A Digital Humanist Puts New Tools in the Hands of Scholars - Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Ed

When Daniel J. Cohen went to work at George Mason University in 2001, its Center for History and New Media boasted a name and little else. Still, 20 years into the life of the Web, Mr. Cohen feels that many scholars don't grasp the full potential of digital tools. They dismiss computer techniques for reading mass amounts of text. They see the Web as a place to distribute electronic copies of articles rather than as a platform that fosters new ways of thinking. "I'm particularly worried about the humanities," Mr. Cohen says in his corner office at the George Mason center, which he has run since 2007. Traditional forms of scholarly communication suffer from "inertia" that keeps them hanging around "long past their freshness date."