The Digital Classicist is used here as a case study for looking at the development of and more importantly how we might sustain a Digital Humanities (DH) community. This paper examines the background to the foundation of the Digital Classicist (DC), how it all came about; its development, why it evolved in the way that it did; presents some reflections on what was learned along the way, and, looking ahead, considers where, as a community, we might go from here. Putting this in the wider context, it asks the question why, how and when does a community become a community and how do we recognise one as such?

What is the motivation that is needed to start a community of this type? Firstly, it needs a critical mass of people coming together with similar interests and then the necessary spark of an idea combined with the will to make it happen. The DC certainly had its antecedents both in Classics and cognate disciplines. The Digital Medievalist[1] was established in 2003 and indeed many people (scholars, practitioners, and students) are members of both communities as we have many common interests and concerns; the DC however looks back to Ross Scaife and the Stoa Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities which was established in 1997 for inspiration and with the introduction of the Stoa blog in December 2003 being a mobilising catalyst.[2]

The DC was established in 2004 and set up as a community of users to provide a central hub to draw together practitioners interested in the application of innovative digital methods and technology to the study of the ancient world (in its widest sense). The launch of the DC into the wider world could be said to have been at the presentation of the prize-winning poster at the Digital Resources in the Humanities (DRH) conference held at Lancaster in September 2005.[3] This was at a time when we called what we did Humanities Computing as the proto-Digital Humanities and hence: “Humanities Computing applied to the study of the Ancient World” was the poster strapline (see Fig. 1).

Establishment means creating a presence and clearly an online one was needed with the setting up of the website which was quickly followed by a wiki (see Figs 2 and 3).[4] Collaboration and cooperation are central to the DC philosophy and from Fig. 2 it is possible to see the links to the many partnerships that were set up with other projects. Setting up in competition with any of these was never the intention but rather to provide a central web-based focus for research in this rich, diverse, and multi-national field of scholarship [Bodard and Mahony 2008].[5] One of the stated aims of the DC is to bring scholars together and to address head-on the issues of collaborative working; hence the additional use of a wiki:

[…] as well as sharing information about themselves and their own work, members collaboratively compile, review and comment upon articles on digital projects, tools and research questions of particular relevance to the ancient world. They also list guides to practice, introduce the discussion forum and, most importantly, list events. It is these events that more than anything else define the Digital Classicist community by providing a showcase for our members' research and a venue for discussion, introductions, and inspiration for new collaborative relationships and projects.  [Mahony and Bodard 2010, 2]

In 2006 the Digital Classicist Wiki was presented and discussed in the context of openness and collaborative working by this author at the 7th Computers, Literature and Philology (CLiP) conference: “Literatures, Languages and Cultural Heritage in a digital world”, held at King's College London.[6]

Importantly, and in the same year, the Digital Classicist Summer seminar series was launched at the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS), Senate House London. This too had an antecedent in the form of an earlier series run by the organisers. This was effectively the proto-DC seminar series and (ironically) named The Summer Ersatz WiP (Work-in-Progress) seminar as it occupied the same slot as the Postgraduate Work-in-Progress routinely run by students (with staff excluded except by specific invitation) on a Friday afternoon with the added bonus to finish early and to socialise.[7] The Ersatz series ran during the Summer of 2004 as the vibrant and comprehensive seminar programme in Classics supported by the ICS ran in Term time only. We ran our early seminars (and later the DC series) in the Summer because nobody else did; the precedent was set and proved to be valuable experience in setting up and running a successful seminar series.

Running a seminar series once is a “one off”; running it for two consecutive years and it is possibly only a “follow on” (fitting in the papers that could not be included in the first round); run it for the third consecutive year and it is then established with support in place and every expectation that it will grow and continue to thrive.[8] Pulling together a nucleus of people willing to give their time for the organising and also members of the community willing to present research papers suggests the possibility of further endeavours. For the DC, this gave the impetus and inspiration for two panels presented at the Classical Association (CA) Annual Conference 2007 held in Birmingham: Research into people and places and Interdisciplinary approaches to research and pedagogy.[9] The DC was presenting Digital Humanities research at a mainstream Classics conference under the aegis of the largest Classical organisation in the UK as well as at the ICS which is arguably the foremost Classics Institute in the UK, if not the world. Further DC research has been presented at later CA conferences: Glasgow (2009) Ancient World and e-Science[10]; Cardiff (2010) Linked data for archaeology and geography[11]; Nottingham (2014) Open Educational Resources and their place in teaching and research for Classics.[12] The CA conference in Durham in 2011 saw not only two DC panels: Teaching and Publication of Classics in the Internet Age and Ancient Space, Linked Data and Digital Research but also a dedicated Digital Classicist Training Day featuring “Generic Web Tools” and the “Papyrological editor”.[13] DC research papers have not been limited to the CA but have also been presented at the American Philological Association (APA), Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference (CAA), Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts (DRHA), and Digital Humanities; DC takes digital humanities to the Classics and classics to the Digital Humanities.[14]

