Digital Humanities in East Asia

As an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities, Digital humanities (DH) has evolved from simply digitizing historical texts to the philosophical, such as reflection on the nature of representation itself.  As an attendee of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute since 2008, I've seen the growth of DH as a niche study to become an emerging area of importance to the scholarship in the humanities.  I spoke to a number of librarians and scholars in the area of digital humanities and noted the various projects and stages of development across countries in Asia.  If anything, the growth of DH is Asia is far from a homogenous process.

Upon the return of my sabbatical, I presented on the state of Digital Humanities in East Asia to peers at UBC.   In examining the state of DH in Asia, my research reveals a dichotomy of what Tom Mullaney of Stanford University as a West and the Rest.   As Mullaney puts it:

The “Asia deficit” within Digital Humanities is in no small part the outcome of more entrenched divides within the platforms and digital tools that form the foundation of DH itself. Digital databases and text corpora – the “raw material” of text mining and computational text analysis – are far more abundant for English and other Latin alphabetic scripts than they are for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, and other Non-Latin orthographies.

So it's not surprise to see uneven development across Asian countries.  The following is a list of DH scholars that Mullaney has shared and is a group that represent that wonderful work that East Asian studies experts are using the technology to enhance their research in ways that could not have happened (or at least a less immersive way) in the pre-digital world.

• Grace Fong, McGill University, Professor of Chinese Literature - Ming Qing Women Writing (MQWW) Digital Database

• Christian Wittern, Kyoto University, Professor of Informatics in East Asian Studies - Specialist in Buddhist Digital Humanities

• Eunkyong Shin, Columbia University - Specialist in Network Analysis, Applied to Study of Resistance Movements in Colonial Korea

• Javier Cha, University of Hong Kong - Specialist in Social Network Analysis, applied to Early Modern Korea

• Matthew Thomas Miller, University of Maryland - Roshan Initiative in Persian Digital Humanities

• Ruth Mostern - Specialist in Asian and Global Spatial History and Digital Gazetteer of the Song Dynasty

Inside the World's Major East Asian Collections

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I'm really pleased that the book project with Patrick Lo (Tsukuba University) and Dickson Chiu (Hong Kong University) is completed and published. This book is intended to serve multiple purposes.  In particular, the project examines the rise of the "LAM," an acronym that stands for libraries, archives, and museums.  In doing so, we profile leading experts -- librarians, archivists, and museum curators -- who specialize in East Asian collections from across the world.  In analyzing the dynamically shifting role of the cultural institution in the context of managing information and collections, this book provides important themes offered by these cultural experts in understanding the necessary professional skills, knowledge, and personalities that are required for working in such environments of varying size, scope, and composition in LAMs.

As such, LAMs manage preservation and access of history and culture, their missions and goals as cultural institutions continue to converge.  Further, as collecting institutions, LAMs share the common mandate to preserve and make accessible primary resources valuable for researchers and professionals, as well as the public.   Certainly, as LAMs are mostly publicly funded, publicly accountable institutions collecting cultural heritage materials, the purpose of this book is ultimately to enhance the visibility while recognizing the efforts of the LAM professionals as cultural institution leaders, since much of their great contributions is preserving our cultural and documentary heritage often unnoticed outside their parent institutions.

European Collections
1. The East Asia Collections at the Vatican Apostolic Library in Rome
2. The Library of Venice and the East at the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Centre Comparative Studies of Cultures and Spiritualties
3. The Chinese Collections from the Shang to Qing Dynasties at the British Library
4. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean Studies Collections at the British Library
5. The Chinese Collections at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library
6. The Anthropology Collections of the Ewenki and Orochen Peoples at the University of Cambridge Museum’s Archaeology and Anthropology
7. The Dunhuang International Manuscripts Project at the British Museum
8. Asian Art Propaganda at the British Museum
9. The East-Asian Library at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
10. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean Collections at the Royal Library of Denmark
11. The Asian Collections for the Nordic Asian Studies Community at University of Copenhagen’s Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Library and Information Centre
12. The Chinese and Japanese Porcelain and Ceramic Art at the Museums of the Far East & the Royal Museums of Art and History of Belgium
13. The East Asia Collections at the Berlin State Library
14. The Chinese Collections at the Bavarian State Library’s Oriental and Asia Department
15. The Chinese Collection that dates back to the 13th Century at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies Library
16. Documenting the Cultural Exchange of Czechoslovak-Chinese Relations at the Charles University in Prague’s Chiang Ching-kuo International Sinological Center (CCK-ISC) and Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) Libraries
17. Collecting Asia at the Library at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
18. A Unique Chinese Collection for the Public at the Lyon Public Library in France
19. The Kingdom of Naxi Manuscript Collections at the French School of the Far East
20. The Collection of the History of French Interests In China and East Asia at the University Library of Languages and Civilisations
21. The most comprehensive collection of Asian art at the National Museum of Asian Art Guimet Museum
22. The Orient and Eastern collections at the National Library of France

