CfP: DHI Symposium 27th March 2015

Digital Densities: examining relations between material cultures and digital data

Call For Papers

27^th March 2015, The University of Melbourne

Hosted by the Digital Humanities Incubator (DHI) in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

The ‘material turn’ in Humanities research has seen a celebration of the physicality of things and a revaluing of the weight of experience, including in the case of digital data. In his key text Mechanisms, Matthew Kirschenbaum identifies a need to reassess theories of electronic textuality in light of “the material matrix governing writing and inscription in all forms: erasure, variability, repeatability and survivability” (2008, xii). In the academy, this material turn co-exists with an increasing utilization of digital resources and digital methodologies to preserve and disseminate the findings of our research. These shifts are accompanied by divergent affective responses that include an interest in tactile sensations and a mourning of the loss of the object. There is a new awareness of the forms of lightness or weight attached to the transmission of ideas in and beyond our research communities; the densities of our culture and scholarship. The ever more numerous moments of contact between material culture and digital methodologies open up debates that are of both practical and theoretical significance.

We invite papers that explore any aspect of the intersection between digital and material cultures. We warmly encourage proposals from scholars with a range of disciplinary backgrounds as well as from archival practitioners. Topics and questions to be addressed might include:

-   What are the critical practices in the intersection of digital humanities and the material turn?
-  Where are the material traces in the digital? What labour is involved in the transitions between the material and the digital?
-      How do material and digital objects, practices and networks interrelate?
-      What is lost in translations from material to digital, and what is gained?
-      What is it that archives seek, and are able, to preserve?
-      What are the political and territorial disputes of material conservation?
-   How are creativity, meaning and contemporary resonance expressed in museums, libraries and archives?
-   What material, theoretical and ethical challenges are posed by the collection and use of data?
-  Case studies of particular archival collections and the relationships they create between the material and the digital.
-   What are the opportunities and limitations for pedagogy?
- How have contemporary representations imagined the digital transformation  of contemporary cultures?

The symposium will run for one day. Proposals for 20 minute papers should contain an abstract of 150 words, as well as your paper title, a short biography (100 words), institutional affiliation and contact details. Proposals should be submitted by 4^th February 2015 to amandat@unimelb.edu.au

The Digital Humanities Incubator (DHI) is an initiative of the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, and is supported by a collaborative Faculty of Arts Research Grant.

The New Literary Middlebrow

by Amanda Malel Trevisanut
@ScreenVsLife

Congrats to Beth Driscoll, one of our own DHI members, who has recently released a new book into the world, The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reding in the Twenty-First Century, published by Palgrave MacMillan.

The text explores the increasingly dominant force in twenty-first century book culture: the new literary middlebrow. Today's most influential literary tastemakers are descended from the middlebrow institutions of the early twentieth century, operating with new global reach and across the mass media. In this innovative and provocative study, Driscoll defines, describes and defends the middlebrow as a set of institutions and practices that provide real satisfactions for contemporary readers. The New Literary Middlebrow offers a comprehensive definition of middlebrow literary culture, describing it through eight features: it is middle class, feminized, reverential towards elite literature, commercial, emotional, recreational, earnest and mediated. Different expressions of the middlebrow are explored in a series of detailed case studies, including Oprah's Book Club, the Man Booker Prize, literary festivals, teachers, educators and the Harry Potter phenomenon. These case studies reveal new insights into the relationships between tastemakers and readers that are shaping contemporary literary culture.

Happy reading.

Announcing the Research Bazaar: Free training conference for Researchers

The Research Bazaar is an academic training conference presented by Research Platforms and the University of Melbourne. Research students and early career researchers from all disciplines can come to acquire the digital skills (e.g. computer programming, data analysis) that underpin modern research. There will be a range of tools on offer, including Python, R and even mapping. Training will be provided by teachers accredited by Mozilla Science Software Carpentry. The conference will also be an opportunity to meet and network with researchers from around the country from a huge range of disciplines. Applications close November 30. Women and researchers from diverse backgrounds are particularly encouraged to apply.