The Digital Classicist was always considered by the founders to be a “network” to link together people and organisations; a community of users set up by and for practitioners interested in the application of DH methodologies to the study of the ancient world [Mahony and Bodard 2010, 2]. Putting out information gave it a more public voice and a clearer focus with seminars and conference panels giving our members a forum as well as a voice. There is a Jiscmail-hosted mailing list for dissemination of information, making connections and starting conversations and discussions.[15] However, just as with the website and the wiki these are virtual ways in which we connect and communicate asynchronously with our fellows; it is primarily the seminars and also secondarily the conferences that give a locus, a physical presence to the DC.

As well as the mailing list, other communication channels were set up with the obligatory blog being one. However, after an initial period it was incorporated with the Stoa to avoid repetition and to keep one central focus.[16]

As previously mentioned, the DC was always conceived of as a community and a network of users. The wiki was set up as a collaborative medium to allow members to compile, review and comment on digital tools, projects and research questions that would be of interest to them. As with all wikis this had no pre-set design structure but has grown organically over the years in particular in response to DC members as they are the authors of the content.[17] In this way it should follow the interests of the members as well as opening up the opportunities for collaborative working which again reinforces the community aspect of the DC. Indeed, the content of the Guides to Good Practice, FAQs, Tools, and Projects pages should be considered research output in their own right. As the wiki platform is more than simple static webpages it allows for additions and amendments not only by the author but also by other members.[18] The wiki format, set up in this way, can be considered to provide rolling and ongoing peer review and again provide another focus for a community.[19] Moreover, all the original content published in the DC Wiki is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License[20] allowing it to be shared, distributed and adapted so long as it is appropriately attributed and not subject to any further restrictions.

Following the successful establishment of the DC seminar series as an annual event, they have been helped each year with an ever-widening programme that seeks to include research students as well as early career researchers and established practitioners. The emphasis throughout has been on new innovative techniques and methodologies which advance the research interests of classicists (in the widest sense to include all cognate areas of interest such as historians, palaeographers, epigraphists and archaeologists) as well as information specialists or digital humanists. Indeed, the annual “call for papers” specifies that proposals for papers should have an academic research agenda relevant to at least one of these fields.

One aspect of the DC seminars that is often commented on by speakers and visitors alike is the relaxed atmosphere and particularly so after the formal presentation is concluded which then allows and indeed encourages further discussion in an informal setting. This is where the networking and discussions that result in the exchange of ideas and the plans for collaboration take place. This is a throwback to the original proto-DC seminars of the Ersatz series where the point was to have fun and be a foil to the oh-so formal seminars that were held in term time; an excuse to finish study early on a Friday and come together with other postgraduate students.

That said, there have been developments over the years. A growing reputation attracts international speakers and audience; the DC seminars have worldwide appeal and hence in response to requests we started making audio recordings and posting them online together with the presentation slides.[21] For the first time in 2013, and with the help of a professional videographer and some funding from the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and the Department of Digital Humanities at King's, there are video recordings as well as audio and slides to help to create a more permanent record as well as an archive.[22]

The seminars and conference panels create a nucleus of research and so publications became the next appropriate step to make the DC more than a transient entity. Selected papers from the inaugural DC seminar series in 2006 along with one from a conference panel and another specially commissioned were published in a special collaborative issue of the Digital Medievalist [Bodard and Mahony 2008]. This seemed a natural venue for the DC's first publication as the Digital Medievalist already had an established and robust publications platform and peer review mechanism; additionally, both Classics and Medieval projects have a long history of pushing forward the digital agenda through the works of Roberto Busa and IBM on the Index Thomisticus[23], through the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae[24] and a host of other innovative projects. A first DC print publication appeared in 2010 as part of the Ashgate series, Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities, with peer-reviewed contributions based on presentations from seminars and conference panels in 2007 and 2008 [Bodard and Mahony 2010]; this was followed in 2013 with another peer-reviewed publication this time in the ICS in-house journal the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (BICS) [Dunn and Mahony 2013]. During the revision of this article we have seen another important and innovative DC publication edited by organisers of the seminars in London and Berlin focussing on collaborative and public-facing digital research that engages non-academic and other broader audiences [Bodard and Romanello 2016]. These print publications ironically have given the “Digital” Classicist space on library shelves as well as online.

