Panel 2 – Public, Access, and the Archival Dimensions of Digital Humanities

The expansion of digital humanities has started to redefine how we think of, and with, archives — not only in terms of provenance, selection, and preservation of documents, but also in terms of accessibility and use. Big-data tools have also streamlined ways of tracing how users interact with online collections — often informing the digital projects themselves. This panel seeks to identify the archival dimensions of select public-facing digital humanities projects by centering the user. All projects developed here have made real-world objects and documents that are not necessarily located in one physical space available for broad public access via virtual space. Questions to explore include the ethical, political, pedagogical, and technological considerations and challenges that have gone into making these collections available to a broader, engaged public.