When: February 16-18 2015
Where: University of Melbourne
How much: Free!
Apply here: http://resbaz.tumblr.com/conference

DHI presents Melissa Terras

By Amanda Malel Trevisanut
@ScreenVsLife

On the 31st of October this year, Professor Melissa Terras, Director of the UCL Centre for the Digital Humanities came to The University of Melbourne to deliver a public lecture and masterclass for DHI. For the lecture Melissa spoke to us about the challenges of digitalising the Great Parchment Book.

Live tweets of the public lecture can be found via Storify here, and also Fiona Tweedie's interview with Melissa can be found here.

Thank you Melissa.

THATCamp Pedagogy, Melbourne 2014

By Amanda Malel Trevisanut
@ScreenVsLife

THATCamp Pedagogy, sponsored by DHI at the University of Melbourne on the 10^th October, harboured many fruitful discussions addressing pedagogical issues arising from digital engagement.

Consistent with the tradition of THATCamp, the day’s schedule was workshoped by participants over breakfast, with considerable interest in the Bootcamp sessions run by Steve Bennett (Mapping workshop) and Fiona Tweedie (Natural Language Processing), of Melbourne Uni’s own Research Bazaar. The final schedule listing all workshops can be accessed here.

The early afternoon session on Big Box Edumacation, led by Leigh Blackall, discussed some of the key problems with centralised systems for administering and teaching coursework (LMS, MOOC, etc). For instance, many of the free tools available on the web are more amenable to the individual requirements of different courses, enabling tutors to engage students using programs with which they are already literate. This of course dovetails with the issue of investment in centralised systems, and their lack of interoperability with other systems and tools.

The mid-afternoon session on Personal Digital Archives and Security. This discussion was based upon research being undertaken in Computing and Information Systems and the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne, and discussed what happens to the digital files created when a person dies, including facebook accounts, photos and emails. For instance, there are currently 300,000 facebook profiles for deceased peoples, of which only 30,0000 have been memorialized. Also, what happens to research stored on the cloud or on university servers if the researcher dies?  There is, in general, a lack of understanding about the rights individuals have over the digital files they buy or produce that has implications in the context of death.

THATCamp is an open, inexpensive meeting of people, of all skill levels,  who share an interest in digital technologies and how they reshape humanities practice. It is a relaxed event, with participants setting the agenda, to organize your own THATCamp visit http://thatcamp.org/

Fiona's Natural Language Processing Workshop

Thanks to all the participants who attended THATCamp Pedagogy, Melbourne 2014, and also to my co-conveners Craig Bellamy and Fiona Tweedie, the Digital Humanities Incubator for sponsoring the event, 1888 Catering and the Melbourne School of Graduate Research for providing us with spectacular facilities.

Working with the Great Parchment Book: Digitisation and Primary Historical Texts

Time and place

9.30 to 10.45am

31st October 2014

Linkway, 4^th Floor John Medley Building, 

The University of Melbourne

DHI is very excited to host  a public Lecture by Professor Melissa Terras on the 31st October 2014.

Melissa will be discussing the Great Parchment Book of the Honourable The Irish Society, a major survey compiled in 1639 by a Commission instituted by Charles I, of all the estates in Derry, Northern Ireland, managed by the City of London through the Irish Society and the London livery companies. Damaged in a fire at London’s Guildhall in 1786, it has been unavailable to researchers for over 200 years. The manuscript consists of 165 separate parchment membranes, all damaged in the fire. Uneven shrinkage and distortion has rendered much of the text illegible. Traditional conservation alone would not produce sufficient results to make the manuscript accessible or suitable for exhibition, the parchment being too shriveled to be returned to a readable state. Much of the text is visible but distorted; following discussions with conservation and imaging experts, it was decided to flatten the parchment sheets as far as possible, and to use multi-modal digital imaging to gain legibility and enable digital access (http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/3-1/great-parchment-book-project/). 