The seminars have become central to our activities and give a focus for the DC as a community. They promote the research activities of our members; they allow the promotion of the DC; they raise the profile of our speakers. This final point is important for, as well as publishing the presentation online, the DC has an extensive promotions network which as well as announcing the programme, pushes out weekly notifications of speaker and abstract. This is further supported by announcements on the Stoa, the Institute of Classical Studies and the University of London School of Advanced Studies networks. Both the DC and our members take advantage of social media and particularly Twitter. Using the hashtag #DigiClass, blog announcements are automatically “tweeted” by the Stoa and then individually circulated by the organisers and members to their own followers. “Live tweeting” is also encouraged at the seminars and any other DC event. The emphasis is changing from static to dynamic but as well as this the seminars create a focus through the Summer months both online and in the ICS. As well as in “time” the DC now has a presence in “space”, a physical as well as virtual location.

What is it that makes a community and particularly a scholarly one? As discussed earlier, as well as sharing information about themselves and their own work, DC members collaboratively compile, review and comment upon articles on digital projects, tools and research questions of particular relevance to the ancient world. They also list guides to practice, introduce the discussion forum and, most importantly, list events. It is argued here that it is these events more than anything else that define the DC community by providing a showcase for our members' research and a venue (both physical and virtual) for discussion, introductions, and the inspiration for new collaborative relationships and projects. The traditional scholarly community would be centred in an institution but here we have a virtual one with “a group of people who share the same interests, pursuits, or occupation […]” (OED Online s.v. community). Distance is no longer an obstacle and the spatial dimension with a common physical institutional location is no longer needed [Kenyon 2000, 22]; although of course the institutional support is as important as ever. Consequently, it is possible to conceive of a community as more of a symbolic and intellectual construct [Cohen 1989]. The spatial dimension becomes less important and the time factor more so (in the sense of when these seminars occur as they attract a virtual audience as well as a physical one) as the seminars and panels become representative of the DC and the community element becomes a mental construct and one of perception rather than physicality. However, the seminars (and to a lesser extent the conferences) now substitute for that physical presence and give a locational as well as a temporal point of focus. This sense of “community at a distance” is of great importance and studied much in the area of distance education.[25]

Indeed, “community” is one of the foundational terms in Social Science and too many attempts to theorise about it in those terms will be avoided here. However, it would be remiss not to at least include a brief mention of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, with the former being the strong ties that have become associated with “community” and the latter the somewhat weaker ties of what could be termed “association”, and the tension between what could be described as the physical community and one based on occupation or interest; further discussion on this topic should be saved for another paper on Ferdinand Tönnies. However, the point here is that the DC community falls between the two and is neither one nor the other but has some attributes of both. It is fundamentally a community of interest but the seminars and conference panels give the locus and (virtual) physicality and so a strengthening of the bonds. In the sociological sense, a scholarly community might be described as a group who share a common professional interest, communicate and collaborate with each other, but also and importantly identify themselves with the group's goals and values, and experience the feeling of belonging [Kenyon 2000, 22]. It is these factors that hold the “community” together.

Examples of this in practice can be seen in many DC publications and research activities. The Introduction to the 2010 volume, mentioned above, self-consciously uses the term “community of users” to describe the DC as it “has become defined by what we (as a community) do” and indeed that the “unifying agenda of the volume” does not depend on any particular technical, methodological or philosophical approach but rather as a “community of expertise and practice” [Mahony and Bodard 2010, 1–6]. This sense of community is a common theme expressed throughout this first print collection of DC papers, whether that be concerning material culture (Heath ch.2), EpiDoc (Tupman ch.4), or the survival of texts (Cayless ch.8). Perhaps the most pertinent is the concluding chapter (Terras ch.10) where Melissa Terras draws together many of the volume's central themes with a focus on interdisciplinary research (and the problems that arise at both an individual and institutional level) which by their nature require participants coming together in communities of practice to achieve their research goals. In the broad spectrum of DC interests (just as in the wider field of DH where we position ourselves) no single person has all the skills that are needed for interdisciplinary working; cooperation and collaboration is needed.

