Digital Humanities Research and the Academic Librarian

A presentation given at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuttel, July 25, 2014.

Transcript

1. Digital Humanities Research + the Academic Librarian Research Collaborations at the University of Illinois Harriett E. Green July 25, 2014 HAB Wolfenbüttel
2. Libraries and DH: A History @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
3. 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 green19@illinois.edu
4. 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 green19@illinois.edu
5. Research and the DH Librarian Digital Humanities Librarian Library Support Research Collaboration Undergraduate Research @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
6. 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 green19@illinois.edu
7. 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 green19@illinois.edu
8. Search Speed and Interface @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
9. New Tabbed Interface @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
10. Institutional Branding @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
11. Enhanced IconClass
12. 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 green19@illinois.edu
13. “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 green19@illinois.edu
14. 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 green19@illinois.edu
15. 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 green19@illinois.edu
16. 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 green19@illinois.edu http://hathitrust.org/htrc
17. 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 green19@illinois.edu
18. 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 green19@illinois.edu
19. 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 green19@illinois.edu
20. DH Research Collaborations in the Library Build Connections Project Collaborations Consultations DH centers @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
21. Librarians’ Advantages to DH Strong Faculty Relationships Institutional Prominence Information professional skills @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
22. 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 green19@illinois.edu
23. Not Just A Service… Scholar Programmer Innovative DH Project! Librarian @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
24. Librarians in the DH Collaboratory Scholar Librarian Technologist @greenharr green19@illinois.edu
25. Thank you! Harriett Green English and Digital Humanities Librarian University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign green19@illinois.edu Twitter: @greenharr