Last week PhilPapers, “a comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy maintained by the community of philosophers,” sent letters to academic librarians asking for financial support to sustain their work. As a recipient of such a letter, I would like to invite philosophers, librarians, and others interested in volunteer-run digital projects like PhilPapers to talk about issues raised by the organization’s call for support.  Among other topics, we can consider such questions as what is the value of such a service for scholars? for graduate students? for undergraduates?  Is asking for subscriptions from libraries the most appropriate method for supporting resources like PhilPapers?  Should libraries regularly factor funding for such services into collections budgets and how should libraries prioritize such funding with traditional journal and database subscriptions?  All are welcome to bring their opinions and their questions to the table.

If you are unfamiliar with PhilPapers or their call for subscriptions, here are a few links to more information:

Check out PhilPapers here: philpapers.org/

See PhilPapers public notice calling for institutional subscriptions here: philpapers.org/post/8146

For an overview of the response from librarians see this post from Wayne Bivens-Tatum, philosophy librarian at Princeton University: blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2014/04/a-last-bit-on-philpapers/

In rendering its judgment in the case of Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, the court was persuaded by arguments raised in the “digital humanities” amicus brief. The court expressly stated that the transformative uses of the digitized content, as highlighted in the brief, was the very definition of fair use. This endorsement of fair use in transformative digitization projects informs the articulation of strategies or best practices to employ when building new digital humanities projects. During this session, we will talk about some well-accepted fair use strategies and best practices for digital humanities projects — and maybe articulate some new ones!

When I began my own research project as a second-year undergraduate, I set out to map the world of Dante’s Commedia through the use of GIS software. However, I eventually left that project behind and pivoted into a more traditional topic and goal. Although I am pleased with how my undergraduate thesis turned out, I would like to talk about undergraduates and projects in digital humanities. As the bar continues to be raised for undergraduate research projects, I wonder how digital skills can enhance and shape future work. This discussion will likely yield more questions than I can predict—here are some of my own to get us started:

• What types of results do instructors consider digital humanities projects?
• What kinds of traditional disciplines and courses lend themselves to these projects?
• What type of skill set would students need in order to do these projects?
• What resources and support can ensure the success of undergraduate work in the digital humanities?
• How early is too early to get started?

Despite focusing this proposal on the undergraduate experience, I think the questions I have outlined could also be extended to other levels of students and instructors themselves.

What is TEI? What can you do with it? How can one get started with TEI editing? What avenues exist for publishing online with TEI encoded projects?

TEI (or the Text Encoding Initiative) is a way to prepare archival documents to be coded and searched electronically.   This session aims to explore TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) through an examination of two mark up projects:  the Charles Brockden Brown Electronic Archive and Scholarly Edition www.brockdenbrown.cah.ucf.edu/   and a digital edition of Virgil’s Aeneid (dissertation).

In addition to understanding how one can use an XML editing tool like <Oxygen> www.oxygenxml.com/, the session will illustrate the process for coding texts in basic structural ways along with more in-depth interpretive ways or tagging.

Time will also be spent exploring traditional publishing platforms such as XTF xtf.cdlib.org/  and more recent initiatives such TAPAS  www.northeastern.edu/nulab/tapas/    It will also examine the state of cutting edge XML tools such as Juxta Editions.