A new Digital Lab@Veth!
The Digital Lab is open! This new lab is meant for staff and students who are looking for a place to work, experiment, and find support for their digital research. There’ll be a kickoff event, with live digital demos and a roundtable on “the Humanities in a Digital World” on Friday October 29 in the afternoon.
Why and for whom?
Humanities research and education have an important role to play in our increasingly digital world. The Digital Lab@Veth is part of a multi-pronged strategy by the Faculty’s Centre for Digital Humanities (LUCDH) that is designed to help all of us meet the challenges and opportunities that come with this role.
Maybe you are a member of staff or a student that is already well-versed in digital media and tools but need advanced equipment and a community of specialists to take your work to the next level? Or are you someone who would like to learn how to bring digital methods into your scholarly practice but need a place to learn and experiment and a support group to start? Then this is the place for you.
What's there?
The Digital Lab can be found in the P.J. Veth building in room 1.07. In the lab you will find 4 high-end workstations, suitable for intensive multi-media work, crunching through bigger datasets, and projects that require installation of specific software or programming environments. This open space also has room for an additional 18 (group)workplaces with laptops. You can also find a VR and 3D printing station here to experiment with. Next door, in 1.06, there’s a recording studio that can be used for making podcasts/vodcasts or livestreams.
A full list of the Lab’s facilities and instructions on how to book these can be found on the Lab’s webpage.
A Digital Hub
More important than hardware, you will also be able to find others here who take a specific interest in digital tools and thinking. For instance, during opening times (see the Lab’s webpage), there will always be people present who know their way around the lab and digital tools, can answer your questions, or know others who will. Furthermore, the Lab will also host workshops on things like R, digital mapping, networks, and interactive storytelling. These will take place once a month on Friday afternoon.
Check out the LUCDH events page or sign up for the LUCDH newsletter (via e-mail to lucdh@hum.leidenuniv.nl) to keep up to date on events such as these. Have ideas for workshops or other activities in this place? We would love to hear them! You can contact us via digital-lab@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Sjef Barbiers, director of the Leiden University Center for Digital Humanities, on the new Digital Lab
'The Digital Lab@Veth is a new, on-campus laboratory for humanities research in the digital world. In this well-equipped lab, researchers can meet, cooperate, develop new projects, learn digital techniques and get support for research projects that have a digital component. As digital text, data, tools and topics will play an increasingly important role in future projects, the Digital Lab@Veth will develop into THE hub for research cooperation and innovation at our Faculty. '