digital humanities research and academic librarian
DESCRIPTION
PResentation given at the HAB Wolfenbuttel, July 25, 2014.TRANSCRIPT
Digital Humanities Research + the
Academic Librarian Research Collaborations
at the University of Illinois
Harriett E. Green July 25, 2014
HAB Wolfenbüttel
Digital humanities + the library
Library as support service?
Library as a humanities laboratory?
Library as research partner?
Different models in different places….
But at the heart are users.
@greenharr [email protected]
People, not Projects “What if you saw that training period as an investment in healthy, long-lasting relationships? What if we saw digital humanities as a long-term investment in scholarly growth, not a short-term investment in projects?”
Miriam Posner, UCLA http://miriamposner.com/blog/commit-to-dh-people-not-dh-projects/#more-1687
Public Student Faculty/researcher
@greenharr [email protected]
Research and the DH Librarian
Digital Humanities Librarian
Library Support
Research Collaboration
Undergraduate Research
@greenharr [email protected]
DH @ Illinois: A History of Research
IMLS Digital Collections and Content (IMLS DCC)
Digital library program: http://www.library.illinois.edu/dcc/
National Digital Newspaper Program
OpenEmblem Portal/Emblematica Online
@greenharr [email protected]
Emblematica Online
New phase, “Emblematica II” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Humanities Collections and Reference Resource program
New contributions of digitized emblem books from the University of Glasgow, Duke University, Utrecht, Getty Institute
Other key aspects of this phase: Revised portal with new functionalities and user engagement study
http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu
@greenharr [email protected]
Enhanced IconClass
User Engagement for Emblematica Online
Goals
Understand the research practices of humanities scholars working in literary studies, early modern studies, Renaissance history, emblem studies, and other humanities fields that draw upon emblem books for research.
Understand behaviors of researchers working with Emblematica Online and similar digital archives.
Gather input from researchers to assess the new functionalities and services added to Emblematica Online, and determine future functionalities that could further enhance the portal.
@greenharr [email protected]
“While a greater reliance and dependency on digital resources is inevitable, the quality of the data and their organization and accessibility in service to teaching and scholarship are major concerns.
“Without the guiding voice of scholars, the tremendous effort now being devoted to digitizing our cultural heritage could in fact impede, not facilitate, future research.”
—Charles Henry, The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
Why Users?
@greenharr [email protected]
User Engagement Study Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with scholars
SO FAR: Importance of digitized emblems for use in the classroom; can promote increased research around emblems and visual cultures
TO COME: Develop usability testing protocol for conducting usability testing of Emblematica Online in the fall
Do you use Emblematica Online? Come talk to me!
@greenharr [email protected]
What’s Next for Emblematica
Annotation Tool
Collection Building Tool
Improvements to IconClass navigation
Expansion of content and cataloging – addition of more digitized emblems and books, increased cataloging of emblems
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
@greenharr [email protected]
HathiTrust Research Center
Research arm of the Hathi Trust Digital Library: Collaboration between University of Illinois and Indiana University
Goal: provide researchers with access to large-scale digitized text corpora (“big data”) for text mining
Conducting research on what researchers need to conduct large-scale text mining with mass corpora
Ultimate goal: Enable “non-consumptive” research on copyrighted works
@greenharr [email protected]
http://hathitrust.org/htrc
Research Agenda
MONK text mining user study
Virtual Verse – e-literature access and
preservation
Scholarly use of digital collections
Digital curation of digital humanities resources
Usability of DH Resources
@greenharr [email protected]
Scholarly Commons
• Digital scholarship center in the library
• Consult for data services, GIS, digital humanities, copyright, scholarly communications, etc.
• Partner with: • Campus academic technology services • Research support: Survey Research Lab • Graduate College • Research institutes: Institute for Computing in
Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS)
http://www.library.illinois.edu/sc
@greenharr [email protected]
DH + Undergraduate Research
Students publish their final research projects with digital publishing tools:
Omeka
Wordpress
Scalar
Other tools: Voyant, Easel.ly
OJS for publishing undergraduate research journals: https://ugresearchjournals.illinois.edu/index.php/ujlc
@greenharr [email protected]
DH Research Collaborations in the Library
Build Connections
Project Collaborations
Consultations
DH centers
@greenharr [email protected]
Librarians’ Advantages to DH
Strong Faculty Relationships
Institutional Prominence
Information professional skills
@greenharr [email protected]
DH Needs Us “Digital humanities offers a means by which disciplines such as bibliography, palaeography, diplomatic and museum studies can be brought back to the heart of the academy. . . . . By forming closer links with such curatorial disciplines as bibliography and palaeography, and connecting these with the theoretical insights of media and cultural studies, the digital humanities can reshape the academy and address those cultural imperatives which confront it.”
—Andrew Prescott, King’s College London @greenharr [email protected]
Not Just A Service…
Scholar Programmer Innovative DH Project!
Librarian
@greenharr [email protected]
Thank you!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Twitter: @greenharr