Now featuring letters that may very well be fake!

Dear DO,
I’m quite familiar with the fantastic work CDH does during the week. However, what’s life like for a CDH member on a weekend? Do you relax or enjoy time with your families just like us real people? Are you robots that simply power down?
Sincerely,
Curious Jorge from New York

Dear Curious,

We at CDH actually spend weekends FIGHTING CANCER. Well, at least on the weekend of April 19th-20th this year, at the annual Relay for Life at UCLA. Relay for Life is a tag team walk-a-thon-style fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, and this year CDH has formed a team of around ten staff and family members. The UCLA event takes place in Drake Stadium over 24 hours (Saturday 12PM - Sunday 12PM), during which we’ll have at least one team member on the track the entire time. Each team member is encouraged to get donations and can set their own goal. The team goal is currently set at $1,000, and is 47% complete with about half a month left until the event.

To get the inside scoop, join us– in a display of narcissism and journalistic excellence– for an interview with the team captain himself, Frank Lee.

DO: Frank, what inspired you to create a team and get CDH involved in this event?
Frank: I first heard of the event when my friends in the community service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega formed a team. This year I was going to join their team, but figured I’d be able to raise more funds than alone by starting my own team. CDH people have always been a friendly, social, and socially conscious bunch, so I thought they also would be eager to take part in the event. It was fantastic that we’ve got people who jumped right on board. Although this is the first group philanthropic event I know of, in the past years Linda Holmes (CDH Labs Manager) put together softball practices and competitions against the other computer consortiums, so team socials/exercise isn’t a new concept to us.

The Digital Odyssey also asked other team members why they joined the team and this is what they had to say:

“My intention when I initially offered to join the team was to have some fun and support CDH. Then I received a phone call from a good friend, during her annual mammogram the doctors found an cancerous lump in her breast and she said she was scheduled for surgery in a week. I could not believe it, It was out of the blue, we just had dinner the previous week and all was fine… The Relay for Life event is more to me now and I feel like walking for somebody close and for everyone battling this disease… I really hope to raise money and awareness for this cause.” - Linda Holmes

You’re more than welcome to CLICK HERE and make a donation for the team (or join the team)!

The following announcement came in from Karin Armstrong at the University of Victoria.

Announcing the 2008 Digital Humanities Summer Institute

University of Victoria, May 26-30, 2008

http://www.dhsi.org

* Scholarships

We are pleased to announce that funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, and other partners, makes possible the
offering of a limited number of scholarship-subsidized spots in the 2008 Summer Institute. These will be awarded to scholars in the
digital humanities, both students and professionals. The application deadline is March 15th. Applicants will be informed of their success
before March 30th. The application form is available on line at: http://www.dhsi.org/home/scholarships.
Scholarships will be awarded first to those coming to the institute for the first time, then to returning participants.

* Additional ACH Travel Bursary

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (http://www.ach.org) is offering several bursaries to assist graduate students by defraying travel and lodging costs. You may apply for the this bursary at the same time as for Institute scholarships by indicating on the scholarship application form that you are a graduate student member of the ACH and would like to be considered for the ACH bursary.

What does environmentally-friendly computer use have to do with baby otters? Keep reading and you’ll find out.

In recent years, there have been two trends: Increasing purchases and usage of computers and gadgets, and increasing environmental awareness and action. Apply the latter to the former and you get the rise of green computing.

“Green computing? Is that to imply that my current computing is… not green?” As beneficial as technology is today, it also damages the environment during the three phases of its existence: Manufacturing, usage, and disposal. There are two primary aspects of environmental damage that consumers and businesses are focusing on: The production of greenhouse gases from energy consumption, and toxic air and water pollution from manufacturing and disposal.

How can we help? There are many green decisions we can make beginning from when we’re thinking about getting a new computer until when we’re getting rid of that computer.

Purchasing

When shopping for a new computer, there are a couple signs that basically say “officially green”.

