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DATA DRIVEN …
but how do we steer this thing?
digital humanities in the library
Trevor Muñoz
University of Maryland
@trevormunoz
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@trevormunoz
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@trevormunoz
is one of the “Top Trends” in academic libraries
College & Research Libraries News 75, no. 6 (June 1, 2014)
— ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee
DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
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@trevormunoz
What Makes
something a “top trend”
?
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@trevormunoz
The committee found examples of either
recent library collaborations
current collaborations
within higher education
that we believe could benefit
from library participation
or
“
.”
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@trevormunoz
*Apologies
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@trevormunoz
The following discussion may tend to get a little
academic library
}-centric
Corrections from other perspectives warmly welcomed
USA
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@trevormunoz
DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
Top Trend:
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@trevormunoz
Academic libraries can play
a key role …”
“
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@trevormunoz
YES!
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@trevormunoz
… in supporting humanities
faculty in their research …”
“
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@trevormunoz
Uh Oh
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@trevormunoz
Many of the problems we have faced
‘supporting’ digital humanities work may stem
from the fact that digital humanities projects in
general do not need supporters—they need
collaborators.
“
— Miriam Posner, “No Half Measures”
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@trevormunoz
… by creating partnerships
and collaborations …”
“
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@trevormunoz
… and helping to connect
with other campus units …”
“
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@trevormunoz
In or Out
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@trevormunoz
… needed to implement and
carry out digital humanities
research.”
“
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@trevormunoz
DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
IS NOT A
SERVICE
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@trevormunoz
Academic libraries can play a key role in supporting
humanities faculty in their research by creating
partnerships and collaborations and helping to connect
with other campus units needed to implement and carry
out digital humanities research.”
“
— ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee
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@trevormunoz
What to Make
of these divergent views of
digital humanities in libraries
?
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@trevormunoz
We cannot engage this
question by asking what
___ number of
peer institutions
have done/are doing
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@trevormunoz
Not
HOW
But
WHY
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@trevormunoz
DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
Top Trend?
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@trevormunoz
I believe there is a
MORE
SIGNIFICANT
connection between
digital humanities
and librarianship
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@trevormunoz
DATA DRIVEN …
but how do we steer this thing?
digital humanities in the library
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@trevormunoz
One of the hallmarks of digital humanities practice has
been the desire to experiment, to make things, to dig
into our data – to see how humanities ‘things’ are
‘made.’ There is nothing contrary to the library spirit in
that desire …”
“
Glen Worthey:
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@trevormunoz
… Librarians – perhaps even more than other knowledge
workers – have long distinguished themselves with the
very gears and cogs of literary production and study: with
the book trade; with bibliography and metadata; with the
acquisition, organizing, and preservation of textual
objects; with a variety of technological means for
scholarly discovery. …”
“
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@trevormunoz
… What is all this traditional library work if not an
engagement with how knowledge is ‘made’? And what
are we, if not co-makers of that knowledge?”
“
— Glen Worthey
http://bit.ly/worthey-dh
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@trevormunoz
Academic libraries can play
a key role in supporting
humanities faculty in their
research …”
“
?
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@trevormunoz
Engage this question by
tracing some of librarianship’s
historical self-
understanding
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@trevormunoz
Engage this question by
building out some points of
connection with
humanist
scholarship
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@trevormunoz
Commence
History and
Theory!
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@trevormunoz
WAIT!
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@trevormunoz
What about the
“digital”?
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@trevormunoz
Toward
Better Thinking
About
Technology
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@trevormunoz
productive
unease”
“
— Julia Flanders
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@trevormunoz
Libraries/
Librarianship
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@trevormunoz
Library as
Platform/
Library as
Infrastructure
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@trevormunoz
This next bit of the discussion was greatly enriched by
Mattern, Shannon.
Library as Infrastructure”
“
Design Observer, June 9, 2014
http://bit.ly/mattern-2014
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@trevormunoz
Library as
Platform
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@trevormunoz
… focuses our attention away from the provisioning of
resources to the foment those resources engender. A
library as platform would give rise to messy, rich
networks of people and ideas, continuously sparked and
maintained by the library’s resources.”
“
— David Weinberger
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@trevormunoz
Another problem with the platform model is the image it
evokes: a flat, two-dimensional stage on which resources
are laid out for users to do stuff with. The platform
doesn’t have any implied depth, so we’re not inclined to
look underneath or behind it, or to question its
structure.”
“
— Shannon Mattern
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@trevormunoz
Weinberger:
A library … would give rise
to …”
“
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@trevormunoz
The car transformed rural
society …
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@trevormunoz
To save everything, click
here …
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@trevormunoz
Libraries promote
democracy and class
mobility …
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@trevormunoz
Part of the problem in philosophical writings about
libraries has been a failure … to distinguish between
philosophical analysis (rigorous critical thought) and a
philosophy (a set of motivating beliefs, concepts and
values). The latter always pervades library service and it
is not necessarily democratic. Different political regimes
have different social agendas, so LIS will be differently
deployed.”
