Digital Humanities Summer Institute

I’ve been attending classes this week at the University of Victoria’s DHSI. From the website:

The Digital Humanities Summer Institute provides an environment ideal to discuss, to learn about, and to advance skills in new computing technologies influencing the work of those in the Arts, Humanities and Library communities.

Perhaps the only institute of its kind, attendees come from all over the world (in my class there are people from Europe, the US, and Thailand as well as Canadians from all parts). We have grad students, professors and librarians.

To get an idea of the content, have a look at the program. From the technical basics (how to use TEI, and how to digitize analogue materials of all media types) to the presentation of advanced tools for meeting emerging scholarly needs in the online environment.

Some of these last are covered in Digital Tools for Literary History, presented by Susan Brown and Stan Ruecker. I’m not in that class, but part of the charm of this event is the change to meet and talk with people from other courses. Here are some of the tools they are featuring:

NORA;

MONK;

TAPoRware;

HyperPo;

Philologic;

ManyEyes;

JiTR;

Voyeur;

Zotero;

Wordhoard

… and others!

The Institute is now in its 8th year. It is the brainchild of Ray Siemens, the Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, and is supported the SSHRC and other organizations, and is allied with UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre. I believe there is also a strong connection with the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and Canada wide initiatives, such as TAPoR and Synergies