A new review article assesses the current state of the field Digital Humanities (DH) from the perspective of book history. This is an interesting angle to consider the state of DH, since so many DH projects deal with document digitization and dissemination.

If accessibility to information is the key goal, the field of DH seems to be doing very well indeed. Historical museums and other humanities institutions have embraced digital education and presentation initiatives. Many humanities conferences have adopted poster sessions and digital presentation of research, even if this often amounts to merely digital slideshows and graphs.

Less apparent in discussions of DH are explorations of digital methods for analyzing text and information in entirely new ways. The growing field of information management studies offers some models that humanities scholars may wish to consider. Perhaps a “state of the field” article such as this can help generate more sustained discussion of what we mean by Digital Humanities and how DH methods can be transformative for doing humanities research.

The citation for the article is: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and Sarah Werner, “Digital Scholarship and Digital Studies: The State of the Discipline” Book History 17 (2014) pp 406-458;

The review article in Book History is available online through a link on Sarah Werner’s blog, Wynken de Worde.

Humanities scholars and graduate students working with Digital Humanities methods will be interested in this piece, especially since DH is becoming increasingly important for graduate students in History and other humanities fields.