This vision of the DC as a “community” goes beyond theorising and manifests itself in practice. This can clearly be seen in initiatives such as EpiDoc (a sub-set of the TEI and a set of XML standards for “the representation of texts in digital form”).[26] Again, users of EpiDoc self-identify as a “community of practitioners” by those who both make use of and teach encoding methods for inscriptions [Dee et al. 2016, 15]. The same is true of many other DC projects such Perseids (a collaborative editing platform), EAGLE (the Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy) and those involved in documenting cultural heritage; these also self-identify and represent themselves as communities [Almas and Beaulieu 2016, 178] [Orlandi 2016, 209] [Vitale 2016, 147]. Just as the wider DC community, these too can be typified as virtual ones as they also exist without a physical location; yes, there is an institutional site where the server is hosted and maintained but the users and contributors are spread far and wide. This is also true of the wider DH community. This author is Associate Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH) and we are very much a “virtual centre”; we have signs on our office doors to indicate our affiliation but members of the Management Team are spread across various department in the Arts and Humanities, as well as Computer Science and beyond.[27] We are a cross-faculty research centre; we share a vision and a taught programme; we put on seminars and other events but we do not have a physical space; we have posters on display but no bricks-and-mortar evidence of our existence. Indeed, we are ourselves part of the wider virtual community of DH centres that is CentreNet.[28]

How might a community such as DC become sustainable when all the members undoubtedly have great pressure on their limited time? As above, the community is mostly identified by what it does and, for the DC, the events more than anything else define the community and provide, along with the wiki, a showcase for members research and a point of focus. For a community, and particularly a virtual one, to flourish members need interaction with the rest of that community and to have a sense of belonging: of being a part of that community. Communication via the Jisc discussion list, coming together for seminars and conferences, both virtually by social media and in person, creates that sense. The common focus supports the sense of belonging and connects with the shared interests and values of members. Debate and discussion follow and the asynchronous medium of the mailing list and wiki allow a democratisation of the discussion process where everyone potentially gets to have their say and is equally valued [Mahony 2007]. This communication opens up possibilities for the sharing of information, knowledge, tools, and advice; the scholarly exchange of expertise and resources given freely here becomes part of a socially organised form of reciprocity such as described by Marcel Mauss who sees this type of sharing as a mechanism to maintain and preserve the social relations within a society and by extension a community [Mauss 1990]. Thus the community is sustained by engaging in the activities that attracted the members to begin with. Members need to feel that they are part of the community, that they have a voice, and most importantly that they are able to have a positive and valuable interaction with other members of the community [Millan and Chavis 1986]. In other words this might be reduced down to the simple question: what do the members get out of being part of the community? To be sustained a community must continue to engage its members.

In addition, the institutional affiliation needs to be maintained and the DC has been generously funded and supported since its inception by the ICS at Senate House, London (part of the University of London, School of Advanced Study) and they in turn are accountable to their funding bodies. It is therefore important to satisfy basic funding requirements to ensure further support. Our seminars are open and everyone is welcome, from specialist to those with a casual interest; we are part of the ICS's programme of “outreach” and “public engagement”; we increase their “impact” as well as participating in those other activities favoured by funding bodies, “knowledge transfer” and “knowledge exchange”. However, the DC goes much further than this as we are part of and participate in networks much wider than the DC such as those of the Digital Humanities and e-Science communities in both the UK and internationally.[29] Our collective looks outward rather than inward and engages with the wider international community. Indeed, each year our seminars have speakers from outside the UK and Europe as well as international visitors in the audiences.[30]

The emergence of digital scholarship in the humanities has had considerable impact on disciplines such as Classics and the study of the ancient world. The example of the DC is used here to demonstrate the possibilities for collaborative authorship, the creation of reusable research output, the opportunities to add thoughts and comments in the form of annotation, and for bringing people together (both physically and virtually) to facilitate the exchange of ideas. These are all central to building communities of learning and scholarship, but the most important is the exchange of ideas. It is in this way that knowledge grows and we are able to push the boundaries of scholarship. To be clear, this was never, to my knowledge as one of the founders, planned at the outset. Communities grow organically and in response to their members and their members’ interests. It is necessary, of course, to have people who are prepared to commit time and effort in the planning, organisation, development, contribution, and participation. To flourish such a community needs to be community driven and to give members a sense of ownership, where users become contributors and so stakeholders, to be welcoming and inclusive rather than exclusive. This is particularly true of a community that exists for most part at a distance and falls between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

