DH Projects in East Asian Studies

The ‘Digital Humanities’ is still a young and highly contested area.  Furthermore, as Tom Mullaney has argued, within Digital Humanities is an “Asia deficit”which is no small part the outcome of more entrenched divides within the platforms and digital tools that form the foundation of DH itself.   This divide between East and West runs very deep, and is not primarily a question of scholarly interest or orientation.  I was pleasantly impressed at the progress made in DH learning more about these projects.

A couple of projects that I had come across recently came from a presentation by Michael Hunter of Yale University.  He introduced the The Life of the Buddha (LOTB) project which addresses this challenge by presenting and analyzing for the first time monumental Tibetan murals depicting the Buddha’s life, their related literature, and their architectural and historical settings. LOTB also offers scholarly and learning communities the first tool to research and engage image, text, architecture, and history as an integrated and meaning-rich whole. The project’s impact for the humanities and the study of Buddhism are thus twofold: the largest study to date on visual and textual Buddha narratives in Tibet, and a new digital tool for synthetic teaching and research of Buddhist images and texts in context.  These murals date from the first decades of the 17th century and are among only a handful of fully preserved narrative paintings in Central Tibet. They are also among the few murals in Tibet explicitly linked to an extant collection of narrative, poetic, ritual, and technical painting literature about the Buddha. Practically nothing has been written about the Jonang murals, and no complete visual documentation has ever been attempted.

The Ten Thousand Rooms Project (廣廈千萬間項目) is a project led by Michael Hunter, and is a collaborative workspace (but not a database) for pre-modern textual studies.  Building on the Mirador Viewer developed by Stanford University, the platform allows users to upload images of manuscript, print, inscriptional, and other sources and then organize projects around their transcription, translation, and/or annotation. Both as a workspace for crowd-sourcing core textual research and as a publishing venue for scholarly contributions that are less well suited to conventional book formats, the Ten Thousand Rooms Project is really one of the early DH projects at Yale that establishes an international online community committed to making the East Asian textual heritage more accessible to a wider audience. All users are free to view projects on the site, and registered users can create their own projects and also to others as well. 

In all, the future of DH in Asian Studies is coming along now, certainly at a pace that suggest much is happening, either at conferences, digital podcasts, and the network of scholars and practitioners coming together in a vibrant community of practice in an area of scholarship that's long overlooked.

Horizon Report 2017 - Will Be Missed. Rest in Peace NMC

Happy holidays and New Year to you all.   While I look forward to 2018, I'm sad that the New Media Consortium, after so many years of great work, has ended. Best known for producing its “Horizon Reports” on the future of technology at K-12 schools, universities, and museums, I remember every year about this time anxiously anticipating the release of the latest technology trends that the report releases.  Unfortunately, alas, the NMC has abruptly shut down this month after officials discovered the organization was out of money. It's an embarrassing end to an illustrious organization. How "because of apparent errors and omissions by its former Controller and Chief Financial Officer, the organization finds itself insolvent" is beyond me.  I'm too surprised to be even angry at this point, though I think we should be upset at this development. Not even time for us to say good-bye, or a proper sendoff.

Started in 1994, the NMC has served hundreds of college and university organizations, organizing conferences and events, and published reports in its goal of encouraging exploration and use of new media and technologies for learning and creative expression, particularly in 2002 when it began publishing its must-read Horizon Reports.  With that said, I hope these technology trends for academic libraries will not be the last time that we'll see the report coming out with findings.

1. Big Data Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

2. Digital Scholarship Technologies Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

3. Library Services Platforms Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

4. Online Identity Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

5. Artificial Intelligence Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

6. The Internet of Things Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Though it's filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it's still too early to say that the NMC is completely gone since the NMC’s assets may still be sold as part of the bankruptcy process and another entity (maybe another nonprofit?) may yet go forward with the annual summer conference. Who know's, it's still too early to say. Maybe that will be our goal moving into 2018 - to wish the NMC back into existence.

An academic press reimagining the scholarly publication process

I've been following the work of Tom Mullaney, historian at Stanford University for a while now. Stanford University Press, with the help of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is exploring new publishing channels for digital scholarship. From development, to peer review, to marketing, Stanford's digital publishing initiative supports its scholars in conveying their ideas using emerging media and digital tools.  By advancing this new publishing process the purpose is to establish the same level of academic credibility on digital projects as print books typically receive, this hopefully supports the efforts of scholars in the humanities and social sciences that have for so long have worked so hard on digital scholarship that was outside the traditional road to tenure and promotion without reaping the rewards.  This recognition is an important development in the academic and scholarly publishing world.

Mullaney’s project, The Chinese Deathscape, integrates interactive maps with accompanying scholarly analysis, examining the spatial relocation of graves in China over time.  His work, scheduled to be published in spring 2018, is one of six digital-only projects Stanford University plans to release in 2018 and 2019.  The press, in a partnership with Stanford University Libraries, has also been exploring how to copyright the interactive works and ensure that they are archived and accessible in the face of a constantly changing publishing landscape.  This is an exciting development in the field of digital scholarship, and the humanities.  As the initiative proposes:

The nascent fields of digital humanities and computational social sciences have ballooned in recent years. Emergent technologies and scholars’ increasing fluency with these technologies are providing academics with new ways to visualize, analyze, and interpret data. Yet, there are no formal channels for publication or consistent peer review standards for digital projects. Our initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, allows us to advance a publishing process that helps authors develop their concept (in both content and form) and reach their market effectively to confer the same level of academic credibility on digital projects as print books receive.

