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Hugh M. Richmond deposited Challenges and Rewards for Digital Humanities in the group
CLCS Renaissance and Early Modern on MLA Commons 6 years, 6 months ago
The English Department at U.C. Berkeley has developed two multimedia humanities websites at “Shakespeare’s Staging” and “Milton Revealed,” illustrating classic rewards and problems in digital humanities programs. Users are uniformly positive about the simple, selective, and fully organized structure. Visits are numerous, averaging 200-400 page visits daily to each site, but often rising to a thousand or more at such times as exam preparation. In ten years the Shakespeare site accumulated over one million visits, and in two years the Milton site has reached over 100,000 visits annually. We are fortunate to access a vast amount of expert material, bibliographies, stills, and video, all developed by site participants, materials that had generated considerable applicable funding, but were clear of copyright issues. As the sites developed, other sources of material became more generous in permitting educational use freely. Technical support was available on campus.