Review of Intro to Digital Public Humanities

It’s come to the end of the semester, and it’s time to reflect on my coursework (one of the most helpful, but least comfortable things to do).

My original definition of digital humanities: It is definitely a serviceable definition, and DH is such a varied concept, that almost any definition will be right as long as it combines the humanities, technology, collaboration, and the public. If we’re being honest, even if I were to tweak it now, it would be just that tweaks, and I would probably try to tweak it again next time I read it to. I don’t think there’s ever a perfect way to define digital humanities (and trust me, I’ve tried over the last months, every time someone asks me “So what are you studying?” It’s turned into me starting it out like a Facebook relationship status: It’s Complicated.

So what were my goals for the course: I wanted hard skills (specifically 3-5) that I could put on my resume to have a better chance of landing a job when I graduate. In addition, I mentioned wanting to practice digitization and Omeka. Well, I think that’s a resounding success. While I’m still a beginner in some of these programs, I’ve learned about: digital copyright and how to find creative commons or public domain sources, digitization with Tropy and Omeka (even basing my final project on this topic), online archives, meta data, word clouds with Voyant Tools, Mapping (Kepler, ArcGIS, Palladio), virtual reality concepts, and educational video games. The fact that I wanted to do digitization and Omeka in the first week of class, forgot that I wrote that, and then doing it anyway, is a funny surprise. Though if it were earlier in the semester, I would have loved to do a longer project on educational video games, that unit was amazing for me.

My favorite topic? Without a doubt educational video games. I’m not sure it’s the most important for me to study (after all, it doesn’t seem like it would have good job prospects), but I love video games and gaming in general, so it was fun to combine my hobbies with my educational interests.

Now moving forward: I don’t think I have any over-arching questions about Digital Humanities. I know going forward that I would prefer to focus more on the archives, databases, exhibits, side of things rather than mapping. I briefly heard about Scaler interactive essays which is something that I want to experiment with. I would also love to learn more about 3D modeling, Digital Exhibits (that aren’t Omeka), about creating Digital Education Tools for K-12, and maybe if there’s time educational video games (don’t judge me, it’s fun!)

I’m so excited to be “graduating” from Intro to Digital Public History and I’m excited to start plain ol’ Digital Public History next semester!