East Asian Collections in Asia
1. The Digital Archives at the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR)
2. The Siberian Ethnographic Collections at Peter the Great Museum of Ethnology and Anthropology in Russian
3. Imperial China’s collections at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan
4. International Exchange and Networks of Cooperation at Taiwan’s National Central Library (NCL)

1. Chronicle of Taiwan’s Collections at the National Central Library, Taiwan (ROC)
2. The History of "Asian Hollywood" at the Hong Kong Film Archive
3. The Traditional Chinese Medicine Library Collections at the Hong Kong Baptist University
4. The Kung Fu Museum in Hong Kong by the School of Creative Media and the International Guoshu Association
5. The School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
6. Contemporary Asian Art at the Asia Art Archive (AAA)
7. The Sport collections at the Hong Kong Sports Institute Library

North America
1. The East Asian Collections at the Princeton University Library’s East Asian Library
2. The Japanese Collections at University of California, Berkeley’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library
3. The Japanese Collections at the University of Michigan’s Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
4. Azusa Tanaka, Japanese Studies Librarian, East Asia Library, University of Washington Libraries
5. Exhibiting Bruce Lee Collections Around the World via the Bruce Lee Foundation (USA) and the Bruce Lee Exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum

Renewing the Digital Path in the Publishing Industry

I'm in the business of publishing, and like many in the industry, have faced the daunting challenges with print.  So when Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly iterated that cultural producers face both challenges and opportunities because of new digital publishing and broadcasting platforms, I naturally listened.  There are stark differences of opinion over how Canada's cultural industries should adapt to the future of digital content.  And there is increasing concern in the cultural industry that current government policies are stifling creation of content at a time when traditional media is being drowned out by the likes of Apple iTunes and Netflix.  It's assuring that the new federal government is at least listening.

The federal government released a discussion paper to coincide with the consultations which seems to indicate that while it doesn't want to place limits on foreign content, it does need to channel is efforts into supporting its own cultural industries.  In the world of magazines, I've witnessed the cruel decline of a once vibrant industry.   So the Department of Canadian Heritage wants to build a more dynamic system that better supports creation, discovery and export of Canadian content in the digital world

What should a cultural system that supports creators choice look like?
In 2016 the Department of Canadian Heritage launched consultations on Canadian Content in a Digital World.  An online survey questionnaire canvassed the opinions of stakeholders (creators and cultural organizations) and Canadian culture/media consumers (public) on issues about Canadian and local content and as well as tools for the creation, discovery and export of content.  The results are interesting because despite the diversification of entertainment and communications in the globalized environment that we're in, the need for Canadian content is still very important in the eyes of creators and consumers.  The grants and funding system needs to be support Canadians first and foremost.  So yes, while it's clear that our habits have clearly shifted online, the need for access to cultural content hasn't shifted away from Canada. 

How can we promote Canadian content in the digital world?
One that protects Canadian culture and reflects Canadian identities.  But I don't think the system currently embraces the diversity of Canada.   The initiative that I've been involved in, Ricepaper Magazine, has sought to explore the meaning of being Canadian of Asian descent, perhaps in ways that seeks to redefine the term "Asian Canadian" within Canada.   But over the past few years, funding has decreased and have further marginalized so-called "non-mainstream" media.  It's almost too late now for a reversal.  Canada's intercultural mosaic has evolved as it has every century, and will continually do so.  So the media that reflects the new faces of Canada need to be upheld.  Despite what the government may tell us about its role, it's clearly come short of where the country need it to be.

How do we support Canada’s artists, content creators and cultural entrepreneurs?
The division between of media between print and digital media into distinctive camps is no longer sufficient, and we can't expect the self-cannibalism to solve itself.  For a sustainable and vibrant publishing industry, we need to be "platform agnostic," blending both into emerging areas as transmedia transmedia narrative, multiplatform storytelling, or cross-media seriality that uses creative techniques of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using our current digital technologies.  We need to move beyond the convenient the future-is-digital stance and integrate efforts telling our stories.

So consultations are underway, but it's interesting and perhaps shortsighted that such energies have excluded the Canadian book publishing industry.  As a librarian, I worry about this omission.  Maybe there is a greater plan yet to emerge, but from what I've seen and heard, I don't sense it.