UK Libraries Learning Lab & Digital Humanities: Defining DH

​Jeffrey Schnapp - Digital Humanities, Serious Science (2/18/14)
​​What are the boundaries of the humanities? What are the new forms of production of knowledge? Professor of Romance Languages & Literature at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Jeffrey Schnapp, on new forms of knowledge and digital media.​

"The Digital Humanities is both a field with a discernable set of academic lineages, practices, and methodologies and a vague umbrella term used to describe the application of digital technology to traditional humanistic inquiry.  Ultimately, what sets DH apart from many other humanities fields is its methodological commitment to building things as a way of knowing."

Matthew K. Gold, New York City College of Technology and CUNY Graduate Center​

Debates in Digital Humanities, Ed. Matthew Gold, pg. 67-69, 2012.
Day of DH, 2011

"DH is at its best when it embraces the digital not simply as a means to the traditional ends of scholarship, but when it transforms the nature of what humanists do. The digital allows for scholars, librarians, archivists, and curators to engage much more directly with each other and the public. Further, it allows them not simply to write for each other, but to build things for everyone."

Trevor Owens, Head of Digital Content Management, Library of Congress

"I think digital humanities, like social media, is an idea that will increasingly become invisible as new methods and platforms move from being widely used to being ubiquitous.  For now, digital humanities defines the overlap between humanities research and digital tools.  But the humanities are the study of cultural life, and our cultural life will soon be inextricably bound up with digital media."

Ed Finn, Stanford University

Debates in Digital Humanities, Ed. Matthew Gold, pg. 67-69, 2012.
Day of DH, 2011​