DS Resources More People Should Know About: A Short List by Subhanya Sivajothy

DS Resources More People Should Know About: A Short List by Subhanya Sivajothy


Digital scholarship is a vast and constantly evolving field. Here are some resources that more people should know about, hand-picked by the Sherman Centre’s Data Analysis and Visualization Librarian Subhanya Sivajothy.

1. “What Is Digital Humanities?”

Are you doing digital humanities work and you don’t know it yet? If you’re asking yourself what digital humanities even is…there is a perfect website for that. Every time you refresh the page, it gives you a different crowd-sourced definition of DH.  

Screenshot from the What Is Digital Humanities? Website. Text reads “What is Digital Humanities? DH is what critical theory is or was—an opportunity to ask new questions, try new methods, engage in new conversations. -ssenier.

2. “Going to Work in Mommy’s Basement”

In the article “Going to Work in Mommy’s Basement,” Sarah Sharma asks us to consider equity beyond just representation and consider the ways in which normative and exploitative regimes of care are baked into the technologies and platforms that we use.  

Screenshot of the article's webpage. Blue background with green text reads Going to Work in Mommy's Basement. From laundry to meal prep, apps tend to mimic maternal care. Is this good for women? By Sarah Sharma. Photograph on the left shows a person in a ball pit with their arms raised.

3. “Anatomy of an AI”

  • The data visualization Anatomy of an AI ambitiously maps the vast networks that underpin the life cycle of a single Amazon Echo smart speaker. Kate Crawford does the important work of grounding our ephemeral ideas of AI back down to the human labour, data, and material resources that are extracted to allow it to function.   
Data visualization that maps the life cycle of an Amazon Echo smart speaker. Background is black with the visualization in white.

4. ORBIS: A Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World

  • This last one is for the history nerds and is a classic example of what digital humanities scholarship can look like. This interactive map/visualization lets you see the cost and duration it would take you to travel between locations during the Roman empire.
Screenshot from the Orbis project. Shows a map of ancient Rome and its surrounding regions. A grey panel on the left allows users to choose the start and end locations of their journey, the season in which they travel, their priority on the journey (fastest, cheapest, or shortest), and network modes (road, river, open sea, et cetera). A panel on the right has display options. A panel on the bottom shows the distance from the user’s destination (Alexandria) and notes significant sites.

This post was repurposed from a guest column in the Sherman Centre’s July 2022 edition of The DS Dispatch. If you want to learn about more DH and DS resources, jobs, and events, consider signing up for our mailing list and receiving the DS Dispatch directly in your inbox.

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