Wednesday, February 2, 2011

THATCamp Virginia December 2010

Last December, I attended THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) which was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is a small informal gathering of humanities scholars, graduate students, librarians, archivists, programmers, developers and others (those interested in digital humanities) where attendees discussed and shared ideas about their projects, particularly with regard to the application of technology to the field of humanities. The fun part of attending this camp is that everyone gets an opportunity to participate and there were around 75 participants.

As THATCamp comprises of humanities scholars and graduate students, it is an excellent chance for librarians and archivists to learn about these projects and also to find out ways in which they can effectively serve user needs. There were several interesting sessions and information about these are available at http://virginia2010.thatcamp.org

There was also a session on the use of Omeka and worpdress for digital history projects that was very interesting. Links to some of the digital history projects are available on Dr. Jeffrey McClurken's website. He also wrote an article about teaching with Omeka in the Chronicle last August.

- Chella Vaidyanathan