On February 11, 2022, we held a discussion of how to conceptualize and plan a digital humanities project, led by DH Initiative faculty members Andrew Goldstone, Francesca Giannetti, Paul Israel, Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, and Sean Silver. The workshop was especially aimed at graduate students planning to apply for a Digital Humanities Seed Grant (due March 1). A video recording of the session is available here.

The workshop handout is reproduced below, together with a few additional notes on other resources and example projects (include past seed grant recipients) mentioned in the discussion.

Key considerations

• What is the research question? What story do you want to tell?

• What are your methods? What do you already know how to do? What do you need to learn how to do?

• Who is your audience? Who do you seek to address or involve?

• How does your project address, extend, complement, or correct an existing scholarly conversation—about the topic, about the methods?

• Where are the materials or the data? Are they already digitized? Do they need to be created? Can you work by reusing or enriching existing materials or data, or must you create data from scratch?

• Are there existing tools or platforms that could be used to address your questions? Could you develop a novel tool if what is available “off the shelf” is not suitable?

• What would success look like? What will the finished project be? What are your practical goals for a small-scale, one-year “seed” project?

Some guides

• Miriam Posner, “How Did They Make That?”: https://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video. Concrete examples.

• Simon Appleford and Jennifer Guiliano, Development for the Digital Humanities: https://devdh.org. Extensive general guidance.

• Yale DH Lab, Getting Started: https://dhlab.yale.edu/guides.html. More general advice.

• Rutgers Libraries Guide to Digital Humanities: https://libguides.rutgers.edu/digital_humanities. A starting point for exploring the field at Rutgers.

• Members of the DH Initiative: https://dh.rutgers.edu/about-us/committee/. We are available, to the extent possible.

From discussion: examples

• “Reading Regionally”: Abstract from 2016–17 seed grant recipient Alex Leslie (English).

• “Islands in the North”: Project developed by 2017–18 seed grant recipient Marlene Gaynair (History).

• Abstracts from the 2017–2018 seed grant round.

• coLAB Arts Oral History Project: an example of a community-based DH project.

• Peer reviews of DH Projects: one way to learn of more example projects.

From discussion: more resources and further training

• Upcoming Public Humanities Workshops, April 7-8, 2022.

• Hardware and software available at the Rutgers DH Lab in Alexander Library.

• New Brunswick Libraries workshops: many in or adjacent to DH methods and techniques.

• Rutgers OARC events, including training in data analysis.

• NYC Digital Humanities: a regional interest group with a news group for announcements.

• Caterina Agostini’s list of current Consortium courses in digital humanities.