Digital humanities in the library: challenges and opportunities for subject specialists

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (06) ◽  
pp. 53-2466-53-2466
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Rushmeier ◽  
Ruggero Pintus ◽  
Ying Yang ◽  
Christiana Wong ◽  
David Li

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Lei Zeng

AbstractThe emergence of “Big Data” has been a dramatic development in recent years. Alongside it, a lesser-known but equally important set of concepts and practices has also come into being—“Smart Data.” This paper shares the author’s understanding ofwhat,why,how,who,where, andwhich datain relation to Smart Data and digital humanities. It concludes that, challenges and opportunities co-exist, but it is certain that Smart Data, the ability to achieve big insights from trusted, contextualized, relevant, cognitive, predictive, and consumable data at any scale, will continue to have extraordinary value in digital humanities.The emergence of “Big Data” has been a dramatic development in recent years. Alongside it, a lesser-known but equally important set of concepts and practices has also come into being—“Smart Data.”


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Pettersson

Many university libraries hold cultural heritage collections that are unknown to the majority of students. The digitisation of these collections offers new ways of working with primary sources, and with it, an increasing interest in archives and older collections. This development has made us reflect on our information literacy classes within the humanities. Are we too influenced by the STEM and social science interpretations of information literacy and their focus on the peer-reviewed article? We want to challenge this view and discuss what a humanities approach to information literacy could incorporate.We want to invite you to a discussion on how we can integrate archival material and other primary sources into our classes,thus broadening mainstream information literacy to include primary source literacy (see ACRL’s Guidelines for primary source literacy, 2018). Our understanding is that this topic is generally not discussed at Nordic information literacy conferences, and our literature review indicates that this field is mostly addressed by special collections librarians and archivists (Hauck & Robinson, 2018; Hubbard & Lotts, 2013; Samuelson & Coker, 2014).In addition, in digital humanities pedagogy, there is need for reflection on data or sources beyond “tool-based thinking” which this approach would open up for(Giannetti, 2017). We will share two examples of how we have engaged students with primary sources and discuss the pedagogical challenges and opportunities. Our aim has been to go beyond show and tell and let the students actively work with primary sources. One example, from the Master’s Program in Digital Humanities, involved working with digitised sources using the platform Omeka. In the other, first year students from the Department of Conservation explored primary sources from the Gothenburg Exhibitionheld in 1923. Hopefully, this round table can be a stepping-stone for forming a network where we continue to share our experiences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Gaffield

At the heart of the emergence and development of the Digital Humanities has been the potential to move beyond the out-dated epistemological and metaphysical dichotomies of the later 20th century including quantitative-qualitative, pure-applied, and campus-community. Despite significant steps forward, this potential has been only partially realized as illustrated by DH pioneer Edward L. Ayers’ recent question, ‘Does Digital Scholarship have a future?’ As a way to think through current challenges and opportunities, this paper reflects on the building and initial use of the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (CCRI). As one of the largest projects in the history of the social sciences and humanities, CCRI enables research on the making of modern Canada by offering complex databases that cover the first half of the twentieth century. Built by scholars from multiple disciplines from coast-to-coast and in collaboration with government agencies and the private sector, CCRI team members came to grips with key DH questions especially those faced by interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, cross-sectoral and internationally-connected initiatives. Thinking through this experience does not generate simple recipes or lessons-learned but does offer promising practices as well as new questions for future scholarly consideration.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elton Barker ◽  
Chris Bissell ◽  
Lorna Hardwick ◽  
Allan Jones ◽  
Mia Ridge ◽  
...  

This article offers reflections arising from a recent colloquium at the Open University on the implications of the development of digital humanities for research in arts disciplines, and also for their interactions with computing and technology. Particular issues explored include the ways in which the digital turn in humanities research is also a spatial/visual one; the tension between analysis based on the extensive ‘hard’ data generated by digital methodologies and the more subtle evaluations of traditional humanities research; the advantages and disadvantages of online resources that distance the researcher from the actual archive, book, artefact or archaeological site under investigation; and the unrealized potential for applying to the humanities software tools designed for science and technology. Constructive responses to such challenges and opportunities require the full rigour of the critical thinking that is the essence of arts and humanities research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 244
Author(s):  
Francesca Giannetti

Abundant literature explores the nexus between academic libraries and digital humanities research and teaching, including major reports by CLIR, Ithaka S+R and OCLC, yet many aspects of the library’s role have not yet been investigated critically. Editors Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Laura Braunstein, and Liorah Golomb have addressed this gap with this practical volume, written for the subject librarian, that covers a large spectrum of library activity in digital scholarship. Digital Humanities in the Library includes case studies, recommended readings and tools, sample course assignments, and strategies for focusing library contributions and keeping them aligned with the local mission and goals.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Petterson ◽  
Anna Svensson

Many university libraries hold cultural heritage collections that are unknown to the majority of students. The digitisation of these collections offers new ways of working with primary sources, and with it, an increasing interest in archives and older collections. This development has made us reflect on our information literacy classes within the humanities. Are we too influenced by the STEM and social science interpretations of information literacy and their focus on the peer-reviewed article? We want to challenge this view and discuss what a humanities approach to information literacy could incorporate.  We want to invite you to a discussion on how we can integrate archival material and other primary sources into our classes, thus broadening mainstream information literacy to include primary source literacy (see ACRL’s Guidelines for primary source literacy, 2018). Our understanding is that this topic is generally not discussed at Nordic information literacy conferences, and our literature review indicates that this field is mostly addressed by special collections librarians and archivists (Hauck & Robinson, 2018; Hubbard & Lotts, 2013; Samuelson & Coker, 2014). In addition, in digital humanities pedagogy, there is need for reflection on data or sources beyond “tool-based thinking” which this approach would open up for (Giannetti, 2017).  We will share two examples of how we have engaged students with primary sources and discuss the pedagogical challenges and opportunities. Our aim has been to go beyond show and tell and let the students actively work with primary sources. One example, from the Master’s Program in Digital Humanities, involved working with digitised sources using the platform Omeka. In the other, first year students from the Department of Conservation explored primary sources from the Gothenburg Exhibition held in 1923.  Hopefully, this round table can be a stepping-stone for forming a network where we continue to share our experiences.  


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