• Look for Energy Star 4.0 compliance
  If equipment has the “Energy Star” label, it means it conforms to energy efficiency specifications set by the US EPA. A description from their website states, “Qualified products must now meet energy use guidelines in three distinct operating modes: standby, sleep mode, and while computers are being used. This approach ensures energy savings when a computer is active and performing a range of tasks, as well as when standing by. Newly qualified computers must also include a more efficient internal power supply.” These specifications were updated in 2007 (version 4.0) to be more stringent than past versions.
• Look for RoHS compliance
  The RoHS Directive bans the sale in the UK of electronic goods that contain more than agreed levels of certain toxic substances. How does that affect consumers outside the UK? Well, if a manufacturer wants to sell to the UK market, instead of making an RoHS-complaint and an RoHS-non-compliant version of their products, they might as well make just the RoHS-compliant version to sell to the UK and outside. Thus, you’ll be finding RoHS-compliant components in the US thanks to the UK.

You can also prevent the creation of e-waste by obtaining a used computer if you feel the environmental benefits outweigh the drawbacks (such as older technology and no warranty).

Usage

An average computer, including monitor, consumes 100-300 watts. While we can encourage manufacturers to produce greener products, we have much more control over the energy consumption of products through the way we use them. The following chart illustrates this concept.

Ideally, we would power off our computers the moment we stop using them, but we can have a balance between low energy consumption and practicality.

• Configure your computer’s power management settings.
  You can set your computer, if it’s not set already, to automatically turn off unused components like the monitor and hard drive after they’ve been idle for a certain time. You can also put the computer on a timer to…
• Suspend, sleep, or hibernate
  We might avoid turning off our computers because they take a while to boot back up or we’re reluctant to close our work and have to reopen everything later. Both these obstacles can be reduced or avoided by using the suspend, sleep, or hibernate function on your computer instead of completely powering off. There are some distinctions between the three modes and they still consume a trickle of power, but the bottom line is they consume much less power than the computer being on.

Outside of the environmental impacts, consumers and businesses gain by spending less money on energy.

Disposal

Since electronics often contain toxic metals and substances, it’s often illegal to toss old electronics away with the rest of your trash, where the substances are in danger of polluting water sources. Luckily, we have many other options that are becoming more convenient.

• Donate the equipment if it’s still usable
  See if a friend or local non-profit organization or school would like your old computer. You can also lookup thrift shops and donation and recycling sites at www.earth911.org.
• Recycle unusable items
  Lookup local recycling centers at www.earth911.org. You can also research if your community organizes e-waste recycling drives/pickup.
• Use manufacturer recycling programs
  An increasing number of computer manufacturers now offer ways for you to send your old computer to them for recycling. For example, Dell’s recycling program will recycle any Dell-brand product for free or recycle other-brand products for free with a Dell purchase.
• Recycle dead batteries
  Most electronics stores, including cell phone retailers, accept depleted batteries for recycling.

In addition, the decisions of businesses and organizations have a greatly magnified environmental impact because of the sheer number of computers they use. These organizations can help the environment by adopting greener purchasing and disposal procedures and computer use policies, and by educating users.

To sum it up without getting too technical, the answer to my initial question is “nothing”.

From Tim Stowell, Dean of Humanities

Monday, January 14, 2008

Dear Colleagues:

I regret to inform you that Joseph Vaughan, the Director of UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities, has accepted the position of Chief Information Officer and Director of Computer Information Services at Harvey Mudd College, one of the Claremont Colleges, with a unique liberal arts focus that incorporates majors in mathematics, science and engineering.

Joseph’s affiliation with UCLA started in 1985 when he joined the Department of Philosophy as a graduate student. In 1994, Joseph’s affiliation shifted to a managerial role, and he held two successive managerial positions within Dodd Humanities. In 2001, Joseph took over the management of the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH), then called the Humanities Computing Facility. This unit was in disarray when Joseph took charge, and could at best provide basic computing support for the faculty and staff in the Division. Under Joseph’s strong leadership, the Center for Digital Humanities began to flourish. Not only did he ensure that basic infrastructure and support were provided in an effective manner ; he also oversaw a broadening of its mission, providing an extensive array of technological solutions in support of both instruction and research. Joseph has also been very successful in appointing skilled and highly motivated managers and staff members; CDH continues to draw its strength from this collective pool of talent.

