New York University’s Archives and Public History Program (History
Department) is now considering applications for a one-year
grant-funded Digital Curriculum Specialist.  The Program seeks a
scholar experienced with the technical and intellectual issues in
digital humanities to help the Program incorporate digital
technologies throughout its curriculum and internship programs.  The
successful candidate will work with existing faculty to reconfigure
existing courses, develop a digital history track within the program,
provide technical services and conduct workshops for student and
staff,  create a platform for mounting student digital projects, and
partner with archival and public history institutions in order to
establish digital humanities internships for students.   He or she
will work closely with NYU’s Information Technology Services and
Digital Library staff.

Qualifications: The successful candidate will have an advanced degree
in either humanities or computer or information science, with a solid
grounding in the issues and technologies relevant for humanities
scholarship.  Knowledge and experience with XML, XSLT, TEI, PHP
programming, and Web 2.0 social networking technologies.  Familiarity
with archival metadata and digitization standards.

For three decades, NYU has prepared students for successful careers
as archivists, manuscript curators, documentary editors, oral
historians, cultural resource managers, historical interpreters and
new media specialists.  The program emphasizes a solid grounding in
historical scholarship, intense engagement with new media
technologies, and close involvement with New York’s extraordinary
archival and public history institutions. For more information on the
program, see
http://history.fas.nyu.edu/object/history.gradprog.archivespublichistory.html

Salary and Benefits: Competitive depending on qualifications. Review
of applications will begin on July 31, 2008 and will continue until
the position is filled.

Please submit cover letter, curriculum vitae, and names of three references to:
Dr. Peter J. Wosh
Director, Archives/Public History Program
Department of History, New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
(212) 998-8666
(212) 995-4017 (fax)
pw1@nyu.edu

If you haven’t already been reading Mills Kelly’s outstanding series “Making Digital Scholarship Count,” (part 1, part 2, part 3) you should put it on your must-read list. Mills finished the series today with a perfectly sensible conclusion about how academia might assess digital work for promotion and tenure. I completely agree.

Oh, and yes, even though Mills published this work on his blog rather than in a journal, it is scholarship. And it should count.

The Center for History and New Media (CHNM, http://chnm.gmu.edu) at George Mason University invites expressions of interest to join the Center in applying to the National Endowment for the Humanities for one of NEH’s Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers.

NEH Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers (FDHC) support collaboration between digital centers and individual scholars. An award provides funding for both a stipend for the fellow while in residence at the center and a portion of the center’s costs for hosting a fellow. Awards are for periods of six to twelve months. The intellectual cooperation between the visiting scholar and the center may take many different forms and may involve humanities scholars of any level of digital expertise. Fellows may work exclusively on their own projects in consultation with center staff, collaborate on projects with other scholars affiliated with the center, function as “apprentices” on existing digital center projects, or any combination of these. The results of the collaboration may range from “proof of concept” to finished product.

The aims of the program are to 1) support innovative collaboration on outstanding digital research projects; 2) expand digital literacy and expertise; 3) promote the work of digital humanities centers; and 4) encourage broad and open access to the humanities. (For the full guidelines, see http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/fdhc.html)

CHNM plans to select a scholar for its application by July 31, 2008. Interested scholars should send a CV and a 2-3 pp. description of 1) their general interest in the fellowship and the Center; 2) what specifically they would like to work on during the term of the fellowship; 3) any experience they might have that is applicable to this work; and 4) how this work dovetails with any current Center projects (e.g. the National History Education Clearinghouse, Zotero, Omeka, the Bracero History Archive, etc.) Send these two documents to chnm@gmu.edu with the subject line “NEH Fellowship” as soon as possible. Applications will be reviewed as they come in, through July 31. The selected scholar will be notified soon thereafter, and CHNM will work with that scholar to submit a grant application to NEH by September 15, 2008.

On this episode of the Digital Campus podcast, Tom, Mills, and I think in greater depth about whether the stodgy academic conferences we often go to could be (at least partially) recast into more informal affairs along the lines of THATCamp, a “barcamp” or “unconference.” We also look at the upcoming iPhone 3G (soon to be the cell phone on campus at its lower price) and what mobile apps might mean for teaching and learning. [Subscribe to this podcast.]

Tom has the news that Omeka reached over 1000 downloads in only 10 weeks—a remarkable number for a collections management and web exhibit system primarily adopted by institutions rather than individuals.

