I am a Digitally Challenged Digital Humanist.
My Digital Humanities project, creating a Cork LGBT Digital Archive, is a truly multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary project – it requires me to understand and engage with a number of different fields and disciplines, including History, Social History, LGBT History, Archives, Community Archives, Digital Archives, as well as understanding the how of doing it digitally. Not a challenging task at all!!!!
A lot of the time it seems as if I am floundering in a land I don’t know, where people speak a language I do not understand. The Humanities side is fine, I speak that language, but I’m new to the Digital.
And yet I keep trying, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always learning through the process. As Samuel Beckett said: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’