In recent years, Joseph has played a key role in new initiatives in the faculty research arena, such as the digital humanities fellowship program (offered in collaboration with the UCLA Library). Joseph has also established partnerships across the campus, including the current
partnership between CDH and Academic Technology Services (ATS). More
generally, Joseph has positioned CDH as a major player in, and contributor to, campus-wide initiatives.

Beyond these many professional contributions, Joseph has always brought an approachable and friendly demeanor, active intellect and positive energy to his position. While I am very sad to see Joseph leave UCLA, I am very grateful to him for what he has accomplished in transforming CDH into the premier center that it is today. On a personal level, I am also very happy for Joseph as he takes on this new challenge. I am sure you will join me in wishing him all the best.

Joseph’s last day is February 15th. I am currently working with Assistant Dean Reem Hanna-Harwell on an interim plan for the CDH directorship. We will need to consult with the CDH managers and various faculty that have been heavily engaged in Center activities.

I will provide an update in the coming weeks, once more information is available.

Sincerely,

Tim Stowell
Dean of Humanities

From the Humanist listserv:

Monday Dec 17, 2005

Academic Commons today released its December 2007 special issue
devoted to CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE & THE LIBERAL ARTS
(www.academiccommons.org/).
Edited by David L. Green (Principal at Knowledge Culture), the issue
is dedicated to the memory of Roy Rosenzweig (1950-2007), an
extraordinary historian who inspired a generation of fellow
historians and others working at the intersection of the humanities
and new technologies (http://thanksroy.org/).

Table of Contents: http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/announcement/table-of-contents

*Introduction*
- David L. Green, “A Cyberinfrastructure for Us All.”

*Humanities Cyberinfrastructure*
- Gary Wells, “The (Uncommon) Challenge of the Cultural
Commonwealth” (Review)
- Kevin Guthrie, “Beyond the ACLS Report: An Interview with John
Unsworth.”  (Interview)

*Beyond the Two Cultures*
- Michael Lesk, “From Data to Wisdom: Humanities Research and
Online Content.” (Essay)
- Sayeed Choudhury and Timothy Stinson, “The Virtual Observatory
and the Roman de la Rose:
Unexpected Relationships and the Collaborative
Imperative.” (Essay)

*Cyberscholarship*
- Gregory Crane, “‘Building the Infrastructure for
Cyberscholarship’.” (Review)
- Janet Murray, “Cyberinfrastructure as Cognitive Scaffolding:
The Role of Genre Creation
in Knowledge Making.” (Essay)
- Amelia Carr, Guy Hedreen, and Dana Leibsohn,
“Cyberinfrastructure and the Future of
Art History.”  (Roundtable Discussion)

*Institutional Change: Colleges and Museums*
- David Green, “Leveraging Institutional Change: An Interview with
James J. O’Donnell.” (Interview)
- David Green, “Museums, Cataloging & Content Infrastructure:
An Interview with Kenneth Hamma.” (Interview)
- John Weber, “College Museums in a Networked Era–Two
Propositions.” (Essay)

*Institutional Change: Colleges and Museums*
- Francis Starr, “Deploying Cyberinfrastructure for the Sciences at
Liberal Arts Colleges.” (Essay)
- Todd Kelley, “Managed Cyber Services as a Cyberinfrastructure
Strategy for Smaller Institutions of Higher Education.” (Essay)
- Matthew Coté, “The Sciences, Cyberinfrastructure and the
Liberal Arts:
The Case of the Bates College Imaging Center.” (Essay)

*Profiles*
Descriptions of some key organizations and networks whose missions
include leveraging cyberinfrastructure.
- Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (AHDO)
- American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
- ARTstor
- Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
- Cyberinfrastructure Partnership (CIP) & Cyberinfrastructure
Technology Watch
- Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced
Collaboratory (HASTAC)
- CenterNet
- Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
- Ithaka
- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- NITLE
- Open Content Alliance
- Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research
(SEASR)

For quite some time, Nancy Ezer (Lecturer, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) has been working with Ted Liu (CDH’s foreign languages instructional technology coordinator) to develop an online tool to teach Hebrew grammar. Nancy had been using a workbook for quite some time, and even had an electronic version of it, but it was trapped on old disks in a format that we could no longer use (beware the passing of technology!).

