Collaborative research in the digital humanities

This is a Fest (celebration) in the form of a Schrift (publication) honouring the professional career of an extraordinary man, Harold Short, by looking at his work and, beyond it, to the digital humanities which he has done so much to establish, in the style and with the trajectory that he has helped to give to the field. But it is also a liber amicorum, a testament of friends to the enduring and improving difference he has made through an inseparable combination of love, imagination, thought, patience and stubbornness: love, in energetic devotion to our subject and to many of its practitioners; imagination, technical, intellectually critical and administrative; thought, in puzzling out the implications of computing and attending to all the details of implementing it collaboratively; and, yes, both patience and plain stubbornness in the face of uncomprehending resistance to new ideas and ways of working. He reminds us that at the centre of all that we do are people, some very special people. This introduction attempts to point toward the significance of what Harold has done.