While not all oral historians identify themselves with the digital humanities, there is a distinct subsection of practitioners who do, and many of the remaining researchers are doing work that is relative to DH, either directly or indirectly. Because of their emphasis on making interviews more accessible to both scholars and the general public, oral historians and digital humanists have a number of intersecting priorities. The new technologies that started becoming available in the 1990s provided a lot of opportunities for presenting materials online, and after working through a range of ethical issues, oral historians took advantage of the new platforms in a wide variety of ways.

Those who conduct oral histories are also in an interesting position for DH practitioners, since while many DH scholars spend their time parsing, analyzing, and recontextualizing already existing records, oral historians are involved in the creation of primary sources as well as in the development of DH research and tools.

This proposed “talk” session would  open a conversation about the roles of oral historians in the digital humanities, what work they are doing now that is relevant, and what products or formats non-oral historians would like to see that would help them with their own work.

I’m an enormous fan of games of all types–word, board, computer, sport, team-building, card, theater–but finding inventive ways to integrate them into the (history) classroom is challenging.

Background: I’m thinking specifically of the work of Jane McGonigal as in her work Reality is Broken and in this TED talk. While this is very well trodden ground at the primary school level, it feels underused still in higher education. But the educational possibilities of creating or playing games are easy to see:

• My friend Emmanuel Schanzer teaches math by having students code computer games through his program, Bootstrap.
• A colleague who teaches government at the local high school uses Diplomacy with his advanced students to demonstrate the give and take of international diplomacy.
• History’s lessons were the inspiration for recent kickstarters on election rigging (Tammany Hall) and the Salem witch craft trials (Salem).
• AAA video game releases use extensive historical elements to add depth to the gaming experience as in the Assassin’s Creed Series.

Let’s have a session where we brainstorm ways to take advantage of gaming’s possibilities for learning.

We can do this as a TALK session (discuss how, why, and when to introduce gaming and brainstorm games that would be appropriate for our teaching areas), a PLAY session (where myself and others can demonstrate simple games that can be extrapolated for specific pedagogical lessons), or a MAKE session (if folks have ideas about specific things they’d like to turn into games).

This month Ithaka released this report: supporting-the-changing-research-practices-of-historians. I would be interested discussing how this report may act a springboard for winder discussions on the role of libraries and archives (henceforth just using libraries) and those who staff these institutions.

My interest comes from three different concerns. I am  the librarian responsible for most of the topics covered at NYU’s Department of History (along with a few other departments).  I am on the board of the International Association of Labour History Institutions, a group of research institutions,  predominantly European and of varying sizes, that focus on social history.  And last and closely tied to the previous two, I am working historian who has published a work in print and a significantly enhanced version digitally.

My talk proposal is related to but somewhat different than Mary-Allen Johnson’s post.  I am more interested in discussing the future role(s) of the library in historical scholarship.  Where is it collaborative and where is it supportive.

andrew