A collaboration among the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities, Libraries, and Office of Information Technology, MITH cultivates research agendas clustered around digital tools, text mining and visualization, and the creation and preservation of electronic literature, digital games and virtual worlds.

Made possible by a challenge grant in late 1998 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH),[1] MITH began operations during the fall semester of 1999, under Martha Nell Smith, Professor of English at the University of Maryland.

Smith left the directorship in 2005 and was replaced by Neil Fraistat, who assumed the role first in a one-year "acting" capacity and then, permanently, in 2006.

MITH is involved in several on-going projects, including the following: MITH is the host of the Deena Larsen Collection, a personal collection of early-era personal computers and software.

[14] MITH hosts the Digital Dialogues series, which invites prominent scholars from the digital humanities, new media, and information technology fields to give a presentation on their current research.