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How to Begin a Digital Humanities Project for Victorianists

Brainstorming, building, and deploying a Digital Humanities (DH) project is an exciting process. Although several resources defining the growing field of DH already exist (we recommend Lisa Spiro's "Getting Started in Digital Humanities"), this page offers resources targeted specifically at nineteenth-century scholars interested in learning more about DH. Before beginning any project you should ask yourself a few preliminary questions.

Questions to answer before beginning a DH project

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What kind of primary materials are you working with?

Archival materials? A special collection? A manuscript? Two- or three-dimensional objects? Print text? Digital or digitized text? Sound recordings? Biographical data? etc. (If you are looking for inspiration for your primary materials we suggest checking out these projects)

Are there any restrictions on their use or access?

Consider copyright and ownership, licensing, and other factors that might restrict access. See copyright law in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia

How big is the corpus of primary materials?

Scale is an essential factor when assessing what method(s) and model(s) you want to implement. For example, methods such as topic modelling and image analytics are useful for studying medium to large corpora; text encoding in TEI XML is great for working with a relatively small corpus (a text or limited collection of texts); network analysis can be used at multiple scales.

What do you want to do with these materials?

What research questions do you want to ask and answer with this project? Is your work exploratory or argumentative? How do you want to explore your materials; what kind of argument do you want to make about them? What digital models and methods are suited to this work? Look at existing digital projects for a sense of the different models used to undertake project-based digital scholarship (see Affiliated Projects for examples).

Who do you want to build this project for?

Your students or colleagues? Your department, library, or institution? Will the final project be private, published with limited access, or open-access and public? Will it be geared to an academic audience or a public one?

What support will you need to create your project?

Financial? Technical? Do you anticipate needing ongoing support? Do your options for financial and/or technical support have a limited term?

Do you envision your project fitting into a digital knowledge ecosystem in the long term? How?

How will it remain visible and accessible to others, how will it be sustained by you or others? Will it continue to grow and change? Will it have a limited life span? If you know support will be limited but you want your project to leave a long-term legacy online, you may want to consider a minimalist approach.

Who can help you? (colleagues, professional organization, your institution's library)

Funding and technical support aside, who might you collaborate or consult with as you develop your project? Collaborators and consultants might include fellow students or faculty; a supervisor or mentor; your institution’s digital librarian; scholars who have done similar projects and are willing to offer advice; resources ranging from peer-reviewed books to blog posts and Twitter threads.

Why do you need DH? Can what you'd like to do be accomplished without DH tools?

Are there other projects (not necessarily Victorianist) that do something similar to what you'd like to do? Have you considered reaching out to the developers of those projects to ask their advice about how you might get started on yours?

Now that you have decided on your project and identified constraints, it's time to expand your knowledge base. Remember, Digital Humanities projects never happen in vacuum. Below are several resources and ideas to help you get started with building your own project.

Digital Humanities as Critical Practice, Not Just Coding

DH practice as a whole has evolved from seeing DH as a coding-led endeavor, to a kind of critical endeavor that combines theory (including vibrant cultural critique), praxis, and pedagogy. One way into DH is to start with key debates in the field, to understand the rich cultural critique that individuals are now bringing to DH practice, and to consider how such interventions might be brought over to Victorian studies. Here are some places to start:

Inspiring Projects

Some DH projects that aren't Victorianist, but show a variety of possibilities for critical converations and research.

Can I Participate in DH Without Coding?

There are many ways to join the DH community with little to no programming knowledge. For instance, the coding work is done for you when you start a WordPress blog or create a COVE edition. You might also consider substituting a Twitter assignment for a more traditional journaling in your pedagogy. On a more theoretical level the minimal computing movement provides ways of thinking about DH that can exist beyond a robust knowledge of computational principles. For discussion of these ideas see:

However, if your apprehension about coding has more to do with the perceived difficulty than a conscious choice, we recommend taking advantage of the numerous resources available to learn these skills. You will likely find that online and in-person courses make programming not only accessible, but also fun.

Where to Learn DH Skills

Online Workshops, Bootcamps, & Certificates

The least expensive and most accessible way to learn programming skills is through online courses. We recommend beginning with these types of courses to achieve a base-line understanding of the technology you will use in your project. In the Learn To Code section below we suggest several skills to build.

In-Person Workshops, Bootcamps, & Certificates

One great, but often expensive, way to learn about DH techniques, best-practices, technology more broadly is in a group setting with an expert instructor. If team learning appeals to you, below you will find several suggested DH Workshops, Bootcamps, & Certificate programs.

Commercial Bootcamps

Although often more costly than exclusively DH workshops, commercial bootcamps offer professional grade technology instruction.

Learn to Code

Scholars agree that learning at least a little coding is essential to fully participating in the field of DH. Although it seems daunting, there are many, many resources to help you learn this skill set. At minimum, we recommend learning HTML and CSS, before moving on to JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and R. Many of these resources are not aimed at humanists. If you are interested in resources written exclusively for academics, Scott Weingart has collected a comprehensive list of resources on the subject of "Teaching Yourself to Code in DH."

Grants

It's never too early to start thinking about funding your DH project. Luckily, there are a number of organizations that offer grants for DH projects. In addition to querying internal funding sources at your institution, the following sites and organizations are good resources for discovering and applying for grants.

Canada

United Kingdom

Austalia

This resource is one of many on the subject of getting started with DH. You may also want to review the materials provided on Simon Appleford and Jennifer Guiliano's Development for the Digital Humanities as well as the Intro to Digital Humanities: Concepts, Methods, and Tutorials for Students and Instructors, created by UCLA's Center for Digital Humanities.