A coworker of mine is looking for suggestions, trying to find material about the point of convergence between digital humanities and public history museums. I can think of a couple, but as I'm fairly new to the museum side of things, I thought I'd turn the question over to a larger body of folks who're in the know.
What should one read, if one is looking to sound well-informed when talking about such topics?
(Also, why is there no "public humanities" related category...?)
Sheila Brennan
Member
There isn't a lot out there, Tad.
I think a good starting place for all things related to digital history is Roy and Dan's book, Digital History: http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/
Sharon Leon has a nice 3-part series called 21st-Century Public History that speaks more directly to museums and public historians: http://www.6floors.org/bracket/2010/04/21/21st-century-public-history-part-i/
Nancy Proctor's Digital: Museum as Platform, Curator as Champion, in the Age of Social Media (Curator, Jan 2010), is another: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2009.00006.x/full
And then there is a book that I haven't read yet:
Theorizing digital cultural heritage : a critical discourse by Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007)
Replying to @SheRah1918's post:
I'm happy a couple I knew were on the list... Although unsurprisingly there are several I don't...
Thanks!
There's also a group operating out of Cleveland State University called the Center for Public History & Digital Humanities: http://csudigitalhumanities.org/ I'm not familiar with them beyond a little exploration of their site, but they may be good folks to talk to.
A couple of us public history/museum/digital humanities types keep noting the parallels between the mores and techniques of the two fields, but not a whole lot has been done systematically that I'm aware of, either. Sharon's series that SheRah1918 noted above does a nice job of addressing those parallels.
There's evidently a special issue of Library Trends coming out soon on "Involving Users in the Co-Construction of Digital Knowledge in Libraries, Archives and Museums," but I'm not sure when we can expect it.
Paul Marty, who is one of the editors of that issue, is also one of the editors of Museum Informatics: People, Information, and Technology in Museums, which while not drawing the parallels between DH and PH explicitly does address some areas of commonality.
Ed,
I'm guessing (as one of the co-editors) that the LT issue probably won't be out until next year. There are also the three.
If I have time later this month, I'll try to troll through my Zotero library to pick out some things that seem immediately relevant to the DH/PH overlap. Likely some bigger thinking is required to map general museum informatics over this too.
There has been lots of talk over the years about the convergence of libraries, archives and museums in the digital realm, but I think there is a lack of discussions about convergence of DH & LAM in general.
That's great to know, Richard--thanks for the update. Good luck with the LT issue--I'm looking forward to it. At the risk of taking this too far outside the specific PH/DH question, I'd wager "[t]he three" that you mentioned are the special issues related to LAM (library/archive/museum, for those that may not know) convergence from Archival Science, Museum Management and Curatorship, and Library Quarterly. For those that are interested, here is a brief summary of that project here: http://hangingtogether.org/?p=757
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