• Cyberinfrastructure debates in Australia (Humanities)

    For those interested in the Cyberinfrastructure debate within Australia for the humanities, there are a number of key documents to consider. Here is a report produced by Professor Graeme Turner for the Australian Academy of the Humanities titled ‘Towards an Australian Humanities Digital Archive‘. The report came out of a scoping study of Digital Humanities…

  • A short history of blogging (Part 1)

    A short history of blogging (Part 1)

    I first started blogging sometime around 2001. And I just logged onto one of the original blogging systems, Blogger, and discovered that all my posts were still there. The first post that I ever made was in a (private) blog imaginatively called ‘production diary’. And ironically, the very first task I set for my blog…

  • The ‘shock of the new’ in the Digital Humanities

    If there is such a thing as a ‘gold standard’ in the Digital Humanities, it is using computing in research to find out something new. And by something new I mean new in a research context, not new as a new pair of jeans or a new as in a new hair style. There have…

  • Are Digital Humanists underdogs?

    Are Digital Humanists underdogs?

    I am increasingly confronted by many in the broader Digital Humanities field’s hackneyed claims that they are underprivileged. I see full Professors do this, Directors of Centres do this, lecturers and programmers do it. They claim they are misunderstood and unloved because they are Digital Humanists. They claim they are discriminated against, spat on in…

  • The ‘what is’ question?

    The ‘what is’ question is a tough one. Researchers get it a lot. And it is probably more prevalent in Australia than any where else because of our excessively modern penchant for simplicity and speed. Australia’s want simple answers quickly and if they aren’t provided, then there must be something wrong with the search engine.…

  • Journal of William John Wills (TEI)

    Conal Tuohy and I taught a 3-hour introduction to last Thursday (30 September).  The major exercise that the class undertook was to encode in TEI the diary of William John Wills; an explorer who died whilst trying to cross Australia in the 19th Century. It makes for pretty interesting reading right up to when he…