Assignment #2

While digging through all the assigned readings this week the general impression that I got was that the Humanities have a lot of catching up to do to get on board with the digital revolution. Because some professionals are still dragging their feet, several different ways of encouraging people to go digital have sprouted up.

One of the major ways that people are trying to attract more frequent users and participants is by keeping scholarship in the digital humanities open access. Open access basically means that users do not have to buy access to scholarly articles and materials. As it is mentioned in the article Digital Humanities in 2008, II: Scholarly Communication & Open Access open access promotes collaboration and the exchange of knowledge and research. Additionally, if research is hid behind a pay wall, people will be less likely to read the published material, which is a "sure path to invisibility in the digital age" for scholars who do not embrace open access.
Another way the scholars from the Humanities are being lured into participating in the digitization effort is through the outcroppings of grants and scholarship opportunities that are geared toward digital humanities projects. At the Virginia Center for Digital History in partnership with several Virginian school counties

have been awarded a Teaching American History grant by the U.S. Department of Education to provide professional development training for American and world history educators.

for 1 million dollars. Digital History is important to foster a global community and share and receive scholarship from around the world.

Both of these approaches are pushing more and more historians to join the digital revolution simply because of its convenience and the realization that history could be left behind. These opportunities are essential to making digital humanities easier to access and develop.