ivry twr

I just flew back from Japan and boy are my arms tired.

Beth and I had the pleasure of going to Japan to attend the second Japanese Association for Digital Humanities Conference held at the University of Tokyo. I can’t speak highly enough about how much we enjoyed the trip. The conference organizers made us feel welcome. The speakers were fascinating. The campus of the university is among the most beautiful I’ve ever visited. And the city of Tokyo was outstanding.

This week’s edition of ‘links of the week’ is devoted to different things that caught my attention at the conference. There was so much interesting information that next’s week’s edition will also be JADH 2012 themed.

1. #JADH2012 on twitter – To get a good feel for what went on at the conference, visit this collection of #JADH2012 tweets. This was the first conference I’ve attended since becoming a heavy twitter user – the side conversations that occurred during papers was fascinating. Twitter has allowed paper presentations to become less of a monologue and more of a dialogue, enriching the learning experience.

2. DH-JAC Metaverse Project – Even though this site is mostly in Japanese, you can still get a sense of their project. Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto is working on a project to recreate tangible and intangible Japanese cultural heritage using Second Life to create a 3D ‘metaverse.’ They’ve found that their metaverse has created new forms of dialogue between experts and the public which led to value new connections for both parties.

3. Does it work? Where theory and technology collude – This article was recommended during one of the plenary talks. It’s author, Laura Mandell, writes that she is “interested in thinking about not what the Humanities and Digital Humanities are, but in how they are, and more specifically, where they break.” I’ve not finished the article yet, but thus far it’s a fascinating look at the role digital humanities plays in academia and the university structure.

4. All our ideas – This site is an ‘idea marketplace’ for the publication A Companion to Digital Humanities, which allows the public to vote for ideas they’d like to see discussed in the journal. The site presents you with two options and you choose the one you like the most. This is a great way to give readers a voice in the kinds of content they’d like to see published.

5. A Social Edition of the Devonshire MS – This is a project started at my alma mater the University of Victoria with the goal of creating a ‘social’ edition of the Devonshire manuscript. A social edition is a work that brings different members of the community (both academic and non-academic) to engage in the text to create a collaborative critical edition. This project embraces scholarly best-practices and the tenants of open-access to with the goals of engagement, collaboration, and dissemination.

Well that does it for another edition of links of the week. It’s going to be a fairly slow week on the site. Beth and I didn’t get back to Korea until the wee hours of Tuesday morning and we’ve been paying the price ever since.

Look for another video in our ivrytwr Summer Road-trip 2012 this Friday as we explore the Busan Aquarium. I’ll also be posting a copy of my paper for JADH2012 later in the week.

Thanks for reading and have yourself a great week.