Julianne Nyhan Andrew Flinn Towards an Oral History of Digital

Springer Series on Cultural Computing Julianne Nyhan Andrew Flinn Computation and the Humanities Towards an Oral History of Digital Humanities Springer Series on Cultural Computing Editor-in-Chief Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Editorial Board Frieder Nake, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany Nick Bryan-Kinns, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK Linda Candy, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia David England, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK Andrew Hugill, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK Shigeki Amitani, Adobe Systems Inc., Tokyo, Japan Doug Riecken, Columbia University, New York, USA Jonas Lowgren, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10481 Julianne Nyhan • Andrew Flinn Computation and the Humanities Towards an Oral History of Digital Humanities Julianne Nyhan Andrew Flinn Department of Information Studies Department of Information Studies University College London (UCL) University College London (UCL) London, UK London, UK ISSN 2195-9056 ISSN 2195-9064 (electronic) Springer Series on Cultural Computing ISBN 978-3-319-20169-6 ISBN 978-3-319-20170-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20170-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942045 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2016. This book is published open access. Open Access This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/cc by-nc/2.5/) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the work’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if such material is not included in the work’s Creative Commons license and the respective action is not permitted by statutory regulation, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to duplicate, adapt or reproduce the material. This work is subject to copyright. All commercial rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland I ndil-chuimhne ar Barry O Flynn (1974–2001) agus ar Patrick Flinn (1927–2016) Acknowledgements We are grateful to the following organisations for funding the research that under- pinned this book: Das Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum (HKFZ), University of Trier, Germany; the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH); the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH); and the Department of Information Studies, UCL. UCL’s open access office generously provided the funding that has enabled the book to be published under an open access licence. Thank you also to Helen Desmond of Springer UK for her expertise and seem- ingly endless reserves of patience. Our Research Assistant, Jessica Salmon, made the initial transcriptions of most of the interviews included in this book. She did this with her characteristic conscientiousness, care and good humour and we are very grateful to her. When there was a short break in our funding John Nyhan was gener- ous enough to humour his daughter’s selfless attempts to find him a retirement project. He valiantly transcribed two interviews before more funding, and his freedom, was restored. Thank you also to him and Eileen Nyhan for stepping in on babysit- ting duties and allowing some of the interviews that were held outside of the UK to take place. We are grateful to the numerous members of the Digital Humanities community (writ large) who have agreed to be interviewed during the course of this research. A selection of those interviews are contained in this book; full details of all those whom we interviewed are available on our project webpages: http://hiddenhistories. omeka.net/interviews. Thank you for your time, generosity, openness and the care you showed when responding to the volley of interview transcripts that were, and in some cases continue to be, sent your way. A number of colleagues have encouraged and supported this work in various ways. Joseph Raben, who died on 18 January 2015, aged 90, sent encouragement, documentation, comments and corrections. He made a pivotal contribution to devel- opment of Digital Humanities and it is fitting that he is so present in this book even though it was not possible for us to interview him. Roy Wisbey kindly shared otherwise inaccessible documents related to the founding of the ALLC. Helen Agüera shared useful and otherwise difficult to access documents with us. Wilhelm Ott and vii viii Acknowledgements Susan Hockey both allowed Nyhan to spend time perusing their personal archives and libraries. Marco Passarotti gave Nyhan much assistance during her visit to the archive of Fr Roberto Busa S.J. in Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. As ever, Melissa Terras has not only been a brilliant friend and colleague but also a source of much inspiration. Willard McCarty encouraged this work in all sorts of ways, from sending information about useful publications, acting as a sounding board for early plans about the shape this book might take and carrying out, on our behalf, the interview with Hugh Craig and John Burrows when we could not make it to Australia. Steve Jones has been very kind with his time and expertise and generously shared drafts of work in progress. Geoffrey Rockwell shared drafts of work in progress, details of connections he has made with those who worked in DH in its earliest stages and copies of sources that are otherwise difficult, if not impossible to access. He has given tremendous and much appreciated help. Like that of Jones and McCarty, Rockwell’s work on the history of DH has been crucially important for us. Thank you also to James Cronin, Claudine Moulin, Ulrich Tiedau and the many colleagues and friends with whom we have had helpful discussions about this work. Most of all, thank you to our families without whom none of this would be possible. Finally a special mention to Patrick Flinn, beloved father, who passed away just as this book was being completed. Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Introduction to Digital Humanities ........................................................... 1 Humanities Computing (c.1949–2006) ..................................................... 2 DH (c.2006–Present) ................................................................................. 4 Is DH a Discipline? ................................................................................... 6 The State of the Art: Histories of DH ....................................................... 8 Why Do We Not Have Histories of DH? .................................................. 10 The Approach Taken in This Book ........................................................... 11 Why Do We Need Histories of DH? ......................................................... 14 References ................................................................................................. 16 2 Why Oral History? ................................................................................. 21 Introduction ............................................................................................... 21 A Brief History of Modern Oral History .................................................. 23 Challenges to Oral History: Valuing Difference ....................................... 26 Studying Communities.............................................................................. 29 A Conclusion. Oral History and Communities: To Whom Does This History Belong? ...................................................... 33 References ................................................................................................. 34 3 Individuation Is There in All the Different Strata: John Burrows, Hugh Craig and Willard McCarty ............................................................................. 37 Biographies ............................................................................................... 38 Interview ................................................................................................... 39 References ................................................................................................

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