This talk by Melissa Terras (one of the members of the GPB project) will look at issues involving using advanced imaging methods within cultural heritage, particularly regarding the relationship the resulting model has to the primary historical text. Using the Great Parchment Book as a focus, she will ask how best can we integrate multi-modal imaging into our humanities research practices? What issues are there for both research and practice?

Professor Melissa Terras is Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities at University College London. Her presentation will include an overview of the advanced imaging technologies used in projects such as the Great Parchment Book (http://www.greatparchmentbook.org/), and the virtual shipping gallery at the Science Museum in London.

Admission is free.

Bookings are required

Seating is limited

To register email:

jose.gonzalez@unimelb.edu.au

For further information contact the Digital Humanities Incubator

E: jose.gonzalez@unimelb.edu.au

W: http://dhunimelb.blogspot.com.au/

Proudly Sponsored by:

 

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DHI has a new logo

Yes, it is cause for much celebration. The University of Melbourne's Digital Humanities Incubator has a new logo. You'll also noticed that we have revised our name, deciding that our name should reflect our broader interests, which extend beyond research into pedagogy, the archives and so on. Thanks to David Lloyd and his team at Juggle for their work.

Storify and its research potential

By Beth Driscoll

@Beth_driscoll

I research literary culture on twitter, and one of the challenges I face is describing the shape of these conversations to a general audience: twitter can seem like a disorienting, fast-flowing river for those who do not use it frequently. I decided to try using Storify, and chose as a case study the live twitter stream that accompanied a session with author Gerald Murnane at the Melbourne Writers Festival on August 22nd, 2014. I was in the audience too and couldn't help tweeting some of his great one-liners!

What I liked about Storify was that it allowed me to group tweets, show the flow of mini conversations, highlight the participation of those who weren't there physically, and add supplementary notes e.g. where I noticed a disjuncture between what happened physically at the session and how it was reported on twitter. 

So this is a first go by me at this visualisation tool:

https://storify.com/Beth_driscoll/gerald-murnane-at-the-melbourne-writers-festival-2

After creating this Storify and posting it using my twitter account, I was pleased to see it re-tweeted and favourited a few times, suggesting this methodology has potential for the dissemination of research in an accessible format. 

THATCamp Melbourne, Pedagogy | 10-11th October 2014

by Amanda Malel Trevisanut

@SceenVsLife

THATCamp, Melbourne, 2014, will be held at the University of Melbourne on the 10-11 October, 2014. The event is free and proudly sponsored by the Digital Humanities Research Incubator.

For those of you unfamiliar with THATCamp, it stands for “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” and is conceived as an informal, hands-on conference at which attendees shape the program. THATCamp is all about participation, discussion, and fun through fostering a productive, collegial environment. The program for THATCamp is created and managed by participants on the day who vote on the sessions proposed.

The core theme for THATCamp Melbourne is pedagogy, although any aspect of digital humanities work is welcome. In preparation for the event we ask you to start thinking about some potential topics to workshop on the day.

To get the ball rolling, here are some suggestions: ‘blended learning’ in humanities teaching,  spaces for learning with technology, the creation, access and critical use of digital resources in teaching; grading and assessment through learning management systems,  social media in the humanities, for instance sentiment analysis, visualisation of historical phenomena, or MOOCs in the DH.

To register follow the link:
http://www.2014.thatcampmelbourne.org/


We look forward to your proposals

Kind Regards
Amanda, Craig and Fiona

National Cinema Archives: Some ethical and political impediments to preservation and access

By Amanda Malel Trevisanut
@ScreenVsLife

Last week I discussed the shifting role of the national film archive in the age of the internet, as discussed within the context of the History, Cinemaand Digital Archives Slow Conference, hosted by the ANU Humanities Research Centre and the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) in Canberra this July. Another key issue that emerged within the conference was the ability of archivists to clearly re-imagine their civic and heritage role, given a the broad range of political, legal, ethical and technical contingencies.