She submitted a project proposal to CDH in 2005, which included the possibility of outsourcing some of the work to a company. We decided to take advantage of the functionality available in Course Management systems in order to build the grammar tool. At the time, we were reviewing Sakai, but when it became clear that the CCLE would be based on Moodle, we decided to use it instead.

Nancy and Ted collaborated very closely, and Ted found ways to get the quiz tool to work with the many challenges that the Hebrew Workbook presented.

On December 5, Nancy and Ted talked about and demonstrated the quiz tool at a presentation in the CDH PC Lab. Shortly afterwards, our colleagues in OID picked up the item for their “tools for teaching” series. See http://tinyurl.com/3xao8x

The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, Ireland has announced the appointment of Dr. Susan Schreibman as Director of the newly created Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO). Dr. Schreibman will join the Academy from the University of Maryland, where she is currently Assistant Dean and Head of Digital Collections and Research.

The DHO is a new entity, created to coordinate Digital Humanities initiatives throughout Ireland.

See http://www.dho.ie/index.html

The Library will host a presentation on ArtStor next week (Friday Oct 19, 1pm). ArtStor is a collection of digital images, licensed by the UCLA library. It now has over 1/2 million images which can be accessed by faculty, students and staff.

The collections continue to grow. The most recent additions include Classical Antiquity lantern slides from Bryn Mawr College and Community Murals from Timothy Drescher.

To learn more about next week’s presentation, please take a look at the attached invitation ->>>artstor.pdf

The ARTstor website is www.artstor.org

Dean Stowell announced a search for a faculty member in Digital Humanities:

From: “Stowell, Tim” <TStowell@college.ucla.edu>
To: chairs.humnet@lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Digital Humanities Search
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:22:50 -0700

Dear Colleagues:

I have authorized an open-rank ladder faculty search this year in the field
of Digital Humanities. UCLA already has one of the most vibrant intellectual
communities of scholars engaging in innovative research and teaching in this
area, and one of our new Mellon programs is helping to foster ties among
this new community of scholars, together with those working in media
studies; http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/ for further information.
This open-rank search will allow us to strengthen our faculty base and
further increase our visibility in this area.

Given that digital and media studies span the full spectrum of fields in the
humanities, no home department has been designated for this search. If the
search results in a viable candidate, the home department(s) will need to be
determined based on the academic background of the successful candidate. For
this reason, and in order to cast the widest web possible, the search
advertisement has been published in a variety of listings and journals
across the humanities disciplines, in addition to the Chronicle and the main
digital humanities postings.

The text of the job advertisement is appended below, at the end of this
message. The application deadline is November 20, 2007. Please feel free to
forward the text of the ad to faculty members of your department and to
colleagues at other universities in your respective fields.

I have appointed an interdisciplinary search committee, chaired by Todd
Presner, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Chair of the CDH
Faculty Advisory Committee. Other members of the committee are Ali Behdad
(English/Comparative Literature), Steven Nelson (Art History), Joseph
Vaughan (Center for Digital Humanities), Willeke Wendrich (Near Eastern
Languages & Cultures) and Maite de Zubiaurre (Spanish & Portuguese).

The search committee is charged initially with recommending to me a short
list of candidates. Once the short list has been determined, the search
committee will be expanded to incorporate the relevant department chairs as
necessary, so that the likely home departments are included in the process
early on, and in a fully consultative manner. After the candidates have
visited the campus early in the Winter quarter, the search committee will
make a final recommendation to me regarding the appointment of a particular
candidate. This appointment will have to be made within one (or more) of our
existing departments, and will therefore have to be approved in a formal
vote by the faculty of the department(s) in question.

