DARIAH conference Public Humanities Workshop 23rd and 24th of May 2017, Trinity Long Room Hub, Arts and Humanities Research Institute Dr. Jennifer Edmond, Director of Strategic Projects, Trinity Long Room Hub

Partners in Project Trinity Long Room Hub, Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Digital Humanities Centre, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Ghent, Belgium Glasnevin Trust, Dublin, Ireland

Background to Project A multitude of digitally based projects taking place across Europe which have prompted a renewed public interest in genealogy and local history The public have assumed a much more proactive role in the production and curation of cultural outputs The directors of Public History and Digital Humanities programmes in the partner countries have observed a real demand by local community groups to explore and document their cultural heritage using digital tools and methodologies.

Format of Event -23rd and 24th of May 2017 a basic introduction to some of the theoretical and conceptual issues underpinning the fields of digital humanities and public history the presentation of case studies from representatives of existing public history and digital humanities projects in Ireland, Poland and Belgium -PL-New Panorama of Polish Literature -IE-Dublin City Library & Archives, Friends of the Derry Walls, St. Andrews Records Project -BE Belgian Refugees 14-18   36 attendees across the 2 days (representing 22 public organisations, 2 individual, 3 academics and 9 students). An IBM representative was also in attendance

Format of Event sessions to help empower participants in the areas of digital humanities and Public History ‘What to think about when digitising’-Digital Resources & Imaging Service, TCD ‘How to make your cultural heritage content available on-line’-Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center  Practical Considerations when embarking on Public History projects’- Quarto Collective (consultancy working in the area of cultural heritage & public engagement) Site visit to Glasnevin Cemetery -one of Dublin’s most resonant heritage sites with an expanding public outreach arm  

Themes arising Difference between “shared authority” and “a shared authority” in regards to public history Sharing authority is about collaboration and equal partnership between parties such as two historians. A shared authority refers to the historian and public working together to jointly interpret and create meaning. DH projects are often very impactful for a short period of time, but there is a challenge with sustainability and ongoing maintenance and audience engagement The importance of metadata in DH projects-digitising content is almost useless if it cannot be found through metadata (standardised)

Themes arising Successful public history projects are audience focused and have a bottom-up rather than top-down view of public history creation-examine what the public want rather than assume what they want “technology cannot solve everything” - the system is only as smart as the program and in many places it can’t be used to replace human semantic reasoning that historians or other humanists can bring to a project DH projects usually involve engaging researchers from both disciplines one of them usually being ICT or computer science. Different researchers have different ‘vocabularies’, which can cause difficulties in communication especially at the start of a project Material from event including videos can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/yc69qc6w