DHTech February Newsletter

by DHTech · calendar Mar 4, 2025  · newsletter
DH hippo with a letter to you from DH Tech

It’s hard to believe but February is almost over! That means, it’s time for DHTech’s newsletter 🎉 And we have things to tell you about! Enjoy and engage ;)

DHTech at DH2025 - Digital Humanities Tech Symposium

DHTech is organizing a mini-conference at DH2025, the Digital Humanities Tech Symposium! Help us make it even better than last year! Submit a talk about the technical aspects of your work or demonstrate your tool from a technical perspective. Or do you have another idea? Submit it! We also need reviewers. Find all the information on our website. Submission deadline is March 15. It’ll be fun :)

DHTech RSE Survey - We still want to hear from you! Go do it right now!

In 2019, DHTech ran a survey to better understand the DHTech and DH RSE communities. Five years later, DHTech is re-running the survey to better understand the experiences and needs of anyone doing technical work in the digital humanities! Do you write code or do coding-related work for digital humanities projects? Do you manage software engineering projects in the digital humanities? Do you develop computational methods for digital humanities research? If so and if you are over 18, please consider completing the Digital Humanities Research Software Engineering survey! It should only take about 10 to 15 minutes of your time. We hope to present the survey results as a poster at DH2025.

DHTech is now on Mastodon (@dhtech) and Bluesky (@dhtech-community.bsky.social)!

We’re excited to join the Mastodon and Bluesky communities and contribute to these emerging social networks that we have seen an increasing number of our colleagues and friends migrate to. We intend to continue to use and cross-post content to Twitter/X for now, but we’ll also begin posting to Mastodon and Bluesky. Follow us on Mastodon as @dhtech and on Bluesky as @dhtech-community.bsky.social.

DHTech April Meetup on Data Longevity

The next DHTech meetup will be held on April 24, 2025 at 9am ET/3pm CET. We will discuss what we can do to keep the data of our projects around and usable even long after the software used to present the data has found its natural end. How can we make sure data is understandable and usable long-term? What happens to the logic encoded in our code that is necessary to interpret the data? Where can we store data and in what format? What’s the cost to benefit ratio for creating backups that might not be used for a long time? Does this sound interesting? Come join us and register for our Zoom meeting!

DHReSCU is Looking for a Consultant

We are excited to announce the first project that will be working with DHReSCU will be the Autosizer project led by Sean Fraga. This project focuses on using artificial intelligence to generate computer-readable physical dimensions from existing item images and catalog metadata.

If you are interested in being a consultant for Autosizer, please review the list of qualifications specific to this project on our website.

DHReSCU still has Funding for Projects

DHReSCU is a pilot program meant to aid early-stage digital humanities research software projects in developing a technical implementation plan. We hope to connect experienced research software engineers with digital humanities projects. The resulting technical implementation plan is meant to reduce mistakes made and improve project outcomes. If you have a Digital Humanities Research Project and are looking for consultation, submit your project using this application form.

Upcoming Deadline

  • Get feedback on your code! The next submission deadline for code review requests is coming up on March 31. You can submit a finished product or work in progress! All that we ask for is that you choose a reasonably-sized chunk of your code that can be reviewed in about an hour. A description of the process and what it takes to have your code reviewed can be found on the code review website. Do you have any questions? Ask us on the DHTech Slack or send an email to dhtech.community@gmail.com.
  • Submit to the Digital Humanities Tech Symposium at DH2025! Submission deadline is March 15, 2025. Check our website for more information

Get Involved!

  • Tell us About Your Career Path: We believe that it is important to share the varied paths people have taken to the DH technical work we do now, in whatever capacity. We want to hear your story and share them on the DHTech website. Contact us in Slack or via dhtech.community@gmail.com if you’re willing to share what you do and how you got there.
  • Become a Code Review Facilitator: Do you want to get involved with DHTech’s community code review process, but are not yet ready to become a reviewer? Become a code review facilitator! It’s low effort but a really important job! You’ll be recognized as a facilitator on our website afterwards and will have everyone’s deep gratitude. You can sign up using our facilitator application form.

Latest Blog Posts

DHTech Job Board

If you have a job posting you think might be of interest to the DHTech community, consider submitting it using this form. We have added a new section to our website that lists current jobs as soon as they are submitted. If you would be willing to help out with reviewing and adding job postings to the website, please get in touch on Slack or by emailing the steering committee at dhtech.community@gmail.com.

DHTech Email Address

Email dhtech.community@gmail.com if you want to reach the DHTech Steering Committee.

Upcoming Newsletters

This is a bi-monthly newsletter. Do you have something to share with the DHTech community that you want included in the next newsletter? Please get in touch with us at dhtech.community@gmail.com or via Slack.

Yours truly,
The DHTech Steering Committee