Indiana’s Day of Digital Humanities [#IndianaDH]

Today, Wednesday, April 29^th, is this year’s Day of DH, an international online event designed to document the activities of digital humanists. Researchers from the University of Alberta launched Day of DH on March 18^th, 2009. They posted 688 blog entries from 85 scholars describing what digital humanists did and how they did it. The event has continued through most years since then, allowing practitioners to document the evolution of their field. You can learn more at CenterNet, which now organizes it.

This one is a little different. Most of us have had to reconfigure our lives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, this year’s Day of DH focuses on documenting the professional activities of digital humanists as we work from home and social distance. It’s taking place primarily on Twitter, using the hashtag #dayofdh2020. Digital Humanists are invited “to share an online activity, host a meetup with other DH practitioners in your own and nearby time zones, or just to share favorite lectures, tutorials, blog posts or digital publications so that others may also experience them.” The Twitter stream will be archived, naturally.

Indiana’s digital humanists are joining in. Over the past year we’ve been establishing a network of DH practitioners from across the state, looking for opportunities to collaborate and share resources, as well to celebrate the impressive DH work that’s been done at libraries, colleges, and universities around Indiana. We’re doing that on Twitter today, using the hashtag #IndianaDH to highlight projects and initiatives in our state, particularly those that show the importance of the digital humanities for understanding and engaging with the challenges we face in the midst of a global pandemic. So look for the hashtags #IndianaDH and #dayofdh2020. They will link you to sites and projects from various campuses and libraries around the state and around the world that can help us make sense of our world in this moment.

Indiana Humanities has been convening a semi-regular gathering of digital humanities practitioners from across the state. To get involved, contact Dr. James J. Connolly.