Bronwyn Dowdall of the NFSA offered an insight into the idiosyncrasies of copyright law, and the types of challenges presented by the outdated exceptions and exclusions contained therein. For instance, the ability to ascertain copyright and provide access is often stalled because the chain of title is not intact. Another issue is amendments to law; prior to 1969 there was no provision for cinematographic film, and as such, films made before this time remain covered by two separate systems, either as dramatic works or as a series of photos. NFSA cannot make copies unless the work has been lost, stolen or damaged (yes, you read correctly), and moreover, of the 3 copies it can make under the preservation exceptions, it can only record a single flat copy when optimum preservation strategies require at least thirty copies.

The numerous technical considerations illuminated by RayEdmondson (Principal of Archive Associates Pty Ltd) include the multitude of different film stocks used over the last century and a half to record, duplicate and preserve content. Each of these has their own aesthetic and material characteristics, which raise significant questions about the status of the original within the context of the archive. Should a film be restored to its original glory, and can this even be achieved when different film stocks and mediums behave so differently? Does the preservation and cultural heritage extend to the preservation of some forms of decay (scratches and fading for instance), which provide evidence of a particular film’s cultural and physical journey over time? And if so, which forms of degradation are valued and how is this decided?

An interesting response to this question was offered by media artist Grayson Cooke (Southern Cross University), who invited attendees to linger over his "after image", a visual performances of negatives being chemically and physically destroyed, revealing how cultural processes of memory and forgetting are conveyed by the materiality of the celluloid as much as it is by the content that it is used to transmit. (Check out his work via his youtube channel and his civilizedmachine website).

On the second night of the conference, attendees were prompted to consider their personal (and intellectual) aesthetic preferences regarding preservation and restoration in the form of a magic lantern show. First, the show emulated the experiences of nineteenth and early twentieth century audiences via the presentation of the magic lantern show in its original format, accompanied by a live musical performance (special thanks to Martyn Jolly, Kate Bowan and Peter Tregear for their amazing performance). The same show was then projected using vibrant digitalised versions of the slides, accompanied by a digitalised recording of the aural performance dating from the early twentieth century. That consensus regarding the preferential format remained elusive only served to underline the ephemerality of “the original,” as both concept and material object.

Beyond digitalisation of analogue formats, the conference also showcased some of the digital tools being developed by and for humanities researchers, and which re-imagine the form and function of the archive.

Tim Hitchcock began by demonstrating how uncritical use of (very pretty) visualisation and topic modelling tools risk re-instituting an exclusive canon of valued works, and also risks underwriting lazy scholarship. This was complemented with some compelling presentations that demonstrated current scholarly attempts to overcome the apparent limitations of computational methods for conducting and presenting analysis.

Eric Hoyt (University of Wisconsin-Madison) provided an overview of Lantern (you can view the talk here), a searchable archive of digitalised cinema trade magazines which he has created with colleagues. The tool not only provides access to important primary resources, but also uses topic modelling and visualisation strategies to communicate which trade magazines have been most utilised by researchers, thereby opening new opportunities for scholars to conduct research that contests the cinematic canon.

Deb Verhoeven (Deakin University) treated attendees to a tour of her digital portfolio, which evidences innovative development of collaborative learning research environments. The virtual lab called Humanities NetworkedInfrastructure (HuNI) project was particularly compelling, and promises researchers new collaborative spaces for building and growing networks across disciplines, and for building and sharing research resources.

HuNI and LANTERN are of course, only two film resources indicating how the form and function of (digital) archives will be re-imagined into the future. For an overview of conference proceedings, and the thoughts of other attendees, you can search the twitter stream using the hashtag #cadh

Amanda Malel Trevisanut is an early career researcher with the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She currently works as a research assistant to the Digital Humanities Research Incubator, is a co-convener for THATCamp Pedagogy (Melbourne, Oct 10-11th, 2014). She has recently completed her PhD SBS Independent: Productive Diversity and Counter-Memory.

What is the role of the national archive in the digital age?

By Amanda Malel Trevisanut
@ScreenVsLife

What is the role of the national archive in the digital age? This was a key problematic addressed by attendees at the History, Cinema and Digital Archives Slow Conference, convened by Jill Matthews, and supported by the ANU Humanities Research Centre and the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA).

