Photo archivists and Twitter sociologists, guerilla gardeners and best-selling Kindle authors descend on Orono, Maine for the 2011 Digital Humanities Week.
From 29 to 29 September, luminaries like hackademic Craig Dietrich, curator Candace Kanes, and sociologist Dhiraj Murthy hold workshops and lectures on community engagement through social media, digital techniques for publishing scholarship, and making cultural archives accessible online.
To coincide with Digital Humanities Week, the New Media Department’s Still Water lab has produced a news blog featuring stories by digital humanists. Visitors to the site can read, rate, and comment on the stories in a style reminiscent of news recommendation sites like Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot.
The 2011 Digital Humanities Week is sponsored by a number of U-Me departments and initiatives and spearheaded by Liam Riordan (History), Marjery Irvine (English), and Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito (New Media).
Other sponsors of the conference include the University of Maine Humanities Initiative, spearheaded by Scott See; and the Digital Curation program, a two-year graduate distance learning degree coming online in 2012 that will prepare anyone who deals with cultural archives or assets to digitize, access, and preserve them.