Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 520.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2024-03-29 14:21:13+00:00
From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.518: name of the first ALLC/ACH conference
Dear Scott, Dear Maurizio,
thanks first for the detailed history of the abstracts library. I do not
really know, whether I shall praise it more as encouraging or mourn the
discouraging aspects of your story.
> You can imagine my shock and dismay when I started to see folks using the
> site as a URL of record for DH presentations (somewhat like a DOI) in
> citations, their CVs, and so on.
Once more, in a world of seemingly numberless "infrastructures", an
extremely useful entity which arose as a byproduct of a basically
unfunded initiative. And once again no infrastructure which is able to
sustain it. I am truly impressed by the usefulness of the thing you have
created, Scott.
But again, I think that what we would need would be a more general
solution, some kind of deposit library, which would take it upon itself
to provide an integrated collection of the past resources on the
interdisciplinary work between the Humanities and information
technology, which I think is a quite significant part of the history of
the disciplines involved.
Maurizio has defined a very useful profile for the kind of structure
needed and provided very good criteria for building it. I would add only
one thing: Giving permanence to a repository of the conferences ist an
importnat thing, but it could only be a first step. As an "archive of
interdisciplinarity" I would look for something more general, which also
takes it upon itself to collect other classes of material. E.g., the
various "newsletters". For the seventies to the nineties they played the
role of the "personal websites" of the nineties, and the developing
culture of blogs and podcasts of the current century. And, strangely
enough, with the internet archive you have probably a much better chance
to get an idea what was discussed in the discipline in the volatile web
media than understanding what the physically robust paper trail of the
earlier discussions could disclose.
Unfortunately, I still have no idea, how to find an institution with the
mission to archive our heritage "for ever", with a regular budget, that
would be willing to enter this segment into its portfolio.
Kind regards,
Manfred
Am 29.03.24 um 08:10 schrieb Humanist:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 518.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2024-03-28 12:27:38+00:00
> From: Scott B. Weingart <weingart.scott@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.369: name of the first ALLC/ACH conference
>
> Dear Manfred (with thanks to Maurizio Lana for resurfacing the
> conversation),
>
> I'm glad our little https://dh-abstracts.library.virginia.edu/ has
> continued to prove of interest and use. You're right that it's too limited
> and parochial for the broader purpose, and I'm glad to see Julianne Nyhan
> and Gerben Zaagsma are working on a larger solution, which as everyone
> rightly points out is sorely needed.
>
> As the wider conversation is already in capable hands, I wanted to address
> a bit about the history of the dh-abstracts project in answer to Manfred's
> questions.
>
> I started a collection of digital abstracts from the ADHO conference in
> around 2012, in the process of blogging about trends I'd noticed, and
> Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara joined me shortly thereafter. We were at Indiana
> University, and soon John Walsh offered me a fuller collection of ADHO
> abstracts that he'd worked to assemble with John Unsworth several years
> before. Later, around 2016 or so, Joe Rudman (ACH treasurer 1985-1989) gave
> me much of his physical conference records.
>
> The database stayed on my computer until March 2020, when my institution
> Carnegie Mellon University (along with everyone else) suddenly needed tasks
> our paid library students could perform from a remote location, so we could
> justify continued salary payments. Nickoal and I, with new collaborator
> Matt Lincoln, quickly built up a site to which we could get students to
> contribute, and I very swiftly and haphazardly looked for as many DH and
> proto-DH conferences as I could find to fill out such a resource. We
> started and finished the work, as I recall, in under a semester. The
> project was never funded. Nickoal and I continued to add conferences here
> or there, when we had time, but usually that was once a year to keep ADHO
> conference materials up to date.
>
> I've since left academia, and my ability to keep the site going by force of
> will alone has disappeared. John Unsworth recently generously offered to
> bring the project to UVA (with Eichmann-Kalwara remaining on board), but
> its exact future still requires much negotiation and planning.
>
> You can imagine my shock and dismay when I started to see folks using the
> site as a URL of record for DH presentations (somewhat like a DOI) in
> citations, their CVs, and so on. This was never meant to be critical DH
> historical infrastructure, it was never meant to be exhaustive, and it was
> not designed to be permanent or archival. Our anglophone perspective
> limited our scope tremendously, and the hasty circumstance of the project's
> development never leant itself to sustain a broader history of the field.
>
> But the fact that our Index is being used for that purpose *anyway* is
> suggestive of the point you all have already been making: that the need for
> such a resource is critical and immediate. In doing this work I've now
> amassed a fairly large physical and pdf collection of conference records
> myself, and I'd be happy for a place to donate them.
>
> Hoping such a consortial response arises, and keenly following Julianne and
> Gerben's efforts in this space,
> Scott
--
Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
formerly University at Cologne /
zuletzt Universität zu Köln
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