The following list is meant as a starting point to help brainstorm ideas for the research project (you may certainly use tools/methods that are not on this list). These chosen references, in particular, focus on a balance between ease of use and efficacy. Many of these tools, while powerful, do not have real-time web collaboration; in-person group meetings are encouraged since only one person can edit at a time.

For interest: a fuller reference list can be found on this digital humanities wiki. Note that some of these other references require software installation or payment.

On Campus Resources:

The Michelle Smith Collaboratory

On most Friday’s from 12pm-4pm, this space is open to all students working on digital humanities projects. Collaborate Friday’s is an open lab with staff on hand ready to help with tools such as Omeka and Neatline. Our Art History students, in particular, have created digital humanities projects using such tools.

UMD Workshops   UMD Libraries offers free in-person workshop tutorials on digital skills such as data visualization and using Geographic Information Systems. Make sure to register for any events you plan on attending.

Creating Digital Curations:

Omeka.net   The free trial account of this tool does not have a time limit, but users are limited to 500MB of storage and their access of tools. Users can still make a basic digital exhibit that is mostly text-based. Omeka is generally the go-to when creating digital curations and thus mentioned here, but a visually rich curation may be better suited in another web space.

UMD WordPress Blog   There are numerous free web development options such as Wix and Squarespace, but we recommend to make use of UMD’s licensing with WordPress (more security and no ads). Any UMD student can request a WordPress Blog here, and can easily customize pre-made templates to suit their needs (this class blog was made through UMD WordPress). Requests are usually fulfilled within the day.

Scalar   A website development platform especially for original research and investigative narratives; the learning curve is at least two hours for all available features.

 

Contributing to a Digital Project:

Harvard’s Digital Archives   This is a project of Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies that works as a participatory archive. Contributors go through a user account. Please see Prof. Baer and Prof. Mason for more information.

Nuclear Futures in the Post-Fukushima Age   This is the digital hub of Prof. Baer’s and Prof. Mason’s collaborative research and teaching project. Contributors will curate and submit artifacts as web pages and interactive tools. Please see Prof. Baer and Prof. Mason for more information.

Wikipedia   Signing up and creating/editing a Wikipedia article is easy to do, however, edits are susceptible to deletion if a Wikipedia administrator judges the article as non-noteworthy. If this happens, you may want to make edits through Wiki Education, a program specifically designed for students collaborating on Wiki projects.

Quick Tips:

• Wikipedia has many student guides and example references to make use of.
• Always change a Wikipedia article in small line edits at a time rather than copy and pasting large chunks. This allows fellow collaborators to easily see edits and modify anything.
• While you cannot see edits in real time (like in Google Docs), you can backtrack edits and restore previous versions.

Creating Virtual Spaces:

Sketchup   A 3D Modeling Software—refer to these Sketchup examples to see how virtual curations could be made. There is an initial learning curve of about an hour for someone new to Sketchup technology.

 

 

 

Artsteps   This tool simplifies Sketchup’s building process and allows you to quickly make a virtual space that especially works well for paintings and photography. Users cannot customize architectural components (like in Sketchup), but the tool allows a VR guided tour feature.

Presentational and Supplementary Tools

The following tools work best as supplementary pieces to a larger body of research.

Geography and Narrative:

Story Maps   A free and powerful tool with pre-made templates to make information rich and interactive maps or slides. The Hornbake library currently has a Story Maps exhibit you may see first-hand and interact with (on display in the Maryland Room Gallery in Hornbake Library North).

WorldMap   A simple tool to quickly make geographic map visuals that can be screenshot for pictures or as a url directing visitors to the curated map. This is useful when tools such as Google Maps are too cluttered with geographic information.

 KnightLab’s Storytelling Tools   These are open-source tools that simplify tools such as Story Maps for easier use. They include other tools such as a timeline building, sound-bite embedding, and panoramic virtual reality.

TimeMapper   Another simple but visually rich timeline creation tool that uses a Google Excel sheet for data input.

Adobe Spark   This tool is a sleeker way to present power point style material. Unlike Google Slides, this tool does not have collaborative editing, however, instead of relying on a presenter, it publishes the content as a website url for viewers to use.

Textual Collation and Analysis:

  Juxta Commons   This is a web-based version of Juxta that mainly allows users to compare the differences between two or more texts. This is useful if you are closely analyzing long pieces of texts with group members. Otherwise, however, a simple group Google Docs can work just fine.

Data Visualization:

  RawGraphs   An open-source web app that streamlines data into different choices of data visual models. The learning curve is about 30min. for making basic graphs but offers a visually stunning end product.

Creating Interactive Media:

Genial.ly   This tool allows you to easily create a variety of interactive visual aids such as this volcano image animation with user click action.