Sunrise to sunset on the day of digital humanities

[I've copied my post from the official Day of DH ('A Day of the Life of the Digital Humanities') 2012 site so it can be integrated with my other posts on digital humanities and general blogging.]

You know you're in Australia when...
gumtree in a carpark

I feel like a bit of a cheat, as through an accident of timing my Day of Digital Humanities has been far, far more glamorous than my usual working day (which tends to involve sitting at a desk in Oxford or Milton Keynes analysing websites; reading books, blog posts and articles; or interviewing people for my PhD).

But today I happened to be in Australia so it was all a bit more exciting...  I left for Sydney’s Central station as the sun was rising, heading for the 8am bus to Canberra. On the bus I tidied my Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 (DHA2012) conference paper and slides for tomorrow’s presentation on historians and crowdsourcing, and wrote a blog post about the week just past (Geek for a week: residency at the Powerhouse Museum).

After checking into my room at the ANU (Australian National University), I scanned my email for anything vital, uploaded my draft blog post and hit publish, then tweeted the link as I headed over to the National Museum of Australia where I was taking part in a playtest for a new game called Sembl.

Play-testing Sembl on iPads

After the playtest was over we walked back to the ANU campus for a DHA2012 drinks reception and a LODLAM (linked open data in libraries, archives and museums) mini-bar meetup. An early night for me so I’m sorted for the first day of DHA2012 tomorrow!

Defining Digital Humanities
I was asked to define ‘digital humanities’ when I signed up for this site, came as a bit of a surprise and I don’t think I did a terribly good job. So here’s another, very personal definition based on my work in digital history and digital heritage:

Digital humanities is thinking through making, as well as writing… for me, it’s currently about thinking critically about the impact of digitality on scholarly practice in addition to applying digital techniques to the concerns of the humanities.