New Book Series "Coding for Humanists” 1st Vol. "Drupal for Humanists"

The Institute for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture (IDHMC) at Texas A&M University (http://idhmc.tamu.edu) is pleased to announce “Coding for Humanists,” a new book series from Texas A&M Press that addresses the practical skill-development needs of scholars in the humanities. The series is edited by Quinn Drombrowski and Laura Mandell.

The hands-on training offered at an institute or workshop such as DHSI, DHOxSS, and HILT equips scholars to pursue new directions in their research and/or pedagogy. These workshops stand apart from generic technical training sessions through their focus on the specific needs, interests and goals of humanists. The pedagogical approach respects students’ intelligence and expertise without assuming a pre-existing knowledge of other programming languages or technologies.

The “Coding for Humanists” book series follows in the spirit of these workshops (http://coding.forhumanists.org). Each volume focuses on a particular tool, technology, methodology, or programming language, using humanities examples. Without assuming any prerequisite technical knowledge, “Coding for Humanists” books guide scholars through the jargon, concepts, and processes fundamental to the technology under consideration, leaving them ready to use the technology independently, or deepen their knowledge through resources written for a general audience. For scholars who are unable to attend an in-person workshop, or who wish to develop new technical skills as time permits, the “Coding for Humanists” series fills an unmet need for clearly-written, accessible training materials developed specifically for a humanistic audience.

The first volume, Drupal for Humanists by Quinn Dombrowski (http://drupal.forhumanists.org/), will be published this fall. Co-editor of the series, Quinn Dombrowski is the Digital Humanities Coordinator in Research IT at UC Berkeley, and has developed numerous digital humanities sites using Drupal, including the DiRT Directory and DHCommons. She has taught “Drupal for Digital Humanities Projects” at DHSI since 2014, and Drupal for Humanists expands upon the materials that have been used successfully in that course.

This book is a significant expansion of, and improvement on, the open access early drafts that have been posted on this site since 2013, and are still available through the Wayback Machine. Over the next year, excerpts from the book will be posted to the site. In addition, there is a great deal of further information about Drupal modules, configuration, and tips and tricks for building Drupal sites that extends beyond the maximum feasible word count for the book. This information, too, will be posted on an ongoing basis, and contributions will be solicited from the community of humanities Drupal users and developers. (From: http://drupal.forhumanists.org/ )

Upcoming volumes in the “Coding for Humanists” series include _XQuery for Humanists_, by Clifford B. Anderson, Jonathan Robie, and Joseph C. Wicentowski; _XSLT for Humanists: Building Digital Editions_, by co-editor of the book series, Laura Mandell; and _Databases for Humanists_, by Harvey Quamen. The series is accepting proposals for additional volumes; please see submission guidelines here:
http://coding.forhumanists.org/submission-guidelines.

Laura Mandell
Director, Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture
Professor, English
Texas A&M University
e: idhmc AT tamu.edu
@mandellc

My source: Laura via humanist AT lists.digitalhumanities.org
List info and archives at at: http://digitalhumanities.org/humanist