Digital Humanities 2009–the annual joint meeting of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, and the Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l’étude des médias interactifs–will be hosted by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland in College Park, USA.

Coinciding with MITH’s 10th anniversary as a working digital humanities center, we look forward to welcoming this distinguished international community to a campus that has fostered numerous early adopter projects in the field and which continues to innovate with new work on tools, text analysis, electronic editing, virtual worlds, digital preservation, and cyberinfrastructure. As a setting for digital humanities research, MITH also enjoys unusually close relationships with the campus’s iSchool or Information School, the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (the oldest of its kind), and the University Libraries, all of whom are co-sponsors of the conference.

Located just inside of Washington DC’s famous Beltway, the University of Maryland site will put attendees within arm’s length of the capital of the United States and all its cultural institutions (including the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Kennedy Center), countless dining options and cuisines from around the globe, and the nearby waterfronts of the Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis, and the city of Baltimore.

Excursions and activities will take full advantage of the wealth of opportunity the area provides, with special tours of the Smithsonian’s vaults or the National Archives, time on the National Mall, and a trip to the Air and Space museum’s recently opened Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport (whose exhibits include the Space Shuttle Enterprise) all in the planning. The venue for the conference banquet will either be the world-famous Baltimore Aquarium or else a dinner cruise through Baltimore’s historic port and harbor, with a traditional Maryland “crab shack” on board.