Other Disciplines with A Relationship to The Digital Humanities
In addition to the areas discussed here, there are other scholarly fields that have a close relationship to the digital humanities.
Library and Information Science
There are links and synergies between Library and Information Science (LIS) and the digital humanities. LIS is defined as: “the discipline which studies the communication chain of recorded information, underlying the practice of librarianship, information management and similar professions” (Robinson et al., 2015). Although it is a separate discipline, (LIS) shares overlapping concerns with DH.
Both LIS and the digital humanities have service functions. The original purpose LIS was to support library and information services. Although the digital humanities are a (sub-)discipline, it emerged from humanities computing, which was considered to be a service, or ancillary, discipline to the humanities.
Additionally, the objects of interest for both disciplines are recorded information and the documents that encapsulate recorded knowledge. Areas of overlapping concern and interest include searching and retrieval, digital archives, metadata, open access, curation methods, digitization and preservation strategies, human-computer interaction and user interfaces, cultural heritage, information visualization, Big Data, and advanced statistical and analysis techniques, including machine learning (Robinson et al., 2015).
To a large degree, digital humanities fields depend on library services, and library science supports digital humanities scholarship, which is often conducted within libraries, archives, museums, and other collection institutions. Much digital humanities work is performed in collaboration with, libraries, and the digital humanities also contributes to the improvement and enhancement of library services (Robinson et al., 2015).
LIS and digital humanities are often situated within the academic units. There is cross-fertilization in educational programs in LIS and digital humanities, where the two fields often include each other’s material, tools, and research methods. LIS accrediting and professional bodies in, for example, the United Kingdom, include digital humanities skills as part of their requirements. LIS and digital humanities also complement each other in pedagogy, where LIS is concerned with information literacy, and the development and utilization of digital methods and tools are characteristics of digital humanities literacy (Robinson et al., 2015).
LIS and digital humanities are both concerned with documentation and recorded information, particularly within the context of digital libraries and digital archives. The two areas are both concerned with resource creation, search and retrieval, metadata, linked data, curation, user interaction, and preservation, among others. In dissemination of scholarship, digital humanities and LIS each have their own journals and forums. However, LIS resources increasingly include digital humanities -related research and methods, LIS-related methods and research appear less frequently in the digital humanities literature, and usually involve library- digital humanities interactions (Robinson et al., 2015).
Software Studies
Software studies is among the new, emerging interdisciplinary fields of study with a close relationship to the digital humanities. Arising in the early years of the twenty-first century, this field treats the cultural and societal impacts of software systems. It is distinct from computational techniques and the digital tools that are the products, or artifacts, of code, focusing instead on software as text, specifically investigating source code, or code written in programming languages that are ultimately converted to (compiled into) an executable program that runs on computer hardware to perform a task. Software studies also investigates how software is integrated into culture and society. Consequently, software studies reside at the interface of the humanities, media theory, the arts – especially new media art, the social sciences, and computer science.
The object of software studies is computer code but extended beyond merely technical aspects or end products of software. The field includes cultural criticism that investigates how culture is encapsulated within code and the algorithms that are implemented with code (Dodge et al., 2009). Computer scientist and new media theorist Lev Manovich writes in his highly cited book Software Takes Command: “I think that Software Studies has to investigate both the role of software in forming contemporary culture, and cultural, social, and economic forces that are shaping development of software itself” (Manovich, 2013).
Furthermore, software code and applications themselves can be considered as works of scholarship. Software is scholarship to the extent that its functionality is derived from scholarly research, that software is employed to develop scholarship, or that software serves as communication mechanism for scholarly ideas. Software applications overcome many of the limitations of standard written documents, and are expressible in text, graphics, and, importantly, human-computer interaction. Consequently, software greatly improves communication and dissemination of scholarly knowledge and arguments (Shadab, 2020).
New Media Studies
New Media Studies, sometimes considered as a subfield of journalism, is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of computer science, the arts, and the humanities. It focuses on research on the interaction of computational technology on media, including traditional media, and the incorporation of media into “cyberspace”. It also addresses how this interaction can result in new forms of expression, as encapsulated by one of the foundational expressions of media theory by Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980), “The medium is the message”. “New media” includes computer simulations, music services, social media networks, virtual worlds – including virtual reality (completely computer-generated reality and simulations) and augmented reality (virtual reality combined with or overlaid onto the physical, material world), computer games, and other computationally generated and disseminated resources (Jones, 2016). Although not traditionally considered as media, New Media includes media which emerged from the Internet, including websites, weblogs or web logs (blogs), user comments on online forums, and even email. A current trend in the digital humanities is the turn to new media, including Big Data, large text corpora, maps and geographic information systems (GIS), and work with born digital and new media resources (Jones, 2016).
