“This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities | Lisa Spiro in “Debates in the Digital Humanities” | 2012

"...PROPOSED VALUES

Drawing from manifestos, model statements of value, and my own analysis of the rhetoric of the digital humanities, I propose the following initial list of digital humanities values. My intent is not to speak presumptuously for the community and decide on my own what it values but rather to open up the conversation. Although I wanted to keep the list of values concise, I recognize that others should probably be added, such as sharing public knowledge, curiosity, multidisciplinarity, and balancing theory and practice. With each value, I explain what it is and why it is embraced by the digital humanities community, and I also offer a few examples of how the value manifests itself, aggregating ongoing discussions in the digital humanities. This set of values signifies what the digital humanities community aspires to achieve, not necessarily what it has fully met.

Openness

Openness operates on several levels in the digital humanities, describing a commitment to the open exchange of ideas, the development of open content and software, and transparency (Zorich, 11). The digital humanities community embraces openness because of both self-interest and ethical aspirations. In order to create digital scholarship, researchers typically need access to data, tools, and dissemination platforms. As Christine Borgman argues, “Openness matters for the digital humanities for reasons of interoperability, discovery, usability, and reusability” (Borgman), since it means that scholars are better able to find and use the data they need and create systems that work together. As participants at a 2011 MLA panel on “The Open Professoriate” argued, openness allows scholars to reach larger audiences than the few who read academic journals, meet their responsibilities to be “public servants,” participate in public exchanges, and become more visible (Jaschik). Ultimately, openness promotes the larger goal of the humanities “to democratize knowledge to reach out to ‘publics,’ share academic discoveries, and invite an array of audiences to participate in knowledge production” (Draxler et al.)...."