“
— Michael Buckland
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@trevormunoz
tracing some of librarianship’s
historical self-
understanding
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Wayne Wiegand’s analysis of
development of librarianship:
@trevormunoz
expertise
character
authority
institution
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@trevormunoz
Traditionally, LIS studies both the institution of libraries
and the broad phenomenon of information largely
through pluralist and managerial lenses as questions of
service delivery, technical efficiency, and managerial
effectiveness. One result is a politically naive profession.”
“
— Christine Pawley
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@trevormunoz
The culture of print established and sustained by most
mainstream organizations operated in an inescapably
racist world—one in which the significance of culturally
constructed racial difference was so taken for granted
that it went unremarked, at least by the white majority.”
“
— Christine Pawley
2009
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@trevormunoz
…The platform doesn’t have
any implied depth, so we’re
not inclined to look
underneath or behind it, or
to question its structure.”
“
— Shannon Mattern
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Designing for Difference”
McPherson, Tara.
Differences 25, no. 1 (January 1, 2014):
177–88.
doi: 10.1215/10407391-2420039
“
cf.
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@trevormunoz
Library as
Infrastructure
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@trevormunoz
We need to ensure that we have a strong epistemological
framework—a narrative that explains how the library
promotes learning and stewards knowledge—so that
everything hangs together, so there's some institutional
coherence.”
“
— Shannon Mattern
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@trevormunoz
The library needs to know how to read itself as a social-
technical-intellectual infrastructure”
“
— Shannon Mattern
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@trevormunoz
Why
is infrastructure better than
platform
?
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@trevormunoz
Toward
Better Thinking
About
Technology
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@trevormunoz
productive
unease”
“
— Julia Flanders
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@trevormunoz
building out some points of
connection with
humanist
scholarship
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@trevormunoz
… What is all this traditional library work if not an
engagement with how knowledge is ‘made’? And what
are we, if not co-makers of that knowledge?”
“
— Glen Worthey
http://bit.ly/worthey-dh
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@trevormunoz
media archaeology
media history
humanities computing
cultural criticism
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@trevormunoz
*Not a
complete list
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@trevormunoz
I would like to see library DH
work that thinks through
media
technology
innovation
culture
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@trevormunoz
alongside other scholars
across both libraries and
humanities positions
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@trevormunoz
e.g.
Documents
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The Invisible Substrate of
Information Science”
Bates, Marcia J.
Journal of the American Society for
Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999):
1043–1050.
“
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Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media
History of Documents
Gitelman, Lisa.
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@trevormunoz
DATA DRIVEN …
but how do we steer this thing?
digital humanities in the library
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@trevormunoz
how do we use this thing to
run the washing machine
churn the butter
rock the baby’s cradle
and cultivate the back “forty”
run the dishwasher
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No content
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Users as Agents of Technological
Change: The Social Construction of
the Automobile in the Rural United
States”
Kline, Ronald, and Trevor Pinch.
Technology and Culture 37, no. 4 (October 1,
1996): 763–95.
doi:10.2307/3107097
“
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@trevormunoz
Luckily, libraries are not really about search. They are not
an information shopping platform hobbled by inferior
technology. Rather, libraries are common ground where
knowledge and culture can be shared and nurtured.
Protecting the commons while inviting people to use and
contribute to them is what librarians are for.”
“
— Barbara Fister
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@trevormunoz
Library as
Infrastructuring
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@trevormunoz
The design researcher role becomes one of
infrastructuring agonistic public spaces mainly by
facilitating the building of arenas consisting of
heterogeneous participants, legitimizing those
marginalized, maintaining network constellations, and
leaving behind repertoires of how to organize socio-
materially when conducting innovative transformations.”
“
— Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren
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@trevormunoz
role becomes one of infrastructuring agonistic public
spaces mainly by facilitating the building of arenas
consisting of heterogeneous participants, legitimizing
those marginalized, maintaining network constellations,
and leaving behind repertoires of how to organize socio-
materially when conducting innovative transformations.
Librarian
The
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THANK YOU.
Trevor Muñoz
University of Maryland
@trevormunoz
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we need recourse to library history and library and humanist
theory to work through what “digital humanities in the library”
can mean
digital humanities in libraries as deeper technological
sophistication in both practice AND “productive unease”
not platforms but infrastructures/infrastructuring
library work as material, social epistemology—“making”
knowledge
think through “media”, “technology”, “innovation” with other
scholars across humanities & libraries