Digital Humanities Toolboxes

Even though there are now countless example projects to point to in the world of Digital Scholarship, I’m still looking for more ways to encourage faculty to think about the opportunities for their own research and teaching on our own small campus. As we build a program to expand our capacity to partner with faculty and students in the creation of new forms of scholarship, my colleague (@MikeZarafonetis) and I have been working with our awesome student workers on creating “Digital Toolboxes”. I’m hoping these toolboxes will serve two functions. First, by providing a couple of models for each tool (Omeka and WordPress to start), we’ll help faculty see clear, local examples of the kinds of projects they can engage in (using material from our own Library Special Collections). And secondly, by experimenting in small sample projects and documenting our process, we’ll increase our skill and ability in working with those tools. I’m hoping THATCamp@Penn can help us discover more “use cases” for these toolboxes, maybe find some local partners, and/or throw the whole notion up in the air and help us discover something new!