If you were to center an understanding about what DH is around one of these projects/sites, how would DH be defined (or redefined)?

In reviewing Northeastern University’s Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA), I was struck by how many of the themes used to present the project remained consistent with themes from our readings–and, how many of those themes were immediately made clear in the archive’s introduction and brought to life throughout the website.

If I were basing my understanding of the Digital Humanities (DH) on my exploration and experience of ECDA’s project and site, I would extract the following:

1. Open access: the site is designed to be accessed freely through the internet and intentionally designed with the user experience in mind. This is evidenced in the clean layout and clear navigational cues and explanations, as well as the incorporation of visuals and overall site and material organization.
2. A commitment to expansive and evolving curation: The ECDA describes their project as “re-archiving (remixing and reassembling) materials from existing archives as well as archiving new materials,” clearly indicating their ongoing work to evolve their materials, tools, and systems alongside the evolution of the project. There are several prompts and buttons throughout the site that encourage users to suggest materials and/or contact the organizers to get involved as a teacher or collaborator. Additionally, while the archive is currently document-heavy, their expansive approach to curating is also evidenced in their stated desire to incorporate and draw connections between a variety of material types.
3. Archiving and/or organizing information in a way that centers marginalized experiences: ECDA’s archival process is both intentionally sourcing new, previously unarchived materials, as well as citing contributors of narratives that have previously been (or are currently) incorrectly archived under others’ works. For example, they have been extracting slaves’ narratives from slave-owners’ publications in order to appropriately credit the material’s source and establish rightful ownership of that knowledge and perspective.
4. Offers pedagogical tools to make use of materials: Beyond enabling open access, ECDA also offers a growing section of pedagogical support for those looking to share the archive’s materials with others, especially in a classroom or educational setting. In the world of academia, where research is often riddled with jargon and predominantly presented in a long-form written format, the accompaniment of pedagogical guidance can help researchers engage a broader audience in understanding and actually using their work. Through this effort, ECDA remains in alignment with its stated objective while offering a solution for a classic challenge within academia. 

As mentioned, each of these themes were also present in our readings this week and can be found consistently across many of the sites we explored. While not an entirely comprehensive description, using ECDA’s archive to construct a definition of DH might sound something like: DH is characterized by principles of open access; expansive and evolving curation; archiving and/or organizing information in a way that centers marginalized experiences; and offering pedagogical tools to make use of the material.