Presentation given for the RUSA History Librarians Discussion Group on the Role of the Humanities Librarian in Digital Humanities.

1. The Role of Humanities Librarian
in Digital Humanities
Harriett E. Green
June 28, 2014
RUSA History Librarians Discussion Group
ALA Annual 2014

2. “DH isn’t a service”
"Digital humanities in libraries isn’t a service and
libraries will be more successful at generating
engagement with digital humanities if they focus
on helping librarians lead their own DH
initiatives and projects.“
Trevor Munoz
http://trevormunoz.com/notebook/2012/08/19
/doing-dh-in-the-library.html
2
green19@illinois.edu @greenharr

3. Not Serving DH Researchers…
Scholar Programmer
Innovative
DH Project!
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Librarian

4. Partnering in DH Work
Scholar
LibrarianTechnologist
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5. How do I know DH when I see it?
“Digital humanities as it is currently practiced isn’t
just located in literary studies departments; the
field is broadly humanities based and includes
scholars in history, musicology, performance
studies, media studies, and other fields that can
benefit from bringing computing technologies to
bear on traditional humanities materials.”
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Debates in Digital Humanities
http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/30
5

6. What can we do?
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Research
Collaborations
Engaged
Outreach
Teaching

7. Engaged Outreach
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Build
Connections
Liaison
Work
Events
Scholarly
Commons

8. Scholarly Commons
http://www.library.illinois.edu/sc
• Digital scholarship center in the UIUC Library
• Consultants for data services, GIS, digital
humanities, copyright, scholarly
communications
• Partner with campus technology and research
centers: ATLAS, Survey Research Lab, I-CHASS
• Institutional repository: IDEALS
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9. DH in the Classroom
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Digital
Literacies
English
Media and
Cinema
Studies
History
Architecture
Omeka Scalar
WordpressArcGIS

10. DH Research @ Illinois That I Found
Legacy Projects:
Internal Projects:
Grant Funded Projects:

11. Research Collaborations
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Hathi Trust Research Center
Emblematica Online
Individual Research Projects
My own research agenda

12. DH + the librarian
”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 either: in fact, librarians – perhaps even more
than other knowledge workers – have long distinguished
themselves with the very gears and cogs of literary
production and study…. 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

13. Thank you!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
green19@illinois.edu
@greenharr