I'm looking for libraries that are offering DH services. There's the Scholars' Lab of course, I believe UCLA is starting to. I'm interested not so much in extended consulting and software or project development, but in streamlined services to enable scholars to create things like digital editions or described collections of materials with minimal input from library staff. Thanks!
Models for DH services in the library?
(7 posts) (4 voices)-
Posted 4 years ago Permalink
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One of the things going on here at Stanford is an attempt to build a suite of spatial services for scholars that satisfy a core set of requirements while integrating the production of digital scholarly media into the security and support structures in the library. Along with a centralized geodatabase to host spatial assets like rectified historical maps and datasets, I'm also working on the development of a spatially-enabled Drupal distribution which would allow students and faculty to quickly and easily build a dynamic map-enabled application with all the collaborative and security benefits of Drupal as well as extensibility. The distribution is meant to be simultaneously a research tool, a collaboration tool and a presentation or publishing tool--I may be too reductionist but I think that all three can be fundamentally the same thing with different features enabled or disabled.
The idea is to provide services that fill in the gaps between commonly available digital services that either aren't quite suited for scholarship or require that the scholar host their data outside the Stanford library. I've focused on the geospatial aspect not only because of my own familiarity with the standards and practices, but also because DH projects tend to have a strong spatial, cartographic or geographic component, and so it seems like it would provide broad applicability.
Posted 4 years ago Permalink -
I have the strong sense that library-based <i>centers</i>, per se, are relatively few in number, while a great many libraries do offer DH services on a more or less ad hoc basis. There's another distinction, too, that might be important: namely, whether these centers offer "services" to members of the university community (e.g., Scholars' Lab), or whether they're more like labs in that they set their own research agenda (e.g., MITH).
Here are some library-based DH centers (that I know about) that provide consultations and services to the university community. I'm sure there are more.
Emory University Digital Scholarship Commons (of course!)
University of Alabama Digital Humanities Center
University of British Columbia Digital Initiatives
Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship
Columbia University Digital Humanities Center
Cornell University Digitization, Publishing, and Copyright
Florida State University Digital Library Center
New York University Digital Library Technology Services
University of Kansas Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities
University of Oregon Wired Humanities Projects
Rice University Digital Media Center
University of Rochester: The Humanities Project
Rutgers University Scholarly Communication Center
Texas Tech Digital Media Studio
University of Utah Digital Scholarship Lab
University of Virginia Scholars' Lab
Washington University in St. Louis Digital GatewayPosted 4 years ago Permalink -
Replying to @Miriam Posner's post:
Thanks Miriam - this is awesome. I'm really interested in libraries that are providing streamlined services (Scholars' Lab model) rather than in those that set their own research agenda (MITH model). And I really don't care if these services are provided by a DH center or by some other library unit, just that they are supported in some way by the library. I will have a look through those links... I hope you had that ready to go and you didn't do a search especially for this post! I appreciate it either way.
Posted 4 years ago Permalink -
Replying to @dot.porter's post:
Just popping in here in response to Dot's comment to say that one of the most interesting things I think we're doing at the Scholars' Lab is blending those two roles. We do provide smooth, library-based services (walk-in & by-appointment consultation and training, workshops, classroom support, etc.), but we're also making sure we build in dedicated time for staff to pursue R&D projects and help set the Scholar's Lab's own research agenda. For what it's worth.
Posted 4 years ago Permalink -
Replying to @Bethany Nowviskie's post:
Hi Bethany! I didn't mean to discount the Scholars' Lab's research agenda. Scholars' Lab staff gets 20% time to research (right?), which is awesome and I would hope that we would be able to do the same thing (yes, I'm asking this question for a reason...). I think the best model would be some combination of the two approaches but what I see in practice is mostly the research-driven model and not so much the service-driven model.
Posted 4 years ago Permalink -
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