(reposted from the DHI)

Cultural Change in the Digital Humanities: 
talk on Feb. 19 @ Columbia by visiting Prof. Arienne M. Dwyer in Digital Humanities Initiative

Free & open to the public, no RSVP required
TOPIC:  Cultural change in the Digital Humanities: Balancing access, participation, and security

WHEN:   Tues, Feb.  19  ~  Noon - 1:30 PM
WHERE:  203 Butler Library
SPONSORS:  Columbia Libraries Digital Humanities Center and Digital Program Division

SPEAKER:
Arienne M. Dwyer
Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center
Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, University of Kansas
Co-Director, Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Kansas

DESCRIPTION:
The digital humanities idealize openness, by promoting open access to scholarly resources, open source software, and the free sharing of information and knowledge. 
We digital humanists are making use of the democratic and collaborative potential of 
Internet to allow greater access to resources, as well as about gaining wider and 
more diverse audiences for our own scholarship. The interdisciplinary collaboration 
that this work necessarily entails creates a microsocial organization that contrasts 
with the lone-scholar approach of the traditional humanities.

With extreme openness comes security risks: material may be lost, borrowed without 
attribution, or insufficiently recognized as valid scholarship. Some security issues 
are amenable to technical fixes. Yet what motivates many humanists to decline to 
participate more collaboratively or openly is as much a social issue as a technical 
one; despite extensive reform efforts, scholarly recognition is still heavily tied 
to traditional modes of publication and recognition. Further, social networks entail 
a culture change. This talk focuses on taking the security and cultural concerns of 
humanists seriously, in order to encourage the broader participation of humanists in 
these emerging forms of scholarship.