Using the DC as a case study for the development and sustainability of a DH community, what can be learned from these experiences and what could usefully guide other communities? As mentioned above, there was no specific plan for the development of the DC but rather an idea: to form a central hub and bring together researchers and practitioners with common interests. The DC grew in a pragmatic way creating partnerships with an inclusive rather than exclusive vision and this inclusivity allowed for diversity and a widening of the sphere of interests. This is turn brought together a greater variety of people, researchers, practitioners and students to allow a much greater facilitation of cross-disciplinary discussion and possibility of collaborations. This inclusivity is important and something that is fostered for us at DC and within DH more generally. For a virtual community to survive it needs to be outward facing and have a focus; one that is recognisable with branding and outreach, importantly outreach beyond the immediate and obvious community. The DC takes digital humanities to Classics and classics to the Digital Humanities with papers and panels at major classics conferences as well as at digital humanities ones.[31] The established seminar series gives the opportunity for this outreach and the promotion of the organisation, the speakers, their research, the centre or whatever as well as a relaxed opportunity for networking. The inclusivity also encourages the breadth of contributions evidenced by the wide-ranging topics found on the seminar listings.[32] The DC has robust and effective mechanisms for promotion via mailing lists, discussion fora and social media with an archive of events, presentations and videos on the website. Showcasing publications from the community afford the same opportunities for outreach and promotion. Engaging with other communities facilitates knowledge exchange and transfer.

The community begins with a nucleus of willing people which the activities described above allow to develop and grow. More is needed, however, for a virtual community to be sustained and to understand this we need to go back to Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. With no physical location, the community begins with the weaker ties of interest and association; the locus and point of contact afforded by the seminars and conference participation strengthens those ties but they are not enough. Members need to be involved and have a sense of ownership; they need to be stakeholders – this is what strengthens the ties. The DC Wiki is one showcase for members' research and a point of focus for our virtual community. A new initiative to draw members to this sense of ownership and closer ties is the monthly wiki “sprint”.[33] This involves participants coming together for an hour or two to work on improving the content of the DC Wiki; these can be themed sprints or consist simply of going through the pages updating links and content as well as deleting redundant pages. This gives another level of participation for willing members and another opportunity to meet and work together in a virtual environment; there is a Google doc to monitor edits being made and a IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel for any discussion or questions. This is particularly useful for drawing in members who consider their specific area of interest to be in the minority or under represented amongst the publications, such as Arabic.[34] Members need to be engaged by the community and feel that they are part of it; they must associate themselves and self-identify with the community. It starts with shared interests and values but the successful community needs members (a critical mass) to have the commitment to ensure it is sustained; having a sense of ownership and a stake in this ensures that it will still be around in years to come.

In any discussion on sustainability, the importance of institutional support cannot be underestimated. The DC has always benefited from the generous support of the ICS along with that of the institutions that employ the organisers. With the ever-increasing pressures of academic and research commitments, for staff, students and practitioners, organisations such as the DC allow the opportunities for outreach and public engagement looked for by promotion and interview panels. Moreover, they go some way to combating the lack of institutional memory by establishing a record of activities, involvement and value in the long term which can then be pointed to should the need arise to justify the time and expense involved.

The DC model seems a robust and effective one as, at the time of writing, it has now passed its first decade. But what of the future? We have seminars, conference papers and panels, we have publications, we are developing a substantial archive of contributions, and now our web is spreading further. Presenters at our seminars are now setting up their own networks within which bringing people together both physically and virtually also plays an important role. There is now the Digital Classicist Germany which plans to “function as a hub for Digital Classics-related initiatives in Germany”.[35] Moreover, the Digital Classicist Berlin launched its own seminar series complete with lecture videos in October 2012 and was they claim, “inspired by the ICS London Seminar”, with the inaugural keynote presentation given by Gabriel Bodard.[36] The keynote presentation for the second Berlin series (2013-2014) was given by this author[37] and the 2016-2017 series is (at the time of writing) in progress;[38] they too are now established and will no doubt grow and continue to thrive. This is indeed an honour and a reflection of the regard in which the DC is held by members (as the Berlin organisers are also DC members) of the international community. In addition, 2012 saw the launch of e-humanities.net at the University of Leipzig and their eHumanities seminars, again modelled on the DC seminar format, where it was a great honour to be invited to give the inaugural talk which is the subject of this paper.[39]

Writing up this talk for publication has allowed much reflection on the past and on the organic development of the DC as a community; it has allowed an evaluation of what is meant by a community and how that might be understood and sustained. Looking to the future it is pleasing to see that the DC has provided inspiration for the development of new seminar series both at Berlin and Leipzig. This is perhaps how we might measure a community and recognise one as such by the extent to which it is regarded by others.