I’m very happy to announce Day of DH 2013.

Hosted this year by Michigan State University’s MATRIX: The Center for the Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, a Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities (Day of DH) is an open community publication project that brings together scholars interested in the digital humanities from around the world to document what they do on one day. This year, Day of DH will take place on April 8th. An initiative of CenterNet, the goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together a picture of the participant’s activities on the day which answers the question, “Just what do digital humanists really do?” Participants document their day through photographs and text, all of which is published on a community online platform (which, for this year, lives at dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu – this website!). Both during and after the day, people are encouraged to read and comment on their fellow participant’s posts. Eventually, all the data will be grouped together, undergo some light semantic editing, and released for others to study. We hope that, beyond the original online publication, the raw data will be of use to those interested in further visualization or digital community ethnographic research.

Anyone who considers themselves as being part of the Digital Humanities community (by any definition) is invited to participate, write, share, and comment.

Interested in participating? Here is what you need to do:

Create a Day of DH 2013 account by registering. Doing this creates a personal Day of DH blog for you (which is where you’ll be documenting your day’s activities). When you register for an account, fill out the “How do you define DH” field – these definitions will live on the How Do You Define DH section of the Day of DH 2013 Website (this website!). Also, be sure you select the “Yes, I’d like to create a new site” check box. Once you do this, you’ll be able to choose your Day of DH 2013 site title and URL. You also need to choose “Yes” for the “I would like my site to appear in search engines, and in public listings around this network” option – otherwise your posts will not show up in the Day of DH 2013 activity stream Once your account has been approved, write a first “About Me” blog entry where you describe who you are and what you do. You can do this before April 8 as a way of learning the version of WordPress we use. Alternatively, you can create a specific About Me page on your Day of DH 2013 site. Make sure you have a digital camera (or other photo capturing device) so you can post pictures of your day. However, be conscious of copyright issues when documenting your activities (i.e. don’t post pictures of children!).

When the big day (of DH) comes around (April 8th), there are many ways you can follow along (in addition to documenting your day’s activities on your Day of DH 2013 blog):

In your browser, you can see all Day of DH 2013 blogging activity on the activity page.

Day of DH 2013 blogging activity on the activity page. In an RSS reader (i.e. newsreader), there is also a feed of of Day of DH activity.

On Twitter, follow discussion at #DayofDH and feel free to join in.

Participants should also check out past Day of DH events (which were hosted and organized by Canadian Institute for Reseach Computing in the Arts at the University of Alberta): 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. The previous hosts of Day of DH also put together a wonderful wiki with all sorts of helpful information for Day of DH participants – which participants should also take the time to read.

Day of DH 2013 is generously supported by the following kind folks at Michigan State University:

For more details, mosey on over to the About Day of DH page at your leisure.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Musings? Requests for the site? Simply comment on this post.