Archivists, especially those working within national and sub-national institutions, are increasingly burdened by the cheap and convenient availability of archival material on Youtube and other such platforms. It is, ostensibly, difficult to justify the public expenditure on maintaining film, television and sound repositories within this digital context. A number of proposals were outlined for how archival institutions might adapt to this new digital environment, the most forceful amongst these was the call for a shift towards a user-centred approach.

Ian Christie (Birbeck College, London) made the case that as explicitly State-funded institutions, film archives need to appeal to the nationalist project that underwrote their establishment in the first instance. For example, archivists can curate exhibitions showcasing the unsung cultural heritage preserved within their walls, such as the BFI’s recent restoration and touring of the Hitchcock 9. Another suggestion was making archival material accessible to documentarians, and facilitate the creation of new content of national significance, in the tradition of the 1973 documentary series The World at War. As Christie rightly indicated however, while high profile events such as restoration projects have an unparalleled ability to attract renewed State investment, these processes are often time consuming and prohibitively expensive. As such they cannot singly resolve financial woes insofar as the finance that they attract is absorbed by a given project, and this diverts money and attention from the core activities of archival institutions (that is, to preserve and provide access to films which they archive).

For Thomas Christensen, curator at the Danish Film Institute (DFI), platforms like Flickr need not undermine the role of archivist, but rather, they provide new opportunities for such national institutions to facilitate public access to cultural heritage. For instance, when Christensen receives requests for certain films, he takes the opportunity to digitalise and post those films to Flickr as a means of providing access to said films (providing of course, that they are orphaned films and films not otherwise covered by copyright).

While copyright is in Australia is somewhat trickier than in Denmark, NFSA CEO Michael Loebenstein similarly holds that institutions must adapt their role to accommodate the needs and expectations of the public. Specifically, Loebenstein is an advocate of utilising crowdsourcing model to not only facilitate public access to the collections, but also collaborate with the citizens to film the significant gaps in knowledge regarding the NFSA’a holdings. The potential of this approach to resolve some of the issues encountered by the NFSA was reinforced in the course of Bronwyn Dowdall’s insightful presentation. Whilst elucidating copyright restrictions on content produced before the Copyright Act of 1968, a conference attendee used the Shazzam app to name a musical track that had here-fore-to mystified staff of the NFSA and which undermined its attempts to secure permission from rights holders to make the film publicly available.

Crowdsourcing aspirations are promising solution to access, however in the short-term, appears to conflict with copyright legislation. The challenges of providing access dovetails with another recurrent conference theme raised by Victoria Duckett, regarding the frustration of many researchers at not being able to access the archives onsite or remotely, or indeed, to use their expertise to help the NFSA resolve some of the mysteries associated with its archival collections.

The other essential function performed by archivists is of course, the preservation of cultural heritage. While digitalisation holds new opportunities to provide access, it is not the solution to the significant impediments to preservation. The future accessibility of digitalised and born digital content is contingent on strategies for overcoming technological obsolescence, and the appropriate level of finance to ensure the constant migration of content as digital technology evolves. This is in addition to building storage facilities (which assumes a significant material presence). Thus it is important that archives also continue to employ a variety of preservation strategies. Under the right conditions film is an extraordinarily durable medium, and can be preserved for a significant length of time. For instance, using the cold storage system developed by the DFI and adopted by the BFI, film can last in excess of 2500 years (at minus five degrees Celsius). This however, again returns many institutions to the issue of inadequate finance.

Keep an eye out for part two of the History, Cinema and Digital Archives conference roundup, next week. For an overview of conference proceedings, and the thoughts of other attendees, you can search the twitter stream using the hashtag #cadh

Amanda Malel Trevisanut is an early career researcher with the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She currently works as a research assistant to the Digital Humanities Research Incubator, is a co-convener for THATCamp Pedagogy (Melbourne, Oct 10-11th, 2014). She has recently completed her PhD SBS Independent: Productive Diversity and Counter-Memory.

