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Manifesto for the Digital HumanitiesContextWe, professionals or observers of the digital humanities (humanités  numériques) came together in Paris for THATCamp on May 18th and  19th, 2010.Over the course of these two days, we  discussed, exchanged,  and collectively reflected upon what the digital humanities are, and  tried to imagine and invent what they could become.At the close of the camp - which represents but a first step -  we propose to the research communities, and to all those involved in  the creation, publication, valorization or preservation of knowledge, a  manifesto for the digital humanities.I. Definition1. Society's digital turn changes and calls into question the  conditions of knowledge production and distribution.2. For us, the digital humanities concern the totality of the  social sciences and humanities. The digital humanities are not tabula  rasa. On the contrary, they rely on all the paradigms, savoir-faire and knowledge specific to these disciplines, while mobilizing the tools  and unique perspectives enabled by digital technology.3. The digital humanities designate a “transdiscipline”,  embodying all the methods, systems and heuristic perspectives linked to  the digital within the fields of humanities and the social sciences.II. Situation4. We observe:- that experiments in the digital domain of the social sciences  and humanities have multiplied in the last half century. What have  emerged most recently are centers for digital humanities - which at the  moment are themselves only protoypes or areas of application specific to  the approach of digital humanities;- that computational and digital approaches have greater  technical, and therefore economic, research constraints; that these  constraints provide an opportunity to foster collaborative work;- that while a certain number of proven methods exist, they are  not equally known or shared;- that there are many communities deriving from shared interests  in practices, tools, and various interdisciplinary goals - encoding  textual sources, geographic information systems, lexicometry,  digitization of cultural, scientific and technical heritage, web  cartography, datamining, 3D, oral archives, digital arts and hypermedia  literatures, etc. - and that these communities are converging to form  the field of digital humanities.III. Declaration5. We, professionals of the digital humanities, are building a  community of practice that is solidary, open, welcoming and freely  accessible.6. We are a community without borders. We are a multilingual and  multidisciplinary community.7. Our objectives are the advancement of knowledge, the  improvement of research quality in our disciplines, the enrichment of  knowledge and of collective patrimony, in the academic sphere and beyond  it.8. We call for the integration of digital culture in the  definition of the general culture of the twenty-first century.IV. Guidelines9. We call for open access to data and metadata, which must be  documented and interoperable, both technically and conceptually.10. We support the dissemination, exchange and free modification  of methods, code, formats and research findings.11. We call for the integration of digital humanities education  within social science and humanities curricula. We also wish to see the  creation of diplomas specific to the digital humanities, and the  development of dedicated professional education. Finally, we want such  expertise to be considered in recruitment and career development.12. We commit to building a collective expertise based upon a  common vocabulary, a collective expertise proceeding from the work of  all the actors involved. This collective expertise is to become a common  good. It is a scientific opportunity, but also an opportunity for  professional insertion in all sectors.13. We want to help define and propagate best practices,  corresponding to needs identified within or across disciplines, which  should derive and evolve from debate and consensus within the  communities concerned. The fundamental openness of the digital  humanities nevertheless assures a pragmatic approach to protocols and  visions, which maintains the right to coexistence of different and  competing methods, to the benefit of both thought and practice.14. We call for the creation of scalable digital infrastructures  responding to real needs. These digital infrastructures will be built  iteratively, based upon methods and approaches that prove successful in  research communities.Join us!You can sign the Manifesto 