New media are digital. That is, they are represented in the binary code, in contrast to traditional media, which have an analog and physical representation. New media objects consist of the 0s and 1s that can be manipulated computationally and algorithmically. Any kind of media that can be represented digitally or delivered digitally can be considered as new media. For instance, to a reader, a blog post consists of words combined in some coherent manner. However, on the web, it consists of formatted codes, usually encoded in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). These codes, in turn, are represented with the more basic binary code of 0s and 1s. The combination of these binary digits results in the representation of a character, using a standard character encoding scheme such as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) or Unicode (a standardized system of text encoding that can represent characters in most written languages). Music delivered over a streaming service is represented through the frequencies of the pitches of sound. Computer generated models consist of 3D models, audio (consisting of digitized frequencies), graphics (algorithmically transformed 3D geometry) and other media, all encoded in the binary code.
New media are also modular. That is, they are comprised of several distinct parts. In a simple example, digital video consists of multiple still images, or frames, that are presented at a specific rate. For instance, a video playback rate or frame rate of 60 Hz (Hertz), indicates that 60 new frames are displayed per second. Each individual frame, or image, is a 2D matrix, with each element of the matrix denoting the colour of one individual picture element, or pixel. Images require some type of header, or metadata describing the image, such as the number of rows and columns, the colour map describing how the colours are represented, and other information. The image, image set, or video may also contain the colour map. In video, information about the frame rate is also stored. Computer generated worlds also contain many individual components, such as the 3D models that comprise it, graphics information, geometry, and other information. Consequently, these digital constructs consist of different, modular components. In computational terminology, they are digital objects that contain data, as well as algorithmic information that is used to present the data to the user. For instance, a digital image, as just described, requires not only 2D matrix data and colour map information, but also an algorithm to read the data, process the colours, and to present the data to an output device, such as a screen. For video playback, an algorithm is executed to display the individual frames at the correct frame rate, and to keep track of the time elapsed between each frame so that the playback is natural. Although the algorithms themselves may not be part of the object, the object contains code which algorithms use to render, or present the object to the user.
New Media are automated. Their generation, maintenance, and presentation involve both humans and computers. Humans are the prime creators of New Media objects, just as artists create works of art and composers and songwriters compose music. However, in New Media, digital tools are part of the process. Computer graphics, for instance, are employed in 3D virtual worlds, but the process of transforming 3D geometry specified by a human to a representation that is algorithmically manipulatable and subsequently rendered to the user is done through computational methods and realized on a computer.
New Media, in contrast with traditional media, are variable. They consist of multiple versions, where new versions replace older versions. Copies are also made of both current and older versions.
New Media are also “transcoded”, to use Manovich’s term. This transcoding emphasizes the cultural dimensions of new media and the study of New Media. Media are combined together, and cannot be isolated from each other, even with the well-understood categories of audio, video, images, and text, and computer-enabled categories such as hardware, software, human-computer interface, and networks. Consequently, “pure media” do not exist, and therefore each media object is historically situated, and its cultural context becomes important (Sayers, 2018). As University of Victoria New Media scholar Jentery Sayers writes: “We could therefore propose that the study of media is the study of entanglements. How and under what assumptions is sound entwined with image? Data with design? Network with node? Old with new? Subject with object? Aesthetics with politics?” (Sayers, 2018).
Games Studies
Game Studies and alternative reality games are often associated with the digital humanities. Video (computer) games are important new media objects that are exercise a decisive cultural influence. Although video games, as new media objects, are very different from traditional textual sources that have been the basic data of humanities computing and the digital humanities, they are significant cultural expressions that merit investigation. As a discipline that employs digital tools and techniques and studies digital objects, the digital humanities can make substantial contributions to this endeavour (Jones, 2016). Conversely, video games can also contribute to digital humanities scholarship. Video games are complex, sophisticated computational systems incorporating many leading-edge algorithms. According to University of South Florida digital humanities scholar Steven E. Jones, video games are “…systems that model in particular ways the general dynamics of the eversion. Games are designed to structure fluid relationships, between digital data and the game world, on the one hand, and between digital data and the player in the physical world, on the other hand” (Jones, 2016).
Additionally, the simulation and interactivity of games themselves suggest new lines of scholarly inquiry (Coltrain & Ramsay, 2019). Because interactivity is one of the most defining characteristics of computer games, these games allow the player to choose among many options and to explore a variety of interpretations crafted by the game designer. In this way, computer games are “explorable environments”, encouraging players to take their own approaches to solving problems, with the outcomes of this exploration depending on the decisions and actions taken by the player. Such exploration would depend on the player’s own decisions. These exploration-based games provide “compelling examples of intentionally designed user agency” (Coltrain & Ramsay, 2019).