Digital Humanities in

Academic Libraries

Sandra CowanUniversity of Lethbridge Library

Lethbridge, Alberta, CanadaSW/PACA Conference

Albuquerque, New Mexico20/2/14

2005 The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) is an umbrella organisation whose goals are to promote and support digital research and teaching across arts and humanities disciplines…

http://adho.org/about

April 2007 centerNet is an international network of digital humanities centers formed for cooperative and collaborative action to benefit digital humanities and allied fields in general, and centers as humanities cyberinfrastructure in particular.

http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet/about/

January 2013 GO::DH is a Special Interest Group of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations. Supported by the University of Lethbridge. The purpose of GO::DH is to help break down barriers that hinder communication and collaboration among researchers and students of the Digital Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Heritage sectors around the world.

http://ww

w.globaloutlookdh.org/category/about-2/

January 2013 Special Issue: Digital Humanities in Libraries

January, 2013 dh + lib : where digital humanities and librarianship meetIt aims to provide a communal space where librarians, archivists, LIS graduate students, and information specialists of all stripes can contribute to a conversation about digital humanities and libraries. http://acrl.ala.org/dh/about-3/

"The Board recognizes that Digital Humanities is a crucial area for our membership and one in which members have asked ACRL to expand its offerings. The rapid growth and active participation in the original Digital Humanities discussion group, has proven that this is an area of importance to our membership. The ACRL Board is very excited to include the Digital Humanities Interest Group among ACRL’s growing number of interest groups and looks forward to hearing from you about the projects and initiatives the group decides to undertake. The Board asked me to extend their appreciation to you for making available to ACRL members this new community of practice.“

ACRL Digital Humanities Listserv

Association of College & Research Libraries New DH Interest Group

January 30, 2014

February 6, 2014 Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Research Report

Further Characteristics of DH:

• Project-based• Collaborative• Digital tools• Iterative• Experimental• Interdisciplinary• Textual, spatial or visual analysis • Open access• Praxis

Digital Humanities

An interdisciplinary area that can be characterized by: a) Asking traditional and sometimes new humanistic questions using digital

resources; or b) Subjecting computing technologies to interpretation and critique by humanistic

methods and strategies of questioning.

~Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of scholarly communications at MLA

“Every research library is already supporting DH at some level. Libraries acquire special collections and other library materials for the humanities, digitize collections for improved access and utility, and provide repositories for scholarly publications.” OCLC Report, 2014

https://www.uleth.ca/dspace/

http://blackfootdigitallibrary.com/bla/about-us

These online collections were locally-developed by the Digitization Team at University of Lethbridge Library, and contain content provided by the University Library, University Archives, on-campus departments and community partner institutions.

http://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/

DH Centers in Academic Libraries

“As of November 2012, nearly 100 centers are listed, roughly half of them in the United States. Of those centers, nearly half are located within libraries and another quarter maintain some informal relationship with libraries.”(Sula, 2013)

Scholar’s Lab at University of VirginiaLibrary Lab at Harvard

Digital Humanities Incubator at University of MarylandDigital Scholarship Commons at Emory University

Academic Libraries : Responses to DH?

1. What is Digital Humanities?

2. Supporters (reactive/responsive to serve patrons’ needs)

3. Full collaborators (proactive)

2. SUPPORTERS

• Responsive/reactive• Service orientation• OCLC Report “Does Every Research Library Need a Digital

Humanities Center?”• Libraries are already providing DH support in many ways• REACTIVE We’re already doing it – support to faculty, packaging

services, collaborating on DH centers and projects—responding to the needs of our patrons

3. FULL COLLABORATORS

• Proactive: taking the lead in DH• DH as away to change to the role of libraries and librarians,

move away from service/support role to active scholarship and equal collaboration

• DH centers in libraries, librarians as DH scholars • Institutional support of digital scholarship, rather than ad hoc

and often temporary centers, groups, initiatives• Responses to OCLC Report = librarians should and do take a

lead role; they ARE digital humanists and academics; they have a broad/multi-disciplinary viewpoint, more able to synthesize across disciplines;

Library Role/s in DH

• Library as lab/maker-space/classroom• Digitization• Digital management and preservation• Intellectual property rights• Open access/copyright• Tool development• Digital libraries• Marketing/outreach• Project management/planning & development• Grant support• Collection development• Metadata• Preservation/archiving• Training/instruction• Discovery/access/finding primary sources• Stability – infrastructure, sustainability

“The library is a permanent feature of the academy, supported by and responsive to its users.” (Bryson, et al.)

Chris Alen Sula “Digital Humanities and Libraries: A Conceptual Model” from Journal of Library Administration 53 (1), 2013

“In the twenty-first century, digital libraries are as essential to humanities scholarship as physical libraries have been in the past. Digital humanities is an evolving specialization in librarianship.”

York University (Toronto) Posting for Digital Humanities Librarian

Digital Humanities and Academic Libraries: References

Berry, D.M. (Ed.). (2012). Understanding Digital Humanities. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Burdick, A., Drucker, J., Lunenfeld, P., Presner, T., & Schnapp, J. (2012). Digital_Humanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Bryson, T., Posner, M., Varner, S., Page, M., Durante, K., & St. Pierre, A. (2010). Roles of librarians in digital humanities centers. http://digitallibrarians.org/node/2496

Posner, M. (2013). No half measures: Overcoming common challenges to doing digital humanities in the library. Journal of Digital Humanities 53(1). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01930826.2013.756694

Meeks, E. (2014, Feb 9). Digital humanities curio cabinet [blog posting].https://digitalhumanities.stanford.edu/digital-humanities-curio-cabinet

Nowviskie, B. (2013). Skunks in the library: A path to production for scholarly R&D. Journal of Library Administration 53(1), 53-66.

Nowviskie, B. (2014, Feb 8). Asking for it [blog posting]. http://nowviskie.org/2014/asking-for-it/

Porter, D. (2014, Feb 12). What if we do, in fact, know best? A response to the OCLC report on DH and research libraries [dh + lib blog post]. http://acrl.ala.org/dh/2014/02/12/what-if-we-do-in-fact-know-best-a-response-to-the-oclc-report-on-dh-and-research-libraries/

Schaffner, J., & Erway, R. (2014). Does every research library need a digital humanities center? OCLC Research Report. http://oclc.org/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresearch-digital-humanities-center-2014-overview.html

Sula, C.A. (2013). Digital humanities and libraries: A conceptual model. Journal of Library Administration 53(1), 10-26.

Vandegrift, M. (2012, June 27). What is digital humanities and what’s it doing in the library? In the Library With a Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandthelib/

Vandegrift, M., & Varner, S. (2013). Evolving in common: Creating mutually supportive relationships between libraries and the digital humanities. Journal of Library Administration 53(1), 67-78.

Vinopal, J, & McCormick, M. (2013). Supporting digital scholarship in research libraries: Scalability and sustainability. Journal of Library Administration 53(1), 27-42.

Water, D. J. (2013). An overview of the digital humanities. ARL Research Library Issues 284. http://publications.arl.org/rli284/3

Organizations & Websites

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Digital Humanities Discussion Group [January 30, 2014 approved as ACRL Special Interest Group]http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/discussiongroups/acr-dgdh

dh + lib : where digital humanities and librarianship meethttp://acrl.ala.org/dh/

Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)http://adho.org/

CenterNet: An International Network of Digital Humanities Centers http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet/

Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH)http://csdh-schn.org/

Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH) ADHO Special Interest Grouphttp://www.globaloutlookdh.org/

Digital Humanities Quarterlyhttp://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/about/about.html

ADHO DH & Libraries Special Interest Group under proposal