By George Williams. Launched in September of 2010, Digital Humanities Questions & Answers is a joint venture of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and ProfHacker. (See Julie Meloni’s launch announcement.)
Digital Humanities Questions and Answers (@DHAnswers on Twitter) is designed to be a free resource where anyone with an interest in the digital humanities can pose a question to the community of folks working in the field. More...

By George Williams. Here at ProfHacker, we’ve written a number of posts over the years about Creative Commons licenses, which are intended to “give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.” For example, I’ve explained how to find free online content that you’re allowed to re-use. Jason showed us the basics of searching the photo site Flickr for images with Creative Commons licenses. And Julie discussed using Creative Commons licensed material in the classroom. More...

By Ilan Stavans. I’m saturated with Obama’s rhetoric. I’m not talking about his politics, which, in and of themselves, have been disappointing. The list of miscalculations, overreaching, and unfinished business is staggering: immigration reform, drone use, NSA, a stumbling health-care reformulation. More...

By William Germano. “And the Canaanites slew the Amirites, because they had done evil in the name of linguistic brevity.”
That punishing thought may not actually show up in any of the Biblical accounts, but in recent months the amirites  have invaded my social media. My first reaction (I’d been looking at a lot of Italian librettos recently) was that an amirite  was some Italian or Latin second-person plural I didn’t get. But of course it isn’t, it’s just am I right reduced to its bare forked essence. This realization did not make me a happy man. More...

By Lucy Ferriss. The writer Bich Minh Nguyen posted a question on Facebook the other day that drew a swell of discussion:
Grammar dilemma over here. According to grammar sites we’re supposed to write “Hi, Jane” rather than “Hi Jane” (because “Hi” is different from “Dear”). But this just doesn’t sit right with me. I dislike the two commas involved: “Hi, Jane,” looks cluttered compared to “Hi Jane.” I’m starting to feel a little anxious whenever I start an email. Will the person I’m writing disapprove of my (lack of) grammar? Which path should I take?
Responses ranged from the euphonic (“’Yo Jane!’ has a nice ring to it”) to the technical (“Personally sometimes I use the comma, other times not; the not being when I am using Siri on a I-device and Siri does not always understand it is supposed to insert a comma rather than spell out the word ‘comma’”). More...

By Nick DeSantis. Top-ranked liberal-arts colleges are failing to provide their students with a rigorous higher education even as many of them have steadily increased tuition and administrative spending in recent years, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni asserted in a report released on Monday. More...

By Nick DeSantis. President Obama left some in higher education feeling slighted on Thursday, when he said during a speech in Wisconsin that young people could make more money in skilled manufacturing than with art-history degrees. Mr. Obama’s speech was intended to highlight his administration’s approach to work-force training, which was a key theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday. More...

By Lawrence Biemiller. Friday’s announcement that President Obama has created a foundation to pick a site for his presidential library set off a new round of speculation over where the facility might end up, with universities in Chicago, New York, Hawaii, and California expressing interest. The University of Chicago’s president, Robert J. Zimmer, immediately released a statement saying that his institution “is committed to working in partnership with the City of Chicago, our neighbors, civic leaders, and cultural and educational institutions” to locate the library on the city’s South Side. Accompanying the statement is an FAQ laying out a “Rationale for Chicago” and describing what the university’s role would be. More...