After a year of informal activities, we are pleased to announce the official founding of digital Sciences, Humanities, and Arts: Research and Publication--or, as we will hereafter acronym it, dSHARP. We are a (virtual) center co-sponsored by the University Libraries and Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, with a core mission of promoting innovative digital research and publication at CMU. You can find us online at http://dsharp.cmu.edu and join our listserv for emailed updates.
We have a diverse and talented core group of faculty and staff, with especial strength in the digital humanities.
- Dan Evans, Digital Humanities Developer, works on faculty grant-funded projects chosen through the Andrew W. Mellon Digital Humanities initiative.
- Rikk Mulligan, Digital Scholarship Strategist, offers consultation and workshops on digital scholarship research methods and publications.
- Jessica Otis, Digital Humanities Specialist and Assistant Professor of History, offers consultations, workshops, and for-credit courses on digital humanities research methods and publications.
- David Scherer, Scholarly Communications and Research Curation Consultant, offers consultations and workshops on scholarly communications, research curation, and the KiltHub digital repository.
- Scott Weingart, Program Director, Digital Humanities, offers consultations and workshops on digital humanities research methods, and runs faculty grants and graduate fellowship funded through the Andrew W. Mellon Digital Humanities initiative.
- Lisa Zilinski, Research Data Consultant, offers consultations and workshops on research data management.
In November, our core personnel will be expanded by the addition of a 2-year Council on Library and Information Resources/Digital Library Federation (CLIR-DLF) Postdoctoral Fellow, Emma Slayton, who received her Ph.D. in Archeology and has expertise in Geographical Information Systems and Data Visualization.
As we begin our first semester of official operations we will continue to offer weekly open hours for drop-in consultations and co-working (Wednesdays, 1:30-4:30pm, Hunt Library Studio B). These were immensely successful last year and we look forward to continuing to build a community of related initiatives and affiliate faculty and staff whose research and publication interests intersects with our own.
Our Digital Humanities Reading Group will continue to meet on the final Wednesday of the month (August-October, January-May) from 5-6:30pm at various eating/drinking establishments in the Oakland area. Join our listserv to receive (among other things!) regular announcements of readings, date, time, and place.
Additionally, we will also begin to offer a series of 2-hour workshops through the University Libraries and inaugurate our speaker series with two fall lectures. More details will be forthcoming--check out our website calendar for the most complete and up-to-date list of dSHARP and Pittsburgh-wide DH activities.
Interested in learning more about the process of founding dSHARP? Rikk Mulligan, Jessica Otis, and Lisa Zilinski will be giving a talk at the Digital Library Federation annual meeting in Pittsburgh this October.
by Jessica Otis, Digital Humanities Specialist and Assistant Professor of History