Oral History And Digital Humanities

Exploring the developments that have occurred in the practice of oral history since digital audio and video became viable, this book explores various groundbreaking projects in the history of digital oral history, distilling the insights of pioneers in the field and applying them to the constantly changing electronic landscape of today.

This book addresses the application of computing to cultural heritage and the discipline of Digital Humanities that formed around it. Digital Humanities research is transforming how the Human record can be transmitted, shaped, understood, questioned and imagined and it has been ongoing for more than 70 years. However, we have no comprehensive histories of its research trajectory or its disciplinary development. The authors make a first contribution towards remedying this by uncovering, documenting, and analysing a number of the social, intellectual and creative processes that helped to shape this research from the 1950s until the present day. By taking an oral history approach, this book explores questions like, among others, researchers’ earliest memories of encountering computers and the factors that subsequently prompted them to use the computer in Humanities research. Computation and the Humanities will be an essential read for cultural and computing historians, digital humanists and those interested in developments like the digitisation of cultural heritage and artefacts. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license

Charting the evolution of practicing digital history Historians have seen their field transformed by the digital age. Research agendas, teaching and learning, scholarly communication, the nature of the archive—all have undergone a sea change that in and of itself constitutes a fascinating digital history. Yet technology's role in the field's development remains a glaring blind spot among digital scholars. Adam Crymble mines private and web archives, social media, and oral histories to show how technology and historians have come together. Using case studies, Crymble merges histories and philosophies of the field, separating issues relevant to historians from activities in the broader digital humanities movement. Key themes include the origin myths of digital historical research; a history of mass digitization of sources; how technology influenced changes in the curriculum; a portrait of the self-learning system that trains historians and the problems with that system; how blogs became a part of outreach and academic writing; and a roadmap for the continuing study of history in the digital era.

Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilised as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers -- ethical, practical and conceptual -- in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature In The Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions.

Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library's role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education. Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls for a reimagining of the roles of libraries and librarians. In many cases, these reimagined roles call for expanded responsibilities, often in the areas of collaborative instruction and digital asset management, and in turn these expanded responsibilities can strain already stretched resources.Laying the Foundation provides practical solutions to the challenges of successfully incorporating digital humanities programs into existing library services. Collectively, its authors argue that librarians are critical resources for teaching digital humanities to undergraduate students and that libraries are essential for publishing, preserving, and making accessible digital scholarship.

Exploring the developments that have occurred in the practice of oral history since digital audio and video became viable, this book explores various groundbreaking projects in the history of digital oral history, distilling the insights of pioneers in the field and applying them to the constantly changing electronic landscape of today.

This volume introduces the reader to the wide range of methods that digital humanities employ, and offers a practical guide to the study, interpretation, and presentation of cultural material and practices. In this instance, the editors consider digital humanities to include both the use of computing to understand cultural material in new ways, and the application of theories and methods from the humanities to interpret new technologies. Each chapter provides a step-by-step guide to cutting-edge methodologies so that students can make informed decisions about the methods they use, consider ethical practices, follow practical procedures, and present their work effectively. Readers will develop practical and reflexive understandings of the software and digital devices that they study and use for research, and the book will help new researchers collaborate and contribute to their scholarly communities, and to public discourse. As contemporary humanities work becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, and increasingly permeated by and with digital technologies, this volume helps new researchers navigate an evolving academic environment. Humanities and social sciences students will find this textbook an invaluable resource for assessing and creating digital projects.