It’s the 2014 Day of Digital Humanities, and digital humanists around the globe are writing about how they spend their day. I made a blog for it at Day of DH 2014, and of course I’ll cross post here too.

First item of the day: picking up my J1 scholar visa form which needed a travel validation signature so I can leave the US to go to Canada (to Jeremy Hunsinger‘s university, Laurier) on Thursday to give a talk with Scott on our visualizations of the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. I suppose I don’t need the signature to leave the country, but I certainly will for them to let me back in.

Getting signatures on forms isn’t digital humanities, just one of the not very exciting admin tasks that all scholars have to attend it. And that reminds you that your presence in a country is potentially precarious. I actually had to have Steve Jones, the lovely head of the Communications Department, sign a different form approving my going to Canada as relevant to my research so I could get this signature on the form I need to keep with my passport. Luckily Steve let me go, with a laugh and raised eyebrows at the government requiring his giving me permission. Nothing like a little governmental paternalism.