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/

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.

We will provide a short introduction to the software project called MassMine–an open source software, developed by academic/humanities researchers, for use within the academy. The software has been used to data mine Twitter and this data is being analyzed as the basis for a publication about trends, media ecology, and the concept of cybernetic “attention.” Our short presentation will explain how the software project resulted from limitations in currently available tools for conducting academic research on social media. The goal is for introduction to lead to engaging and innovative dialogue about the prospects for humanities software development, the ongoing task of understanding how/why data science/mining may present useful methods for research in the humanities, and/or how software development and data science may be integral to the research of “writing” (any form of inscription or multi-modal composition) as it occurs within an ever-changing and restructuring media ecology.

–Nicholas M. Van Horn will be co-presenting/collaborating remotely for this session

www.massmine.com