If you have further questions about this search, please don’t hesitate to
speak to me or consult with Todd Presner (presner@humnet.ucla.edu).

Tim Stowell
Dean of Humanities
==================

UCLA College - Division of Humanities - Digital Humanities

The University of California, Los Angeles, invites applications for an
open-rank faculty position in Digital Humanities beginning July 1, 2008.
Specializations may include, but are not limited to: new media and
cultural/literary studies, computational sciences and culture, globalization
and media, visual studies, GIS and cultural mapping, advanced visualization,
Internet culture, and media theory. The successful candidate will have a
demonstrated ability to work across disciplines on broad-based humanities
projects that build bridges between humanists and technologists through
interdisciplinary collaboration. Applicants should demonstrate a strong
commitment and innovative approach to teaching and research. Administrative
experience working with technology staff and funding agencies is desirable.
The successful candidate will be appointed in one or more academic
departments. He/she will work closely with interdisciplinary centers,
including the Center for Digital Humanities, and is expected to assume a
central role in UCLA’s vibrant digital humanities community. Please note
that UCLA is conducting two additional searches in the field of Digital
Humanities, as follows: A search by the Department of English in the area of
New Media and a search for a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital
Humanities. For more information, please visit:
http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu
<http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/>

A Ph.D. is required by July 2008. To apply, please send an application
letter, CV, three letters of recommendation, and representative research
publications by November 20, 2007, to:

Chair of Digital Humanities Search Committee
2300 Murphy Hall, Box 951438
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1438

Position subject to final budgetary approval. UCLA is an Affirmative
Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are especially
encouraged to apply.

Two very successful and celebrated teams at CDH are the Departmental Technology Analysts (DTAs) and the Instructional Technology Consultants (ITCs). Each team supports the Humanities faculty, staff and graduate students. However, the two groups play different roles that complement each other and sometimes overlap.

The DTAs are full-time career employees who provide technical support in all areas of computing and are the center point for all technological assistance. Each DTA is assigned to a specific administrative unit, such as the Dodd Group or the Royce group, and spends 80% of their time as the primary contact for all technology related concerns. The DTAs are skilled PC and Apple hardware/software technicians and handle all matter of desktop support issues. They each have a wide variety of experience utilizing networking and communication protocols, graphic design concepts, and data management stratagems. The other 20% of DTA time is spent working on special projects, such as, website design, and the bi-weekly home computer support clinics.

If a DTA can’t help you directly, they know how to find help. So it is always a good idea to start with your DTA!

Clockwise from top left, the DTA team members are Alastair Thorne, Bronson Tran, Bryan Jung, Calvin Tong (DTA Coordinator), Dave Nguyen, Frank Lee, Joseph Fahs, Roozbeh Kavian and Steven Lee.

The DTA web page is http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/dta.html

By contrast, the ITC team consists of ten part-time humanities graduate students hired for a tenure of up to two years and based in the “ITC Lab” (1041 public policy). The focus of the ITC team is to assist instructors with the best use of technology in instruction and learning. Like DTAs, ITCs are assigned to support specific departments. However, they work very collaboratively to share their various disciplinary, pedagogical, and technical skills wherever needed. ITCs are most often associated with course websites, but they know and consult on a variety of other technology tools, including presentation software, media processing, blogging and wikis, Wimba, scanning and OCR. The ITC Lab is equipped with high-end digitizing equipment — available to instructors to use by appointment or on a drop-in basis.

The 2007-2008 ITC team. Front row, left to right: Huan Wang, Yoshiko Fukuyasu, Eva Sobolevski, Jonathan Jones, Chris Shaw, Yasu Imao, Kim Mack
Back row, left to right: Innhwa Park, Ted Liu (Foreign Languages IT Coordinator), Randall Gordon, Austin Payne, Annelie Rugg (ITC Coordinator)

The ITC web page is http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/itc/

(Thanks to Linda Holmes for drafting this article).