Maps, workshops and research

By Antonio Gonzalez

Yesterday I attended the awesome workshop led and organised by Fiona Tweedie and Steve Bennett from Research Bazaar and the ITS Research Services at The University of Melbourne (follow them here and here). Me and other researchers were asked to be at 10 am in the Old Arts Building, where we learned about CartoDB, an amazing software designed to make your own map. And I can only say this: the possibilities provided for researchers are endless! Although I had no experience with CartoDB, I do have some experience using TileMill, a similar software that allows people to create their own maps, using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This is the language that programmers use to create everything that is related to presentation.

In two hours we learned the basics and using a map made by the lovely Fiona, we set out to make the ugliest map we could ever have made. Little by little we learned how to change the style of the geodata that Steve provides us with and many other features like adding and deleting rows and columns to our table. I must say that it is one of the easiest software I have ever used and compared with TileMill, I think that advantages are obvious. Having said that, comparing TileMill to CartoDB is an exercise I won’t do here. They’re both great digital tools for researchers who cannot find reliable maps and/or prefer to create their own map. As an example, let me show you the map I created. And not only that, I have already submitted a paper and a book chapter with this map. Have a look!

© Antonio Gonzalez

I created the map a year ago with the help of Steve in a three-day workshop I organised at The University of Melbourne with ITS Research to teach researchers understand the basics of TileMill, so they could create their own maps. Of all the maps of the Dampier Archipelago I came across during my PhD, I could use few of them due to copyright and permission issues. After years of frustration without success, I decided to use TileMill and I created this beautiful map of the Dampier Archipelago. Ok, I admit, it is not the best map ever and it still lacks some important details (like scale). However, by using my own map I can easily adapt it and use it in different contexts (lectures, presentations, etc…), without having to rely on the holder of the copyright.

Ok. I think that is enough about maps.

The next workshop that Steve is doing at The University of Melbourne is already raising a lot of expectations. Have a look yourself!

Departments | Centres | Hubs | Networks: Mapping the Digital Humanities

By Amanda Malel Trevisanut

@ScreenVsLife

This blog has been adapted from a presentation given on 4 April 2014, at the Methods Models and Meanings Symposium, which was hosted by the Digital Humanities Research Incubator. While it attempts to map the institutional terrain of the digital humanities, it must be acknowledged that this paper is hardly exhaustive. The purpose, rather, is orient newcomers to the digital humanities, and to provide an all important starting point for thinking about how The University of Melbourne might position itself in relation to the burgeoning field.

To that end, it does well to acknowledge that there is more research to be done, and that this overview is Anglo-centric insofar as it focuses on English-speaking centres largely located in the US, the UK, and to a lesser extent, Australia and Canada. It is also worth noting that the digital humanities is a rapidly evolving constellation of departments, centres, hubs and networks, and insights that were relevant at the time the paper was written are likely to become outdated.

This paper is organised under four broad categories that represent the different types of digital humanities institutions that currently characterise the field: departments, centres, hubs and networks. The development of each category has accounted for various factors including axes of inter-disciplinary collaboration, teaching programs, publication outputs, and relationships with internal IT departments and with external stakeholders.

Departments

As suggested by the term “department”, this category encompasses those organisations that have been established for a considerable length of time, such as, such as the Department of Digital Humanities at Kings College, London, which has a long tradition of digital humanities research stretching back to the 1970s. Departments are characteristically embedded within their particular academic institution and the international field. They are significant sites of inter-disciplinary collaboration across traditional boundaries, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, sciences, libraries and IT. For instance, UCLA Center for Digital Humanities nurtures strong links between the Arts and Architecture, Social Sciences, Humanities, Information Studies, and its Theater, Film, and Television departments.

Departments are also characterised by teaching programs incorporating bachelor, masters and doctorate degrees. Summer schools, workshops and short coursework is also common, and the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities will also soon run an open access platform DHOER: Digital Humanities Open Educational Resources. Moreover, Kings College directs their digital expertise toward the provision of a commercial consultancy service.

