Call for Participation: Issues in the Digital Humanities

Call for Participation: Issues in the Digital Humanities: A Postgraduate and ECR Training Event

June 20^th & 21^st, Working Class Movement Library, Salford

This is a two-day, AHRC-funded skills training event for postgraduate researchers. Day One (June 20^th) will deliver a bespoke training course, designed by the Digital Preservation Training Coalition. The course will introduce participants to key issues in designing and managing a project to digitise archive materials (books, manuscripts, and other documents). Issues covered will include selection of materials, selection of equipment, copyright, and project management. Materials from the Library’s collection will be used as case studies.

Day Two (June 21^st) follows on from the first day’s training, with the hope that a better understanding of the way that digital resources are produced will help us to use them more effectively.

• Keynotes by Dr Helen Rogers (LJMU) and Dr Jim Mussell (University of Birmingham). Helen will be speaking about the Archive of Working-Class Autobiography and the Writing Lives research project, and Jim will address the methodological issues arising from use of digital resources in research.
• Four short position papers around 15-20 minutes long on any aspect of participants’ use of digital resources in humanities research.

We invite abstracts (up to 300 words) for these papers. Such papers could offer advice or models of best practice that speakers have developed in their own research. Alternatively they could discuss an ongoing problem that digital resources present for their research, inviting feedback on methods of tackling it.

Applications:

• If you would like to give a paper, please send us an abstract for consideration. If you would like to attend but do not intend to give a paper, please send us a short statement (up to 200 words) which indicates your use of digital resources in research. We would prefer for participants to attend both days.
• The event is free, but places are very limited. In the event that applications exceed the number of places available, the organizers will assess applicants’ statements and offer places to those who demonstrate research interests relevant to the WCML’s holdings, experience in archive work, and/or engagement with issues in digitization.

Deadline for abstracts and applications: May 16^th 2013. Email: idhsalford@gmail.com