Digital Humanities @University of Alabama Libraries

Located within the University of Alabama Libraries, the Alabama Digital Humanities Center (AHDC) is a hub for Digital Humanities practitioners and students. The mission of the center is to support Digital Humanities scholarship and teaching on campus through programming and outreach. Our goal is to connect people with each other and with the resources and support that they need to reach their potential as researchers, teachers, and students.   

What we do: 

The ADHC provides community, skills training, and collaboration towards the development of Digital Humanities projects. Our participation in individual projects includes the provision of local installations and enterprise access to technologies including Wordpress, Omeka, ArcGIS, Nvivo and Tableau. We also help practitioners and students learn to use these tools to develop an understanding of the methods and frameworks of digital scholarship in the Humanities disciplines, and we support researchers in the development of projects using these technologies  by providing site creation and the maintenance of our local installations.  

What we don’t do: 

We do not provide in depth technology and content development support for individual projects, and we cannot support long-term project content maintenance.  

Subscribe to the ADHC Listserv: send an email to ADHC@listserv.ua.edu and in the body include, “SUBSCRIBE ADHC”   

In very simple terms, Digital Humanities is the engagement of digital tools and methods in humanities research.

There are myriad data types used in Digital Humanities projects. some of the most common are:

• Digital surrogate or 3D models of physical materials
• Born digital materials such as computer files, internet research, network analysis
• Digitized text 
• Visual data
• Maps and Geospatial data

Some of the most common methods used in Digital Humanities include:

• Text Analysis
• Mapping (creating hotspots on the digitized surrogate of a 2D or 3D object for annotated information and data linking)
• Geospatial Mapping for storytelling
• Chronology and the creation of interactive timelines
• Collecting and digitizing primary source materials for broad dissemination 

Some commonly used DH tools:

• Wordpress
• Omeka
• ArcGIS
• ArcGIS Storymaps
• Python
• R
• Timeline JS

These are just a few examples of the kinds of work you can do in Digital Humanities. The possibilities are limitless, and if you would like to talk further about a project idea or need, make an appointment with us!