Digital Humanities Tools and Resources

“Digital Humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b) digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences… The first wave of digital humanities work was quantitative, mobilizing the search and retrieval powers of the database, automating corpus linguistics, stacking hypercards into critical arrays. The second wave is qualitative, interpretive, experiential, emotive, generative in character. It harnesses digital toolkits in the service of the Humanities’ core methodological strengths: attention to complexity, medium specificity, historical context, analytical depth, critique and interpretation.” -Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 

“As an emerging field, DH has, thus far, had a broad characterization. As technology and our understanding of it change, so do the limits of DH. There has been some debate as to whether DH constitutes a discipline of its own or is simply an application of new technologies to existing disciplines. In either case, DH can be understood as the place where traditional humanities research methodologies and media/digital technologies intersect. DH is more than the digitization of existing processes, documents, and artifacts. It is often data-driven, answering humanities research problems with multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary approaches within the digital/IT realm. The current challenge for DH lies in establishing itself in traditional academic environments.”- Association of College & Research Libraries

“The digital humanities is a part of the humanities not so much in the sense of being a distinct and separate discipline, but in the sense of interrelating deeply and multifariously with the humanities disciplines. The digital humanities should not only have integrity and independence, but they also need consistently to touch at the heart of the disciplines and engage with major contemporary research challenges and some of the most acknowledged humanities scholars…The digital humanities clearly has the power to stimulate visionary and transformative thinking, and it can be a site for innovation, reconfiguration and exploration. This power, which should be acknowledged and valued, comes from the broad and intersectional reach of the digital humanities, a sense of being situated at the periphery and fighting established structures, the non-disciplinary status of the field, and humanities-external interest and acknowledgement. The digital serves as a potent point of canalization for this transformative sentiment, and by proxy, the digital humanities can become a place where the digital, analogue and hybrid humanities can be discussed, negotiated and projected.” -Patrik Svensson