Creating a successful tool for universities, libraries, and museums is incredibly difficult; kudos to the entire Omeka team. They’ve done a lot of things right. They understand that design matters. Omeka looks great to the curators who administer it as well as to the users who visit an Omeka-powered site. Little details matter. Omeka’s metadata entry page, for instance, automatically morphs (using AJAX) so that curators aren’t confronted by fields that aren’t applicable to the object at hand. Documentation matters. The Omeka team is doing a weekly video/screencast to explain its features and operation. Creating a community around the tool matters. Omeka already has an active user forum and developers’ list, and the team meets regularly with institutional stakeholders.

Coming in 2009: a hosted version of Omeka, to make it even easier for those who want to use the software but who might not have the technical skill or staff to install and maintain the open source package.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities seeks a programmer with extensive knowledge of relational database development and design (MySQL), XML and related technologies (particularly XPath and XSLT), JavaScript, and scripting languages (PHP and PERL) to support Encyclopedia Virginia (EV) and its management and publication of content. More information can be found at http://www.virginiafoundation.org/jobs.html.

• Jeremy Boggs continues his series on the “Digital Humanities Design and Development Process” with a detailed post explaining his design principles, and showing how he developed compelling design elements like the logo for Omeka. One of the things we’ve learned at the Center for History and New Media over the last 15 years is that design matters far more than we might like to admit as bookish scholars, and that it’s often neglected in digital humanities projects.
• Dave Lester begins a blog series on “Facial Recognition in Digital Photo Collections.” Interesting application of crowdsourcing history, across sites rather than on a single site like Flickr.
• Adam Crymble, a graduate student who is visiting us for the summer from the University of Western Ontario, makes the rather generous offer (which he may later regret) to make any Canadian website Zotero-compatible if it is not already.
• The New York Public Library launches its first Omeka-based exhibit, “Eminent Domain.” Some terrific photographs from their collection.

The Department of History and Art History at George Mason University invites applications for a tenure-track position in digital history. The successful applicant will be expected to manage a range projects at Mason’s Center for History and New Media and to teach digital methodology for the department.

To apply for this position (number F5343z), go to http://jobs.gmu.edu, then mail a letter of interest, a CV and three letters of recommendation to: Chair, Search Committee, MS 3G1, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA, 22030. For specific inquiries about the position, please send an email to tkelly7@gmu.edu. Applications will be reviewed beginning October 15, 2008.

George Mason University is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with national distinction in a range of academic fields. Enrollment is 30,000, with students studying in over 150 degree programs at campuses in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and the United Arab Emirates.

The Center for History and New Media, founded in 1994, uses digital media and technology to preserve and present history online, transform scholarship across the humanities, and advance historical education and understanding. Each year CHNM’s many project websites receive over 16 million visitors, and over a million people rely on its digital tools to teach, learn, and conduct research.

George Mason University is an equal opportunity employer encouraging diversity.

I was hoping to provide a wrap-up of THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) in this space many days ago, but other commitments got in the way of my blogging.

Let me just say in summary that I completely agree with Mills Kelly’s sense (echoed by Tom Scheinfeldt and Marjorie McLellan, among many others) that going to THATCamp made me yearn for a serious makeover of the standard professional conferences I’ve gone to my entire career, especially the annual conference of the American Historical Association. (The digital humanities are not immune, by the way: the panels-and-papers format has infected these meetings as well.) In my opinion, such conferences tend to focus too much on the job market, padding the CV, and showing how clever you are, rather than building the discipline collaboratively. THATCamp showed how informative, engaging, and constructive a conference can be when everyone participates, there are no lectures or read papers, the format is highly flexible, and everyone feels open to speak—including candidly about the gaps in one’s knowledge as well as what one feels knowledgeable about.

For those looking for a more comprehensive sense of what happened, check out the Google Blog Search feed for THATCamp posts or scan the raw feed of our IRC channel. And if you’re interested in the digital humanities, it’s really worth making your way through the entire THATCamp blog for ideas and perspectives from THATCampers on the state of the art and the issues we face.

Hope to see you at THATCamp 2009!

I’m delighted to announce the Center for History and New Media’s launch of Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives, a comprehensive and compelling new website exploring the history of the Soviet Gulag. The project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; Title VIII, The U.S. Department of State; the Kennan Institute; and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University; and was produced in association with the Gulag Museum at Perm 36, Perm, Russia and the International Memorial Society, Moscow.

The bilingual (English/Russian) site is a powerful combination of primary documents and photographs, documentary video, and contextualization (including from George Mason’s expert on Soviet history, Steve Barnes). It also includes a rich archive and a podcast series.

The site also shows the ease and flexibility of CHNM’s Omeka, software to manage collections and create web exhibits.

Congratulations to the entire team that built the site!