The Problem with Printpublishing born digital scholarship

What’s wrong with print?

Nothing.

Or, everything.

hyper and deep

“Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times.”

“Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom.”

-- N. Katherine Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”

Attention blindness

“It's not easy to acknowledge that everything

we've learned about how to pay attention means

that we've been missing everything else. … For

more than a hundred years, we've been training

people to see in a particularly individual,

deliberative way. No one ever told us that our

way of seeing excluded everything else.”

Cathy Davidson, “Collaborative Learning for the

Digital Age”

Plato: not a big fan

“[writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.”

“You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality.”

“Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing..”

Plato, Phaedrus

What can an institution be?

“This book proposes a deliberately provocative

alternative definition of institution: An institution

as a mobilizing network.”

“How can the digital connections that transcend

the walls (literally and figuratively) of institutions

enable us to transform some of the most

bounded and frustrating aspects (the “silos”) of

institutions of higher learning?”

Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, The

Future of Thinking.

What can digital scholarship

do?

-- “deep reads” using database and data mining

tools;

-- display of digital and video works in their

original formats, for the purpose of uncovering

and critiquing these texts;

-- potentially widespread open access via the

Internet;

-- on-demand updating of projects as new

scholarship comes to light.

Humanities computing

An example: the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts.

A typical manuscript, worked up for the library:

Julius Caesar’s Gallic War,

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Pe

rseus:text:1999.02.0001

Humanities computing

toolsMIT’s Annotation Studio, under development:

http://www.annotationstudio.org/tutorial/

Critical code studies

Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)

http://eliterature.org/

Jason Nelson

http://www.secrettechnology.com/

“Infinite Click and Read”

http://www.secrettechnology.com/sydney/

Sandy Baldwin, Goo

(2006)

What lies beneath?

Hidden skulls

(sidebar: if you’re

interested in

Holbein’s The

Ambassadors,

you might find Slavoj

Zizek’s

Looking Awry to be a treat)

Critical e-dition

Jim Andrews, Arteroids

http://www.vispo.com/arteroids/

Leonardo Flores talks about his mission, at the

Library of Congress:

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2013/03/q

uest-for-the-critical-e-dition-an-interview-with-

leonardo-flores/

Data visualization”The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books”

Spatial historyhttp://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-

bin/site/viz.php?id=391

Spring Grove State Hospital

Virtual Archaeology Project

Curating and indexing

The Brautigan Library in Vancouver WA

http://www.thebrautiganlibrary.org/Blank.html

ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model of

Creativity and Innovation in Practice) Database

http://elmcip.net/

The problem with digital

Yes, digital works have their own set of biases

and problems

Institutional

Technological

Commercial

Institutional issues

Book-centric models of publication (your

research isn’t done until you write about it)

Poor perception of peer review in digital works:

NITLE/Anvil

http://anvilacademic.org

Rigid definitions of what counts as scholarly

“work”

Problem: obsolescence

“Acid Free Bits”http://eliterature.org/pad/afb.html

Principles for Creating Long-Lasting Work4.1 Prefer Open Systems to Closed Systems4.2 Prefer Community-Directed Systems to Corporate-Driven Systems4.3 Consolidate Code, Supply Comments4.4 Validate Code4.5 Prefer Plain-Text Formats to Binary Formats4.6 Prefer Cross-Platform Options to Single-System Options4.7 Keep the Whole System in Mind4.8 Document Early, Document Often4.9 Retain Source Files4.10 Use Common Tools and Documented Capabilities4.11 Maintain Metadata and Bibliographic information4.12 Allow and Encourage Duplication and Republication4.13 Keep Copies on Different, Durable Media

Document, document,

document..

The Agrippa Files

http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/

Problem: money

Who knew?

Your choice: pay or be googleized…

The future of digital (is

digital)

MINDful Play Environment

Print the future

Print?

No problem.