Collaborative Research in the Digital Humanities: A Volume in Honour of Harold Short, on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday and His Retirement, September 2010

The theme of this volume is collaboration and the application of computing tools for research and teaching in the humanities. This collection of 14 papers provides a unique insight into the reception of technology in the humanities over the past decade and highlights the contribution made by Harold Short in his work at King's College London.

Willard McCarty's paper is the Fest to Harold Short, his dedication to collaborative research and the new discipline that he introduced into his department, with Bradley focusing on technical development work achieved through scholarly practice and projects in the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH).

Other papers follow the future development of digital humanities (DH) beyond academia and the wider sharing of knowledge. Craig and Burrows illustrate this through a study of Shakespeare's authorial role, and whether other dramatists contributed to this collaboration. Software tools and data standards are Flanders interest, for the exchange of scholarly information in digital form and to understand relationships and differences between interoperation and collaboration.

In the internet age, what is the role and impact of DH? Hockey explores its influences and potential developments and concludes that, although digital resources save time and effort, they are difficult to measure. Hunyadi seeks to provide fresh momentum to humanities education and research, with benefits for academia and professional collaboration, through a virtual Centre for DH. Meister offers a vision of collaborative mark‐up for crowd sourcing, reviews existing languages and proposes an ideal text mark‐up at a more complex computational level.

Historians have not been overlooked. Nelson discusses the work of Benjamin and Short on prosopography – a technique used to reassess data, methods and purposes. The PASE projects were successful for introducing interdisciplinary, but not administrative collaboration. Opportunities for collaborative research continue, and tagging an application of crowd sourcing is described by Rockwell, who raises questions about using volunteer help.

Roueché's interest is in mark‐up texts, and a short historical review shows that consistency across material, languages and historical periods is vital for future communication. New areas of research in DH continue to be explored, and Siemens and colleagues lead on a long‐term study of multi‐disciplinary research collaboration on human‐computer interface/interaction and the e‐book from a range of perspectives. Sutherland and Pierazzo investigate the digital capture and delivery of manuscripts for scholarly study and general access.

Terras investigates the effects, benefits and problems of interdisciplinary research for digital humanists and describes projects that demonstrate the variety and complexity of interactions among humanities scholars, engineers, computer scientists and other professionals. To conclude, Tupman interviews Unsworth, who designed and built infrastructural support for research across disciplines, and worked closely with Harold Short on DH projects, thus providing a fitting end to this Festschrift.