Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field with participants of many types (humanities scholars  from various disciplines, computer experts, librarians, museum professionals, archivists, and the public) who are interested in utilizing digital technology to ask intriguing humanities-related questions, and to create, use, and disseminate creative methods and tools for answering these questions.

Depending on their humanities and technology skill sets, as well as the scope, design, and purpose of their projects, digital humanities practitioners work individually or collaborate with others.   As they progress in their ability to build projects and to analyze and synthesize information using mapping, social network analysis, visualizations, text mining, topic modeling, data archiving, and other technologies, digital humanists often share their understanding of DH methods and tools with colleagues and the public.  Many people have learned about digital humanities through DH and humanities journals, Days of DH, THATCamps (The Humanities and Technology Camps), courses, conferences, and crowdsourcing projects that they have become involved with. Over the last twenty-five years, the field has developed and come into its own, thanks, in part to support from the NEH and other grant-funding institutions. Digital humanities has had a significant impact on humanities research, interpretation, and teaching, and on the public’s access to, knowledge of, and ability to participate in the creation of cultural and historical resources.

The structure of my definition is based on the format of the questions asked for this digital humanities historiography module in the Introduction to Digital Humanities course.  My interpretation of digital humanities comes from reading about dh for this course and others, from creating  my own projects, from working on large digital humanities projects, from viewing, utilizing, and teaching the projects of others, and from experiencing the welcoming nature and generosity of participants in numerous digital humanities camps and conferences.