This session will start with an online tour of Digital Karnak, a 3D Virtual Reality model of an ancient Egyptian site built in VSim to be a pedagogical tool and database of information. It will be presented by Lisa Snyder and Elaine Sullivan. The collaborative project has been in development at UCLA, and its creators have been actively involved in leading discussions about the publication, peer review, and dispersion of their work. You can get a glimpse of Digital Karnak here, and more information about VSim here.

After “touring” Karnak with Lisa and Elaine, I’d like to lead a discussion of THATCamp attendees around the topic of evaluating digital projects of all types. For instance, how can digital scholars facilitate the acceptance of our work toward promotion and tenure? What tactics have worked for digital scholars in the past? What challenges do digital scholars face in making sure our work is peer reviewed effectively?

The CAA and SAH have created a Mellon-supported digital task force whose mission is to develop guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship. As both a digital scholar and a researcher for the task force, I hope we can contribute to the ongoing dialogue toward supporting digital work—at all levels of academia and public scholarship—by effectively evaluating it and facilitating its inclusion in promotion and tenure portfolios.