on qualifications. Review of applications will begin on July 31, 2008 and will continue until the position is filled.
Please submit cover letter, curriculum vitae, and names of three references to:
Dr. Peter J. Wosh
Director, Archives/Public History Program
Department of History, New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
(212) 998-8666
(212) 995-4017 (fax)
pw1[at]nyu[dot]edu
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM, http://chnm.gmu.edu) at George Mason University invites expressions of interest to join the Center in applying to the National Endowment for the Humanities for one of NEH’s Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers.
NEH Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers (FDHC) support collaboration between digital centers and individual scholars. An award provides funding for both a stipend for the fellow while in residence at the center and a portion of the center’s costs for hosting a fellow. Awards are for periods of six to twelve months. The intellectual cooperation between the visiting scholar and the center may take many different forms and may involve humanities scholars of any level of digital expertise. Fellows may work exclusively on their own projects in consultation with center staff, collaborate on projects with other scholars affiliated with the center, function as “apprentices” on existing digital center projects, or any combination of these. The results of the collaboration may range from “proof of concept” to finished product.
The aims of the program are to 1) support innovative collaboration on outstanding digital research projects; 2) expand digital literacy and expertise; 3) promote the work of digital humanities centers; and 4) encourage broad and open access to the humanities. (For the full guidelines, see http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/fdhc.html)
CHNM plans to select a scholar for its application by July 31, 2008. Interested scholars should send a CV and a 2-3 pp. description of 1) their general interest in the fellowship and the Center; 2) what specifically they would like to work on during the term of the fellowship; 3) any experience they might have that is applicable to this work; and 4) how this work dovetails with any current Center projects (e.g. the National History Education Clearinghouse, Zotero, Omeka, the Bracero History Archive, etc.) Send these two documents to chnm@gmu.edu with the subject line “NEH Fellowship” as soon as possible. Applications will be reviewed as they come in, through July 31. The selected scholar will be notified soon thereafter, and CHNM will work with that scholar to submit a grant application to NEH by September 15, 2008.
