Occasionally, I get the urge to collect some links that are getting me to think about digital humanities.

The first comes from a colleague at CSU, exploring case studies of informal science learning; I don’t see as much of this work in humanistic contexts, which bothers me, but perhaps we can find a model from these Case Studies | Media and Informal Science Learning.

At CPHDH, we use Omeka, and here are two projects that make use of Omeka, both with nice (though largely out of the box) designs that demonstrate how Omeka can be useful in collaboratively identifying and mapping a city (Sao Tome) and collecting (Bracero): Sao Tome Map Project; Bracero History Archive. Both work at some base level, but depend on crowdsourcing methodologies, which are powerful in theory and even practice (Wikipedia remains the most robust example, if you ask me.) But, the problem of collecting and collaborating remain in question with smaller and largely non-digital audiences. Both projects are, to some degree, tests of that, but it is not at all clear that the metadata being gathered is either robust or representative, both of which are important, presumably, in any crowdsourced project. Our efforts with Teaching & Learning Cleveland have confronted this problem of metadata and collaboration as well. And, it seems to me that the jury is still out to some degree. I am especially interested in the Sao Tome project because of its applicability across space and Bracero because of how it could be used to build community. I blogged about this over at the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities website in greater detail.

We are also working on a mobile application, trying to think about the role of curating the city via mobile devices; curiously, the problem here is that most folks seem to want to put the kitchen sink up on the web for mobile devices. I am not sure that this is a sustainable practice, in no small part because that is akin to putting you in the library and providing a most basic map and letting you loose. Pretty soon, you’d be frustrated because you have not been able to find what you want, overwhelmed with data. Even so, getting information there is a first step, and the PowerHouse Museum is in the forefront of that. Check out this augmented reality test: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2010/04/16/new-version-of-powerhouse-museum-in-layar-augmented-reality-browsing-of-museum-photos-around-sydney/

At the Museum Infomatic conference in Denver (2010) there was a nice talk, that I noted via twitter feed) about various Collection Interfaces.

And, although I am not a fan of games per se, from an environmental perspective, the folks at UVA seem to be on the verge of developing a great game for understanding the Chesepeake Bay: UVA Bay Game.

Lastly, on the technology front, I am struck by Ning’s retrenchment, in the article, Ning’s bubble bursts. This is revealing for many reasons, not the least of which is the importance of hosting your own installs with open-source software. What happens when your “free” service disappears? I was never overwhelmed by ning, but did make use of ning sites. However, much of the social networking capabilities that they provided were possible in other realms, namely via WordPress and BuddyPress, like our work with ReImagining Cleveland.

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