The Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) was a research project of the
Royal Irish Academy and part of the Humanities Serving Irish Society (HSIS) initiative. It provided expertise and knowledge to digital research projects in the arts and humanities in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
. Through activities such as a DHO Summer School, practice-based workshops, seminars, symposia and consultations the DHO helped researchers in Ireland be aware of and stay current with developments in the creation, use, and preservation of digital resources. The DHO developed DRAPIer, a database of digital research projects in Ireland and DHO:Discovery, a portal to collections of Irish cultural artefacts.
Description
The DHO operated summer and spring schools, and week-long workshops for scholars undertaking digital projects.
It operated from 2008 through August 30, 2013.
The
Royal Irish Academy was awarded a three-year grant of about €3.5 million in late 2007 for Humanities Serving Irish Society.
The first DHO first director was Susan Schreibman from the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
.
In 2011 Schreibman joined the faculty of
Trinity College Dublin
, name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin
, motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin)
, motto_lang = la
, motto_English = It will last i ...
.
DRAPIer
DRAPIer (
backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
to Digital Research and Projects in Ireland) was an interactive database of
digital humanities
Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
projects created by third level institutions on the island of
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
.
DRAPIer was named after
Drapier's Letters
''Drapier's Letters'' is the collective name for a series of seven pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 by the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift, to arouse public opinion in Ireland against the imposition of a priv ...
- a series of seven pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 by Dean
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...
of
St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
The text used in creating the logo was taken from Drapier's Letters. The visualisation was created using a simple text analysis routine written within Processing, an open source programming environment. Each purple circle represents one unique word within the text. The circle's radius is directly proportional to the number of occurrences of the word within the text. Each circle has the same base colour but it is semi-transparent, so that when one is plotted on top of another it appears to be darker, representing overlapping networks from human to digital.
DHO:Discovery
In 2011 the DHO opened a Web site called DHO:Discovery, a gateway to Irish digital collections and resources, information and knowledge. It aimed to increase the visibility of resources at HSIS partner institutions and national cultural bodies, allowing users to easily browse and create connections between a variety of digital collections. Using display tools such as Exhibit and Google Charts, statistical data and visualisations not present on the collections' own sites are made available to the academic community.
See also
*
Royal Irish Academy
*
Digital Humanities
Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
*
Humanistic informatics
References
External links
DHO HomepageDHO:Discovery
{{authority control
Digital Humanities Centers
Educational organisations based in the Republic of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy