As part of the ongoing collaboration between the University of Maryland Libraries and MITH, the Libraries have allocated a portion of collections funds to expand the number of books related to the digital humanities available to our community. Kelsey Corlett-Rivera, Librarian for the School of Languages, Literatures, and Culture, has served as liaison to MITH and has worked with our staff to develop and build these collections, which have grown by almost 50 titles over the last two years.
Most of these books (as well as others related to digital humanities) can be seen through the WorldCat portal at the link for the list Digital Humanities at the UMD Libraries. Here are some highlights that you’ll find in the collection:
The emergence of the digital humanities by Steven E. Jones
(New York : Routledge, 2014)
“The Emergence of the Digital Humanities provocatively maps the larger trajectory of digital humanities research and more recent kinds of new digital humanities work. Jones maps the ‘eversion’ that characterizes our everyday lives, exploring the metaphorical and material implications of the networks that surround us. His book brings new insights about the networks that make up our culture, our commerce, and our creativity.” -Danny Anderson, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Kansas.
Paper knowledge : toward a media history of documents by Lisa Gitelman
(Durham : Duke University Press, 2014)
A book about the mundane: the library card, the promissory note, the movie ticket, the PDF (Portable Document Format). Whether examining late-nineteenth-century commercial, or “job” printing, or the Xerox machine and the role of reproduction in our understanding of the document, it reveals a keen eye for vernacular uses of technology.
Oral literature in the digital age : archiving orality and connecting with communities edited by Mark Turin, Claire Wheeler and Eleanor Wilkinson
(Cambridge, England : Open Book Publishers, 2013)
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 fossilized 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.
Debates in the digital humanities edited by Matthew K. Gold
(Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2012)
Clearly the digital humanities has reached a significant moment in its brief history. But what sort of moment is it? Debates in the Digital Humanities brings together leading figures in the field to explore its theories, methods, and practices and to clarify its multiple possibilities and tensions. From defining what a digital humanist is and determining whether the field has (or needs) theoretical grounding, to discussions of coding as scholarship and trends in data-driven research, this cutting-edge volume delineates the current state of the digital humanities and envisions potential futures and challenges. At the same time, several essays aim pointed critiques at the field for its lack of attention to race, gender, class, and sexuality; the inadequate level of diversity among its practitioners; its absence of political commitment; and its preference for research over teaching.
Digital libraries and the challenges of digital humanities by Jeffrey A Rydberg-Cox
(Oxford : Chandos, 2006)
One of the major challenges facing librarians and curators of digital repositories are the innovative ‘born digital’ documents created by scholars in the humanities. These documents range from the parsed corpora created by linguists to traditional reference information presented in electronic databases, to rich, multi-media hypertexts combining audio, still and moving video and text, and many other sorts of material. Too often, librarians think of electronic resources solely as providing access to subscription databases. This book encourages librarians to think holistically of the life cycle of electronic resources from new items being created at their institution, to end-user access, to long term preservation of digital resources.
Thanks to Kelsey Corlett-Rivera and the University Libraries for enhancing access to research resources for digital humanities at Maryland.