At my institution, I'm following similar developments with the collaboration between the UBC Press and the University of Washington Press developing a digital publishing platform in Indigenous studies thanks to a three-year grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Together, UBC Press and the University of Washington Press will develop a digital platform for Indigenous multimedia books. Based on Scalar, an authoring and publishing platform, it will offer a suite of tools for linking data and analyses to digital content from around the world and for interacting in culturally sensitive ways with heritage materials.  It's even hired a Digital Publishing Coordinator and Digital Developmental Editor to build the infrastructure.  It's exciting times ahead at UBC and Stanford.

A new book, "World's Leading National, Public, Monastery and Royal Library Directors"

This is our book on practicing library professionals, but the very first joint interview book project dedicated to documenting on a global scale, the senior leadership and managerial skills, strategic planning as well as professional developments – of the skills and aptitudes that an "effective, total leader" needs in the world of librarianship today.  Each individual library director appearing in this book is highly experienced and greatly respected for their integrity, endeavors and contributions in his or her own right. Their participation in this interview book project, sharing with our readers, their valuable professional practices, unparalleled experiences and unique perspectives, creates such valuable professional learning opportunities for practicing library professionals who continue to communicate with each other on a cross-national, as well as on a cross-cultural level.

As renowned management scholar Henry Mintzberg of McGill University theorizes, “managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes, managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.”

So as the individuals profiled in this book will tell us, their roles are manifold and complicated, involving a range of tasks and abilities that require experience, dedication, and creativity that not only keep the library’s operations afloat but thrive under their guidance. We are fortunate that these busy leaders of knowledge are able to generously share with us their time and knowledge in the making of this book. It was simply a pleasure to learn through their experiences and expertise by “picking” their brains about how these library managers not only shape the missions of their respective libraries, but also how they are shaped by their own experiences into become current leadership positions.  The people we interview in this book include the following:

National and state libraries

1 David S. Mao, Acting Librarian, Library of Congress
2 Dr. Johanna Rachinger, Director General, Austrian National Library
3 Caroline Brazier, Chief Librarian, British Library
4 Ana Santos Aramburo, Director, National Library of Spain
5 Marie-Christine Doffey, Director, Swiss National Library
6 Andris Vilks, Director of the National Library of Latvia
7 Prof. Dr. Renaldas Gudauskas, Director General, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania
8 Alberto Manguel, Director, National Library of Argentina
9 Jelena Djurovic, Director, National Library of Montenegro
10 Dr. Claudia Lux, Librarian, Project Director of the Qatar National Library
11 Oren Weinberg, Director, National Library of Israel
12 Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director, The Library of Alexandria (Egypt)

Public and city libraries

13 Pam Sandlian Smith, Director, Anythink Libraries, Adams County (Colorado)
14 Christopher Platt, Chief Branch Library Officer, New York Public Library
15 John F. Szabo, City Librarian, Los Angeles Public Library
16 David Leonard, President, Boston Public Library
17 Felton Thomas, Jr., Director of Cleveland Public Library
18 Mary Anne Hodel, Director/CEO, Orange County Library System
19 Misty Jones, Director, San Diego Public Library
20 Marcellus Turner, City Librarian, The Seattle Public Library System
21 Kate P. Horan, MLS, Library Director, McAllen Public Library (Texas)
22 Dr. Hannelore Vogt, Director, Cologne Public Library
23 Christine Brunner, Director, Stuttgart City Library
24 Sandra Singh, Chief Librarian, Vancouver Public Library
25 Shih-chang Horng, Director, Taipei Public Library
26 Father Maximilian Schiefermüller O.S.B., General Director, Admont Abbey Library
27 Dr. Cornel Dora, Director, Abbey Library of Saint Gall
28 Oliver Urquhart Irvine, The Librarian & Assistant Keeper, The Queen’s Archives

Call for Papers: Digital Humanities – The Shifting Contexts

I'm so pleased to be working with Megan Meredith-Lobay, who is the Scientific Analyst, Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at UBC together on an exciting project.   We are co-editors of a special edition of Digital Library Perspectives, a journal that explores new understandings and definitions of what is a digital library.   In this issue, we focus on the emerging field of digital humanities, the evolution of the term, and the ways it's being presented and practised by scholars and researchers, particularly examining it outside of the traditional parameters of what one usually considers DH.  So yes, we're looking at shaking up the boundaries a bit, and experimenting with new ideas and processes while we're at it.  But we need your help -- if you have something in the works, please do consider submitting it to this special issue, which will be first LIS academic journal devoting an entire issue to DH.  

Call for Papers: Digital Humanities – The Shifting Contexts 

This special edition of Digital Library Perspectives focuses on the topic of Digital Humanities, with emphasis on the shifting framework of scholars and practitioners who do not necessarily identify themselves digital humanists but use Digital Humanities tools and practices in their work. The Guest Editors of this issue include Dr. Megan Meredith-Lobay (University of British Columbia) and Allan Cho (University of British Columbia).

The co-editors invite contributions on the following, as well as other related topics:

• Role of LIS in supporting non-traditional DH areas of scholarship, i.e. New Media Studies, Musicology, Archaeology, non-textual DH
• Emerging areas of research, teaching, learning in the digital scholarship in the social sciences and humanities
• Beyond “What is DH?” - exploring “Why DH?”
• Non-traditional DH practice and practitioners: inclusion and exclusion
• DH in non-western contexts
• The intersections between DH and digital social science
• Digital Humanities as Data Science

Important Dates:

• Papers due: 1 February 2018 
• First round decisions made: February 2018 
• Revised manuscripts due: March 2018 
• Final decisions made: April 2018 
• Planned publication: Volume 34 Issue 3 (August) 2018

Submission Instructions:

• Papers should be no more than 6000 words
• Submissions to Digital Library Perspectives are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online submission and peer review system. Registration for an account needs to be created first: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dlp.