Data Driven but How Do We Steer This Thing?

DATA DRIVEN … but how do we steer this thing?
digital humanities in the library Trevor Muñoz University of Maryland @trevormunoz

@trevormunoz

@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

@trevormunoz What Makes something a “top trend” ?

@trevormunoz The committee found examples of either recent library collaborations
current collaborations within higher education that we believe could beneﬁt from library participation or “ .”

@trevormunoz *Apologies

@trevormunoz The following discussion may tend to get a little
academic library }-centric Corrections from other perspectives warmly welcomed USA

@trevormunoz DIGITAL HUMANITIES Top Trend:

@trevormunoz Academic libraries can play a key role …” “

@trevormunoz YES!

@trevormunoz … in supporting humanities faculty in their research …”
“

@trevormunoz Uh Oh

@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”

@trevormunoz … by creating partnerships and collaborations …” “

@trevormunoz … and helping to connect with other campus units
…” “

@trevormunoz In or Out

@trevormunoz … needed to implement and carry out digital humanities
research.” “

@trevormunoz DIGITAL HUMANITIES IS NOT A SERVICE

@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

@trevormunoz What to Make of these divergent views of digital
humanities in libraries ?

@trevormunoz We cannot engage this question by asking what ___
number of peer institutions have done/are doing

@trevormunoz Not HOW But WHY

@trevormunoz DIGITAL HUMANITIES Top Trend?

@trevormunoz I believe there is a MORE SIGNIFICANT connection between
digital humanities and librarianship

@trevormunoz DATA DRIVEN … but how do we steer this
thing? digital humanities in the library

@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:

@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. …” “

@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

@trevormunoz Academic libraries can play a key role in supporting
humanities faculty in their research …” “ ?

@trevormunoz Engage this question by tracing some of librarianship’s historical
self- understanding

@trevormunoz Engage this question by building out some points of
connection with humanist scholarship

@trevormunoz Commence History and Theory!

@trevormunoz WAIT!

@trevormunoz What about the “digital”?

@trevormunoz Toward Better Thinking About Technology

@trevormunoz productive unease” “ — Julia Flanders

@trevormunoz Libraries/ Librarianship

@trevormunoz Library as Platform/ Library as Infrastructure

@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

@trevormunoz Library as Platform

@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

@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

@trevormunoz Weinberger: A library … would give rise to …”
“

@trevormunoz The car transformed rural society …

@trevormunoz To save everything, click here …

@trevormunoz Libraries promote democracy and class mobility …

@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

@trevormunoz tracing some of librarianship’s historical self- understanding

Wayne Wiegand’s analysis of development of librarianship: @trevormunoz expertise character
authority institution

@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

@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

@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

Designing for Diﬀerence” McPherson, Tara. Diﬀerences 25, no. 1 (January
1, 2014): 177–88. doi: 10.1215/10407391-2420039 “ cf.

@trevormunoz Library as Infrastructure

@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

@trevormunoz The library needs to know how to read itself
as a social- technical-intellectual infrastructure” “ — Shannon Mattern

@trevormunoz Why is infrastructure better than platform ?

@trevormunoz Toward Better Thinking About Technology

@trevormunoz productive unease” “ — Julia Flanders

@trevormunoz building out some points of connection with humanist scholarship

@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

@trevormunoz media archaeology media history humanities computing cultural criticism

@trevormunoz *Not a complete list

@trevormunoz I would like to see library DH work that
thinks through media technology innovation culture

@trevormunoz alongside other scholars across both libraries and humanities positions

@trevormunoz e.g. Documents

The Invisible Substrate of Information Science” Bates, Marcia J. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043–1050. “

Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents Gitelman, Lisa.

@trevormunoz DATA DRIVEN … but how do we steer this
thing? digital humanities in the library

@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

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 “

@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

@trevormunoz Library as Infrastructuring

@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

@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

THANK YOU. Trevor Muñoz University of Maryland @trevormunoz

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

Data Driven but How Do We Steer This Thing?

Data Driven but How Do We Steer This Thing?

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