White Paper on Digital Humanities,  published  in  December  2017

The so-called "Digital Humanities" is a new born child of this digital age, and the discipline has been growing with great élan since the beginning of the twentieth century. This companion puts forward a panoramic view of this international movement and considers the steps which Taiwan has taken and ought to take in response.

What is Digital Humanities? Should Digital Humanities be seriously considered as worthy of development and support? And how? Opinions vary; but, what remains unshakeable is the fact that it is emerging as a new academic discipline with impacts visible from institutes of higher education, museums, publishers to social media and cultural industries.

Now the world is awash with books and theses about Digital Humanities, and new departments and organizations are being created with their agenda and programs dedicated to this subject from country to country.

White Paper on Digital Humanities sketches out the career and significance of Digital Humanities, containing thirty critical companions to canonical publications on this subject; a survey of notable journals, faculties, institutes, projects and online resources and criticism on Taiwan’s place in this trend and its strategies.

What has Taiwan, certainly a latecomer in the vogue of Digital Humanities, been through over the years? What challenges has the country faced and how did it manage? Dr Lin Fu-shih, Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica, writes insightful essays on these questions with decades of involvement in this field.

This book is by far the most integrative Chinese reader for Digital Humanities with a Taiwanese streak, maintaining a delicate balance between vision, function and reflexivity. Its objective is not to glorify the past but to pave the way for a better future.

For book purchase, please contact the Academia Sinica Press Bookshop (+886-2-2652-1876) and San Ming Bookshop (+886-2-2500-6600). Find free electronic version on National Library of Public Information, HyRead eBook, and iRead eBook.

About the General Editor:

Dr Lin Fu-shih is Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology and Director of the Center for Digital Cultures, Academia Sinica. Lin's involvement dates back to 1985, when the Automatization of the Chinese History Corpus commenced. In the 1990s Lin returned to Taiwan with a PhD degree from Princeton University to answer the call for building the infrastructure of Digital Humanities. He has co-hosted the National Digital Archives Projects (sub-projects, Stage I & II) and hosted some subprojects of Taiwan Digital Archives Expansion Project.