Move over Guitar Hero.   This is a story of the reconstruction of a small piece of social and musical history in Oakland, California on NPR of all places.  It's a great idea, but hopefully the virtual reality is smoother than the clip included here.  Just imagine something like this merged with XBox; now that would be something really fun.

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) is an umbrella organization formed in 2005 initially to coordinate the activities of the Association for Computers in the Humanities (founded in 1978) and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (founded in 1973). In 2007, the Canada-based Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (SDH-SEMI) joined the Alliance.

Devoted to the encouragement and exploration of the digital humanities in all its forms, ADHO's activities encompass the publication of

peer reviewed journals:

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), an independent nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., supports higher education and advanced research primarily through programs in academic libraries and allied institutions. CLIR convenes meetings to articulate concerns shared across multiple communities; commissions and publishes reports on topics of interest to the library and information research communities; provides support for graduate students and recent graduates of doctoral programs in the humanities; and runs the annual Frye Institute in cooperation with Emory University to train future leaders of college and university libraries.  

CLIR's agenda for the next five years reflects past and ongoing transformations resulting from advances in information and communication technologies. It has six interdependent components: cyberinfrastructure, preservation, scholarly methodologies, future library, leadership and new models of research. Cyberinfrastructure establishes a foundation that enables modes of technology-mediated research and models of scholarship. Computationally-intensive research methods and associated models of scholarship occasion needs for new leadership as well as new institutional roles for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions. These organizations will be key to managing the enormous quantities of data, which has resulted from technology-intensive investigations together with related forms of scholarly expression. CLIR's long-standing commitment to curation and preservation of analog and digital data positions the organization to take a leadership role in ongoing national discussions. CLIR is deeply committed to identifying strategic approaches and partnerships that leverage social, intellectual and organizational resources across institutional and disciplinary boundaries on behalf of the public good. 

Ithaka promotes innovation in higher education by helping pioneering initiatives to thrive. Leaders of new not-for-profit projects, and their funders, must navigate a challenging path from early-stage funding to long-term viability. At the same time, long-established institutions are finding that they must fundamentally rethink the way they serve their constituents in a changing world. Ithaka supports entrepreneurial leaders in higher education with a range of services.

Research Services
Our research group works to understand how new technologies are changing higher education and how colleges and universities can best manage these changes. Its work is guided by an advisory committee of community leaders, and it is presently emphasizing three areas of interest:

NITLE is a non-profit initiative focused on advancing learning through the use of digital technology. NITLE's participating institutions represent more than 100 primarily smaller independent colleges and universities in the U.S. and world-wide.

NITLE provides professional development programs and managed information services that strengthen higher education by enabling the collaborative sharing of resources, expertise and effective practices. In addition, using collaborative technologies such as multipoint, interactive videoconferencing and open-source systems for learning and collaboration, participants in NITLE programs and services are able to engage in on-going, peer-to-peer exchange across disciplines, professions, and institutions and to build communities of practice that create and share solutions for learning that are useful and relevant to smaller, teaching-centered colleges and universities.

NITLE's programs--both face-to-face and virtual--engage faculty, instructional technologists and librarians in reflective discussion and hands-on practice focused on good teaching and the appropriate use of technology as well as effective, mission-centered strategies for adopting instructional technologies and enterprise tools on campus. NITLE's services lower institutions' risk in testing and adopting technology systems by aggregating community needs and providing managed services that meet those needs. NITLE services currently provide its participating colleges with access to multipoint, interactive videoconferencing (MIV); open-source learning management systems (Moodle and Sakai); and institutional repository services (DSpace).

In all its activities, NITLE leverages the expertise inherent in its participant community and provides a forum and resources to enable the strategic understanding and effective adoption of digital technologies.

For more information, visit www.nitle.org or subscribe to NITLE's blog, Liberal Education Today.