Talk given at UMBC Friends of the Library, Nov. 2013

1. The Problem with Print
publishing born digital scholarship

2. What’s wrong with print?
Nothing.
Or, everything.

3. hyper and deep
“Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally
associated with the humanities, is characterized by
concentrating on a single object for long periods (say,
a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so
engaged, preferring a single information stream, and
having a high tolerance for long focus times.”
“Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus
rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple
information streams, seeking a high level of
stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom.”
-- N. Katherine Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention:
The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”

4. Attention blindness
“It's not easy to acknowledge that everything
we've learned about how to pay attention means
that we've been missing everything else. … For
more than a hundred years, we've been training
people to see in a particularly individual,
deliberative way. No one ever told us that our
way of seeing excluded everything else.”
Cathy Davidson, “Collaborative Learning for the
Digital Age”

5. Plato: not a big fan
“[writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those
who learn it: they will not practice using their memory
because they will put their trust in writing, which is external
and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of
trying to remember from the inside, completely on their
own.”
“You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for
reminding; you provide your students with the appearance
of wisdom, not with its reality.”
“Your invention will enable them to hear many things
without being properly taught, and they will imagine that
they have come to know much while for the most part they
will know nothing..”
Plato, Phaedrus

6. What can an institution be?
“This book proposes a deliberately provocative
alternative definition of institution: An institution
as a mobilizing network.”
“How can the digital connections that transcend
the walls (literally and figuratively) of institutions
enable us to transform some of the most
bounded and frustrating aspects (the “silos”) of
institutions of higher learning?”
Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, The
Future of Thinking.

7. What can digital scholarship
do?
-- “deep reads” using database and data mining
tools;
-- display of digital and video works in their
original formats, for the purpose of uncovering
and critiquing these texts;
-- potentially widespread open access via the
Internet;
-- on-demand updating of projects as new
scholarship comes to light.

8. Humanities computing
An example: the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts.
A typical manuscript, worked up for the library:
Julius Caesar’s Gallic War,
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Pe
rseus:text:1999.02.0001

9. Humanities computing
tools
MIT’s Annotation Studio, under development:
http://www.annotationstudio.org/tutorial/

10. Critical code studies
Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)
http://eliterature.org/
Jason Nelson
http://www.secrettechnology.com/
“Infinite Click and Read”
http://www.secrettechnology.com/sydney/

11. Sandy Baldwin, Goo
(2006)

12. What lies beneath?

13. Hidden skulls
(sidebar: if you’re
interested in
Holbein’s The
Ambassadors,
you might find Slavoj
Zizek’s
Looking Awry to be a treat)

14. Critical e-dition
Jim Andrews, Arteroids
http://www.vispo.com/arteroids/
Leonardo Flores talks about his mission, at the
Library of Congress:
http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2013/03/q
uest-for-the-critical-e-dition-an-interview-withleonardo-flores/

15. Data visualization
”The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books”

16. Spatial history
http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgibin/site/viz.php?id=391

17. Spring Grove State Hospital
Virtual Archaeology Project

18. Curating and indexing
The Brautigan Library in Vancouver WA
http://www.thebrautiganlibrary.org/Blank.html
ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model of
Creativity and Innovation in Practice) Database
http://elmcip.net/

19. The problem with digital
Yes, digital works have their own set of biases
and problems
Institutional
Technological
Commercial

20. Institutional issues
Book-centric models of publication (your
research isn’t done until you write about it)
Poor perception of peer review in digital works:
NITLE/Anvil
http://anvilacademic.org
Rigid definitions of what counts as scholarly
“work”

21. Problem: obsolescence
“Acid Free Bits”
http://eliterature.org/pad/afb.html
Principles for Creating Long-Lasting Work
4.1 Prefer Open Systems to Closed Systems
4.2 Prefer Community-Directed Systems to Corporate-Driven
Systems
4.3 Consolidate Code, Supply Comments
4.4 Validate Code
4.5 Prefer Plain-Text Formats to Binary Formats
4.6 Prefer Cross-Platform Options to Single-System Options
4.7 Keep the Whole System in Mind
4.8 Document Early, Document Often
4.9 Retain Source Files
4.10 Use Common Tools and Documented Capabilities
4.11 Maintain Metadata and Bibliographic information
4.12 Allow and Encourage Duplication and Republication
4.13 Keep Copies on Different, Durable Media

22. Document, document,
document..
The Agrippa Files
http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/

23. Problem: money
Who knew?
Your choice: pay or be googleized…

24. The future of digital (is
digital)

25. MINDful Play Environment

26. Print the future

27. Print?
No problem.