{"id":8015,"date":"2017-08-21T07:16:54","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T05:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/impressions-from-dh2017-different-facets-of-access-in-digital-humanities\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T10:12:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T09:12:40","slug":"impressions-from-dh2017-different-facets-of-access-in-digital-humanities","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/impressions-from-dh2017-different-facets-of-access-in-digital-humanities\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressions from DH2017 – Different Facets of Access in Digital Humanities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) took place on 8-11 August 2017 in Montr\u00e9al (Canada) on the campus of McGill University, and was co-organised by McGill University and the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. This blog entry will draw a few impressions from the attended presentations. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

For the first time officially bilingual, in French and English, the DH2017 conference spotlighted the theme of \u201cAccess\/Acc\u00e8s\u201d approached by a variety of long and short paper presentations, posters, panels and virtual short paper sessions, pre-conference workshops and tutorials, as well as the opening and closing keynotes.<\/p>\n\n

Since depicting the overall scene of the conference is not possible for a participant having to choose from a rich palette of parallel sessions, this blog entry will draw a few impressions from the attended presentations deemed through five facets: Reception, Collaboration and infrastructure, Methods, Tools, Models and concepts.<\/p>\n\n

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\nReception<\/h2>\n\n\n

The opening plenary lecture, The unexpected reader<\/em>, was presented by Marin Dacos<\/strong>, director of the Center for open electronic publishing (Cl\u00e9o<\/a>) (France) and focused on Open Access from the perspective of its reception and usages. In particular, the keynote pointed to the so-called \u201cunexpected reader\u201d, a reader who is not the intended or main target of a given publication, whose access to that publication is rather ephemeral, accidental, determined by a particular event, and probably more of an amateur than professional nature, and that may be uncovered by dedicated tools as Umberto<\/a>, the unexpected reader detector. Beyond the methodological appeal of the model, the unexpected reader approach draws attention to the necessity of making a broader range of readers aware of Open Access by means of alternative systems or alliances between research infrastructures and other forms of media with larger public coverage, and even by providing workshops for \u201cless academic\u201d writing.<\/p>\n\n

Aiming to capture reading behaviour related to space in an American city, in their paper Real and Imagined Geography at City-Scale: Sentiment Analysis of Chicago\u2019s \u201cOne Book\u201d Program<\/a>, Ana Lucic <\/strong>and John Shanahan <\/strong>from DePaul University, USA, combined library circulation data comparative analysis for a selection of books from a promotional city program with sentiment analysis for Chicago-related places in the selected texts. The question was whether there is a correlation between the number of books check-outs and the way they feature places closer to the reader\u2019s neighbouring library branch. The study enquired if this type of analysis, implying access to various types of data sources, such as US census demographics, library archives, social media (twitter feeds, Goodreads), and to the linguistic registers places in a city are written about, may help in predicting the library circulation of future titles in the program, the influence of the library promotional events, the impact of social media pointers, and in detecting ties between literary forms and real geography.<\/p>\n\n

My<\/strong> presentation, co-authored with Catherine Emma Jones<\/strong> (University of Luxembourg), From Usability Testing and Text Analysis to User-Response Criticism<\/a>, approached access from the perspective of user\u2019s response to interface usability tests, with the aim of going beyond usability-oriented interpretations. Considering that digital tools for text as a network, textometry and sentiment analysis may support this kind of enquiry, data from different usability cases were analysed and a typology of users was derived. The results of the study suggest that combining textual analysis with elements from the theory of aesthetic response may foster new paths of enquiry on the user\u2019s self-projection in the digital space and address humanities-related questions such as: what types of reflection are expressed in the response (general beliefs, own experience, experiment-based); whose perspective is represented when the user says I<\/em> (real person\/user, generic user) or you<\/em> (him\/herself, generic user, designer, observer of the experiment, software, computer); how can the user\u2019s affective involvement be interpreted in the experiment versus the larger technology-related context?<\/p>\n\n

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\nCollaboration and infrastructure<\/h2>\n\n\n

Another facet of access was considered by Lisa M. Snyder <\/strong>and Alyson Gill <\/strong>from the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, in their paper Cultural Challenges for 3D Research<\/a>. Elaborating on the outcomes of the 2016 session of the NEH Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute on Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites<\/a> held at UCLA, the presentation focused on several categories of challenges to be addressed by people and institutions involved in 3D research and 3D-based knowledge production. For instance, first, metadata should make 3D contents discoverable and (re)usable as research and learning objects, and allow connections among cultural heritage communities. Second, publishing 3D work may require stable platforms, standards for peer-reviewing 3D work, publication prototypes, as well as preservation standards across 3D types. Third, there is a need for an infrastructure for collaboration, dissemination platforms and interactive environments that may provide the basis for acceptance of 3D work, as a discipline on its own, implying changing attitudes at the disciplinary level.<\/p>\n\n

Similarly, Lisa Spiro<\/strong>, Geneva Henry<\/strong>, Toniesha Taylor <\/strong>and Amanda French<\/strong>, from Rice University, George Washington University, and the Prairie View A & M University, USA, in their presentation Establishing a \u201cResilient Network\u201d for Digital Humanities<\/a>, pointed out the necessity of a stable cross-institutional framework in Digital Humanities to facilitate access by collaboration among institutions, building expertise and communities, and creating collaborative networks and cross-institutional teams. Since such an initiative had to face a series of challenges, as different institutional platforms, procedures and capacities, and the creation of a shared curriculum, the speakers recommended a set of key activities, e.g. extra-institutional workshop sessions, awards in travel and training, new jump-start projects, guidelines writing for other institutions to join, in order to establish a networked model for supporting and sustaining teaching and research in Digital Humanities.<\/p>\n\n

Addressing the question of Collaborative Writing to Build Digital Humanities Praxis<\/a>, Brandon Walsh<\/strong> from the University of Virginia, USA, focused on the collaborative writing of Open Access materials as a form of praxis-oriented pedagogy. This may involve not only teachers but also students that can produce and revise each other\u2019s work and contribute meaningful conversation in the Academy. The proposal was illustrated by a case study, an open coursebook, Introduction to text analysis<\/a>, written with students readers in mind, and proposing a series of exercises for practicing the acquired concepts and skills, and inviting students and other collaborators to discuss, produce and revise shared educational content.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\nDigital Humanities 2017 Montr\u00e9al <\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/header>
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