Readings in Design for Digital Humanities

William Turkel’s great series of posts on a reading list for digital humanities is a must-read for anyone interested in doing history or other humanities work on the Web. I think there’s some room to add a few more books (and perhaps some weblogs, if the academic world is ready to add weblogs to the reading lists of its graduate students).

Where’s the Design?

I was talking with Josh recently about the importance of design for historians. Josh has often said (and I totally agree) that a digital reputation is growing in importance for academics. When someone Google’s your name, you should want your own site, with your own words, to be among the top search results. I’ve often told folks who are reluctant to start blogging because they don’t want it to hinder their job-finding efforts that I’m more afraid of not having an online presence, or having one that is plain boring, than to have one that is controversial. It is very easy for someone to commit the former than the latter. Academics go to conferences to be seen, to interact, to socialize. The Web is a fantastic social environment, and it has great potential to help (or hurt) your reputation.

With that in mind, its useful to think about the importance of design for digital humanities. As I was preaching the gospel of good web design for historians to Josh (I think Josh is one of the few people who can bear listening to me talk about this stuff), he agreed by saying something to the effect that “Yeah, you wouldn’t go to an academic conference to present a paper wearing dirty, torn jeans and ratty t-shirt.” Exactly! Presentation, organization, and implementation of information are all just as important as finding and providing information. (If you need further proof that historians do in fact care how web sites are presented, visit Paula Petrik’s excellent presentation, “Picture This!”.)

Paula’s Clio Wired 2 course are discussing the role of personality and branding in web design, critiquing among other things Luke Wroblewski’s sample chapter “Who Are You?” More broadly, Paula’s class (past and present) constantly addresses the role of design for the digital historian. This semester’s class has mixed reactions about the utility of design, ranging from Ken Albers’s interesting critique that trust through design can be easily abused to Jenny Reeder’s desire to create emotional attachments to her websites through design. It looks to be a really interesting class this semester, and goes to show that study of the field of digital history should consider the importance of design.

So, I would add a few web and interface design books and sites to Turkel’s list, including:

• Transcending CSS by Andy Clarke
• Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
• Web Design on a Shoestring by Carrie Bickner-Zeldman
• Train of Thoughts: Designing the Effective Web Experience, by John C. Lenker, Jr.
• Don’t Make Me Think!, by Steve Krug
• MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, by Hillman Curtis
• Beautiful Evidence, and Visual Explanations, by Edward Tufte
• Thinking with Type, by Ellen Lupton
• Site-seeing: A Visual Approach to Web-Usability, by Luke Wroblewski
• A List Apart
• Digital Web Magazine
• Jakob Nielsen (Whether you agree with him or not, you have to deal with him.)

I’ll keep thinking about this, and adding books to the list. Any others we should add?

Where are the Weblogs?

In addition to publications on web design, I don’t think a digital humanities seminar/field statement would be complete without discussing important weblogs in the field. A few I would include:

• Turkel’s own Digital History Hacks
• edwired – Mills Kelly’s excellent blog on “the intersecton of digital technologies and history.” Mills covers lots of issues related to new media, history, and pedagogy.
• Dan Cohen
• Chapati Mystery, especially Manan’s excellent Polyglot Manifesto I and II.
• Semantic Humanities
• if:book – Their projects on re-presenting books and other published material are also a must-read.
• Musematic
• Past Thinking

I think books are great, but for future digital historians, it is imperative to keep up with the latest thinking in the field (of digital humanities), and the best way to do that is to subscribe to the field’s various, wonderful weblogs. Perhaps it would be be beneficial to create a list of must-read blog posts on digital humanities? Any other weblogs we should add?