Actually this "haystack" is the pronunciation for the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC).
This "consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists and engineers from universities and other civic institutions across the U.S. and internationally...is committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology."
The consortium is developing tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other digital projects.
I first noted HASTAC while reading about a meeting of representatives of 17 digital humanities centers and 15 organizations that support them financially at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to discuss forming a coalition of centers. As Tufts is looking at funding a Humanities Center in the School of Arts and Sciences, this meeting caught my eye.
One outcome of this meeting is a digital humanities wiki that could become a "single place online to locate information about centers, projects, tools, standards, and other aspects of the digital humanities."
If you are interested in seeing what other digital humanities centers are doing, check out the extensive list at HASTAC.
The interest in digital humanities initiatives is growing since the NEH has launched a new program "supporting projects that utilize or study the impact of digital technology."
Currently there are five programs related to this initiative:
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership
Digital Humanities Challenge Grants
Digital Humanities Workshops for K-12
Digital Humanities Fellowships
