Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt and URCA Assistant Tiffany Downing have been working to upload and encode content and also technical and thematic metadata for several transcribed and translated videos of the Gyalsumdo language, a highly endangered variety of the Tibetan language spoken in central Nepal. These videos were recorded by SIUE Geography professor Shunfu Hu (with help from Dr. Hildebrandt’s fieldwork team) in the summers of 2012 and 2013 in Nepal. These videos will be permanently stored, and publicly available in a special archive at the University of Virginia’s Tibetan and Himalayan Library, specifically from their SHANTI platform (Sciences, Humanities and Arts Network of Technical Initiatives). Dr. Hildebrandt plans to archive with THL and SHANTI similar materials from three other languages of the same region of Nepal: Manange, Gurung and Nar-Phu.

Victor Golla is a professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Humboldt State University in California who also specializes in Athabaskan (Native American) languages. According to the university newspaper “Humboldt State Now” he is working there with undergraduate students (through their own URCA program) to digitize hundred year-old field notes on the Wailaki language. Wailaki is a language that is essentially extinct, save for a few people who wish to re-learn their language from these notes. Dr. Golla and his research team view digitization as a solution to problems such as longevity and preservation of rare, valuable (and fragile) language material, availability to learners across a wide geographic range, and the possibility to annotate and edit the original observations on this language in an interactive and online dimension. As Dr. Golla notes in this article : “Documents are not language; they just document it … [but](p)eople could create a new use — a revitalization — of Wailaki from these notebooks.”

… Held at Arcadia Valley Academy on Saturday September 28, 2013 We learned:

• That the organizer (Melissa Miles McCarter) was able to pull together an informative, fun, and connection-fostering workshop on the digital humanities without direct involvement or assistance from an institution of higher education (this is a first!)
• That the Arcadia Valley community played many different roles in making this THATCamp possible (from venue, to materials, to the delicious food)
• That there are many cool tools out there for digital humanists to use, including tools for responsive web design and development, IDEO (idea generation tools in areas of education, social innovation and digital experiences), there are connections between i-ching and hypertext and smartbots, (free) data visualization tools like Tableau Public and Many Eyes
• That the participants of this THATCamp are seriously invested in digital humanities discussions, debates and initiatives, and the possible roles they can play in these issues
• That these participants come from varied walks of like and interests like journalism, education, politics, social mobilization, information technology and publishing; some are high school and university students, and some are teachers
• That these participants are actively invested in the potentials of reciprocal relationships between digital humanities and rural communities of Missouri and Illinois

Just what goes on in Digital Humanities scholarship, anyway? Wouldn’t you like to know! Well, you can find out much more by joining in on the annual 2013 “Day of DH”, which will take place on Monday April 8. This year, Day of DH is hosted by Michigan State University’s MATRIX Center, and will feature a day-long community online publication project to bring together digital humanists and “informaticists” to share the ways in which DH features in their professional (and dare we say, even personal?) lives and accomplishments. Follow the link and register to create your own personal blog to contribute to the dialogue about how DH plays a role in your world. Your participation could contribute to an online publication, and will let other DH scholars know more about how you contribute to this highly interactive and collaborative field.

Centernet is an international network of digital humanities centers, created in 2007. With our affiliation, IRIS is able to tap into the cooperative and collaborative energies shared amongst the other centers found around the world.

The New York Times recently published this article about the latest work in the digital humanities and social sciences.