Round Table: Coalition of Digital Humanities Centers

The members of the panel will discuss with the audience other American centers not represented at the summit meeting
and centers in other countries.
the outcome of the national summit meeting of American
digital humanities centers and major funders held at the National
Endowment of Humanities headquarters on April 12-13,
co-sponsored by the NEH and the University of Maryland.
The purpose of the meeting was to take seriously the ACLS
Cyberinfrastructure Commission’s call for digital humanities
centers to become key nodes of cyberinfrastructure in the United
States. To that end, the summit explored how best to foster
collaboration among national digital humanities centers, among
major funders of the digital humanities, and between centers
and funders, along with the possibility of creating a national
coalition of digital humanities centers.
Among the salient issues are the creation of mechanisms for
promoting timely exchange of information between centers and
identifying opportunities for collaboration among them; the
articulation of mutual research goals as well as particular areas
of emphases so as to avoid duplication of effort among centers;
the development of joint policy agendas and successful
strategies for pursuing them; better articulating funding needs
to funding agencies; methods for optimizing collaborative
opportunities between humanities content specialists and the
technological community; and advancing the place of the digital
humanities on campus, including such issues as infrastructure
and the role of the Digital Humanities in promotion and tenure.
This roundtable session will focus upon the initiatives begun
at the summit meeting and engage in a general discussion about
them, with the hope of widening the conversation to include