In the 2015 installment of the Digital Campus Year in Review podcast, regulars Dan Cohen, Amanda French, Tom Scheinfeldt, and Stephen Robertson look back at 2015 and predict the big news of 2016. Cheers went out to the NEH/Mellon Humanities Open Book Program, Congress (c.1965), the retirement of James Billington as Librarian of Congress, and the US Court of Appeals decision in favor of Google Books. Eliciting jeers were the Ad-blocker controversy, the behavior of Proquest (with Amanda dissenting), and the news that Jennifer Howard has left the higher education beat.

Much of what the group predicted for 2015 came to pass, to some extent: universities were hacked; SHARE developed; the push to learn to code continued; and Proquest and Gale moved to provide data mining access to their collections (at considerable additional cost to libraries). And, with the FAA moving to require that drones be registered, Mills’s prediction from 2013 that an Amazon drone will be shot down over Texas looks ever more likely. If you are impressed by those predictions, then in 2016 you should expect the Wu Tang Clan album to leak, Virtual Reality MOOCs to be launched, a digital humanist to win a Macarthur Fellowship, hypothes.is not to take off (or to enjoy the same success as DPLA), and emojis to replace text as our primary form of communication.

Related Links:

• NEH/Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program Grants: http://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2015-12-17
• The work of the 1965 Congress:
  • The National Historic Preservation Act: http://preservation50.org/about/nhpa-history/
  • The National Endowment for the Arts: https://www.arts.gov/50th
  • The National Endowment for the Humanities: http://50.neh.gov
• The ad blocking controversy explained: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9351759/ad-blocking-controversy
• In defense of Proquest: http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/226/448
• Why Are Universities Hacked? https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-are-universities-hacked
• SHARE: http://www.share-research.org
• Register Your Drone: https://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/
• Annotating All Knowledge [hypothes.is]: https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/

Running time: 59:23

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Great timing for us, as we record the podcast on the very day the US Appeals Court rules that yes, scanning in-copyright books for the purpose of creating an online index of them is indeed a transformative and therefore fair use. Huzzah! The way is clear for all kinds of things now. We also talk about a new digital humanities / libraries tool called BigDIVA that launched today, discussing mainly its plan to become a subscription-based paid service. That leads into a brief digression on the recent patent win by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation against Apple, which could potentially raise almost half a billion dollars for the University of Wisconsin system (just enough to make up for proposed budget cuts). We refrain from comment. Finally, Stephen Robertson reports on RRCHNM’s plan to build a new tool called Tropy, which would help researchers organize the pictures they take in archives.

Related Links

• “Google Books Scanning Legal,” Infodocket, http://www.infodocket.com/2015/10/16/ruling-just-in-google-book-scanning-project-legal-says-u-s-appeals-court/
• “Google Books Litigation Family Tree,” Library Copyright Alliance, http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/storage/documents/google-books-litigation-tree-16oct2015.pdf
• “Online Tool [BigDIVA] Aims to Help Researchers Sift Through 15 Centuries of Data,” NCSU press release, https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/10/big-diva-2015/
• “Apple’s Newest Courtroom Foe is a Patent-Savvy University,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/16/us-apple-patent-wisconsin-idUSKCN0SA09G20151016
• “RRCHNM to Build Software [Tropy] to Help Researchers Organize Digital Photographs,” RRCHNM blog, http://chnm.gmu.edu/news/rrchnm-to-build-software-to-help-researchers-organize-digital-photographs/
• Stephen Robertson on Tropy, http://drstephenrobertson.com/news/tropy-a-tool-to-organize-describe-share-digital-images-taken-in-research/
• Sean Takats on Tropy, http://quintessenceofham.org/2015/10/02/hello-tropy-soon/

Running time: 44:54

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The regulars (Stephen, Tom, Amanda, and Dan) are back for a new semester and a new season of Digital Campus in which we wave to Mills as he jaunts about Europe. We also talk about some of the summer and early autumn’s big news, including the NEH ODH’s project directors meeting, the 50th anniversary of the NEH, Librarian of Congress James Billington’s retirement, and the George Mason University History Department’s new digital dissertation guidelines. Other mentions include:

– UConn historical musical instruments project
– John Donne’s 1622 sermon for Gunpowder Day: Virtual Paul’s Cross Project
– NEH Anniversary Message from President Obama
– NEH Funding Levels, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Check back in two weeks for more from the world of digital humanities, libraries, and museums and to see where Mills lands on another episode of Digital Campus.

Running time: 47:32

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For our hundredth anniversary episode, the digital history fellows divided up the 2007 episodes of Digital Campus and picked their favorite bits — listen to the result if you dare, and be transported back to the days when the iPhone was brand new, when Second Life was the Next Big Thing, and when you had to have an email address with a .edu TLD in order to use Facebook. Good times.

Many thanks to digital history fellows Ben Hurwitz, Jannelle Legg, Anne McDivitt, Amanda Morgan, Amanda Regan, and Spencer Roberts for choosing the clips, and many many thanks to audiovisual guru Chris Preperato for stitching them together.

Running time: 58:13
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In this episode of Digital Campus, Tom, Mills, and Amanda (sans Dan) touch briefly on the passing of Steve Jobs and discuss Apple’s announcement of iOS5, the release of the Kindle Fire and other new Kindle products, the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Project Directors meeting, and one university’s brief ban on social media sites. We also agree that “Nickerson” probably isn’t the best name for a razor company.

Links:

• Jobs, Apple co-founder and visionary, is dead, New York Times
• Apple releases iOS5, CNET News
• Amazon unveils $199 Android Kindle Fire tablet, $99 e-ink Kindle Touch, Ars Technica
• The Promise of Digital Humanities, Inside Higher Ed
• Back in Blackout, Inside Higher Ed

Running time: 41:35
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