Digital Humanities and Copyright

Helle Porsdam

Background

Early work in Digital Humanities (DH), was heavily influenced or even led by the technology. But with the second wave of DH, the visions and the initiatives are coming from within the humanities. The key words are qualitative, interpretive, experiential, emotive, and generative and digital toolkits are being developed and used in the service of the Humanities’ core methodological strengths: attention to complexity, medium specificity, historical context, analytical depth, critique and interpretation.

Second-wave DH is involves making as well as curating. It will involve innovations such as iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. Pioneering efforts began many years ago but many academics in the humanities remain either unaware of, or highly sceptical about, what DH has to offer.

Digitisation will increasingly involve humanities scholars in digital culture production, dissemination, access, and ownership. For DH -- as for the emerging digital culture as a whole -- one of the biggest contemporary challenges is intellectual property (IP) regimes which have been protecting the commercial investments in the products of creativity and innovation for centuries, but which were almost entirely crafted in a pre-digital age. From being an area of interest mainly to big companies and lawyers, there, IP today concerns us all. It will also be an area of increasing importance for workers in DH.

Project Outline

As the prime aim of the Fellowship is to produce a document that will be widely disseminated in various media, much of my time will be spent in the traditional activities of project research – reading, reflection, discussion and writing. However, the outputs I produce will be influenced and stimulated by a two-day, externally-funded expert meeting on DH and copyright which I will be hosting in Wolfson College on November 22-23, 2011 under the title “Digital Humanities – who owns what (and why should we care)?”

Project aims and objectives

The aim of the project is a to produce a readable, authoritative and up-to-date briefing document aimed at scholars in the Humanities which achieves the following objectives:

• Explains in clear, economical terms what the Digital Humanities (DH) are
• Outlines what the role(s) of DH are likely to be in teaching and research
• Surveys the likely impact(s) of DH on scholarly publishing
• Identifies and discusses what the main Intellectual Property issues are likely to be in relation to DH.