Job Announcements, News

Job: Digital Media Studies position at Trent University

The Cultural Studies Department at Trent University is looking for a versatile cultural theorist and active scholar in the area of Media Studies, with a specialization in Digital Media, to take up a tenure-stream position on July 1st 2012. The successful candidate will have: a completed Ph.D., an excellent teaching record, an active research program, and demonstrated ability in academic/administrative organisation. S/he will be asked to anchor “core” Media courses in the Cultural Studies Department; will be invited to participate in the two associated graduate programs; and will play a central role in a new Media Studies Program, scheduled to launch in September 2012.

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: DPLA Strawman Technical Proposal

Collection Achievements and Profiles System and DPLA Crawler Services

This is a quick strawman proposal for what the Digital Public Library of America should build as the first parts of a generative platform. This document is not in a finished state, but just as the DPLA has been good at opening up its process with the Beta Sprint, I wanted to release this document early even in this unfinished state.

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Avoiding Traps

We have the advantage of arriving late to the game.

In the cut-throat world of high-tech venture capitalism, the first company with a good idea often finds itself at the mercy of latecomers. The latecomer’s product might be better-thought-out, advertised to a more appropriate market, or simply prettier, but in each case that improvement comes through hindsight. Trailblazers might get there first, but their going is slowest, and their way the most dangerous.

Digital humanities finds itself teetering on the methodological edge of many existing disciplines, boldly going where quite a few have gone before.

News, Resources

Resource: Spot visualizes tweet commonalities

Twitter is an organic online location, full of retweets, conversations, and link sharing. Jeff Clark tries to show these inner workings with his newest interactive, Spot. Enter a query in the field on the bottom left, and Spot retrieves the most recent 200 tweets. You then can choose among five views: group, words, timeline, users, and source.

News, Resources

Resource: Ushahidi: Free Software for Data Collection, Visualization & Mapping

ushahidi.com is a non-profit tech company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Ushahidi aims to empower organizations and people all over the world to increase public awareness around social events like elections, local crises or resources. It provides free and open access to tools that facilitate the aggregation, presentation and mapping of relevant datasets online.

Job Announcements, News

Job: Department Head, Digital Library Services, Georgia State University Library

The department head sets direction for the library’s technology environment and services through strategic planning, resource allocation and management, assessment, and policy development. S/he encourages creativity in digital and information technology initiatives that respond to and anticipate user needs and ensures that the library’s technology programs, services, and infrastructure are responsive to the academic needs of the Georgia State University community.

News, Resources

Resource: Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 6

Digital Scholarship has released the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 6. It includes selected English-language articles, books, conference papers, technical reports, unpublished e-prints and other scholarly textual sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations. Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works.

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Citation in Digital Humanities: Is the Old Bailey Online a Film, or a Science Paper?

Recently I was writing a paper for a journal and needed to cite the Old Bailey Online (OBO). Not any particular piece of content contained in the project, but the project itself as an outstanding example of digital humanities work. For those unfamiliar with the venture, it’s a database containing 127 million words of historical trial transcripts marked up extensively with XML; still the flagship project of its kind in this author’s opinion. I found myself struggling to decide who the authors of the project were; that is, whose names was I bound by “good scholarship” to include in the citation. Who deserved public credit?