Computer science and IT researchers assume a central role, which have allowed departments to pioneer new digital tools and methods. UCL has for instance, developed the Bentham Project, Textal and QRator, and metaLAB at Harvard University is launching new experimental modes of publication,  with three new releases in 2014. metaLAB is also is involved in documentary arts and media innovation, such as the creation of multilinear/multimedia documentaries modelled on databases.

Departments have developed productive and enduring collaborations with external stakeholders, particularly public museums, libraries, galleries and other types of archives and repositories. UCL is most prominent in this respect. UCL has capitalised on its location in central London, and has forged collaborative projects with institutions such as the British Museum and the British Library, and which reflect the mutual needs and agendas of all collaborators.

Departments have also harnessed communicative potential of online platforms including twitter, blogs, websites, open access journals. As well as facilitating real time global debate amongst peers, web platforms provide access to digital research projects associated with the department.

Centres

The key factor distinguishing centres from departments is their relative youth. That said, they have been around for long enough to establish a stable presence within their respective universities and the international field. For example, research conducted at The ANU Centre for Digital Humanities spans multiple disciplines including visual culture research and visual anthropology; collections-based research; social and environmental history; language, literary studies and linguistics. Its slate of teaching programs is increasing, with the recent incorporation of the second year course Hashtag Communities, into a BA. They also offer MA coursework in digital humanities, digital media methods and visual anthropology. Training and access to digital media resources are also available for grad students.

ANU is also exemplary insofar as IT has a prominent place within the centre, and there is a focus on the development of digital tools, such as OCCAMS (Online Cultural Collection and Management System). Some ANU research projects are in partnership with external organisations, for example AUSTLANG: the Australian Indigenous Languages Database is in partnership with AIATSIS; the PAMBU Collaboration is for the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau and the PNG Department of Agriculture and Livestock.

The web presence developed by centres also often utilise online platforms including websites, which aggregate portals to research projects and blogs. Notably, three scholars within Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln maintain individual blogs cultivating a real time link with the public and international colleagues. The Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at the LOYOLA University of Chicago holds an annual colloquium and publishes an associated journal.

Hubs

Hubs provide a physical or virtual space for collocating different research projects across the university, and for facilitating dialogue between researchers who share an interest in the digital humanities. Hubs serve as a node of activity, and functions to improve the visibility and viability of the digital humanities within a given university, thereby allowing scholars to build a profile for their research and providing them with new opportunities for inter-disciplinary collaboration.

Education is serviced based, for example, The Centre for Digital Scholarship at Brown Library University is resourced to provide digital tools, training and research support. Librarians and archivists produce a significant contingent of digital humanities scholarship, and university libraries are key sites for labs designed to optimise research practice. IT researchers and computer scientists are also important collaborators within hubs, working with humanities researchers to develop digital methodologies.

Hubs provide an important precursor to the development of formalised relationships between a university institution and external stakeholders, insofar as members are involved in research projects with cultural institutions. Hubs generally have websites which allows portal access to multiple digital projects via a single interface, for example the Digital Humanities Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. Conferences, symposia and regular seminars are regularly conducted to build the existing research community.

Networks

Networks are emerging communities of collaboration between humanities scholars with a shared interest in learning new digital methodologies, investigating digital technologies and using digital tools. These networks seek to connect with more experienced colleagues working within IT departments libraries, and across other disciplines in their academic institutions.

The internet is utilised as a powerful tool of collaboration and communication, helping to build a new research community and facilitate new opportunities for collaboration. For example, University of Toronto hasn’t secured funding so uses a blog as a mechanism for forging a cross-institutional digital humanities community. Seminars, reading groups and meetings are also key strategies for building a cohesive community with a significant profile.

Amanda Malel Trevisanut is an early career researcher with the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She currently works as a research assistant to the Digital Humanities Research Incubator, is a co-convener for THATCamp Pedagogy (Melbourne, Oct 10-11th, 2014). She has recently completed her PhD SBS Independent: Productive Diversity and Counter-Memory.