I think one of the issues we should address is the education of humanities scholars in general and in particular of scholars in humanities computing and the digital humanities.
Willard McCarty distinguishes between researchers in humanities computing, who are involved in experimenting with tools and methods, and researchers in the digital humanities--a potentially much larger group who are using the tools and methods from the first group and applying them to their own scholarly activities.
For the purposes of creating highly qualified personnel who can help sustain digital scholarship, I believe we need plans for the education of all three groups. Note that I use the word "education" rather than "training."
2 comments:
I would be interested in teasing out this difference between "education" and "training" further.
One of the main concerns that has emerged during this first phase of interviews is that large projects, in order to remain sustainable, require the ongoing training of participants/scholars in emerging technologies, or the resources to fund consultations with experts in the field. The emphasis for those coming from a humanities background seems often to be on skills as well as tools that are functional and transparent and on a model of training that is as efficient and time-friendly as possible.
Does the digital humanities need to make space for scholars who are only interested in basic training, as it were, to forward their projects? Or is the model of education a necessary one to foster truly critical engagements with emergent digital methodologies?
This is a truly tough question. I've argued strenuously in other contexts that humanities tools might at times work against that grain and refuse to be easy and transparent in order to educate the user. Only problem is, that people may and often do get frustrated and move on, it seems. And yet, some tools, the ones that are most likely to be game changers in some ways, really do take time to get to know, and it seems that we need somehow to overcome the expectations of ease and speed: you wouldn't expect to pick up deconstruction in a few minutes, so why should a new computer-aided method be any different? Perhaps the answer is in building up a critical mass of studies, across the disciplines, that use these new methods and can convince others that the investment of serious time in them is worthwhile.
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