Editor-at-Large Instructions

Interested in becoming an Editor-at-Large? Sign up!

Editors-at-Large (EALs) are the backbone to the dh+lib Review experiment! We rely on you to find, share, and nominate content that is important to highlight, specifically at the intersections of digital humanities and libraries. We offer detailed guidelines for types of content we look for, and how to review and evaluate below.

We use Slack for all of our editorial communication throughout the publication cycle. When you sign up, you will be invited to the dh+lib Review Slack channel, a dedicated space for EALs, and to select a shift (or shifts!). Shifts run for two weeks, and begin on Thursdays and end on Wednesdays. You should spend no more than 20-minutes per day, or 3-hours total, during your shift, which includes perusing listservs and information networks, dropping web links to nominations into Slack, and upvoting as you go or before your two-week shift ends by Wednesday, 12pm Pacific Time. This gives the Review Editors enough time to review and process your nominations, and publish them to our website the next day on Thursday.

Two Review Editors will join you on your shift to help facilitate the nomination process and offer support. They will help provide you with some current, relevant candidates for inclusion in the Review, and a list of places to look to get you started. This list will be bookmarked in Slack and will be featured here soon, too. You can also email nominations directly to the Review Editors at dhandlib.acrl@gmail.com. Just put “nomination” in the subject line and send us a link.

For many years, we primarily relied on PressForward in our WordPress, and for Fall 2022, we are piloting the above for the nomination process and communication with EALs. We appreciate EALs for joining us in the experimentation process and encourage you to share feedback on what’s working and not working.

 

Technical Setup and Process

After you use the Sign-up form, we will send an introductory email with an invitation for you to join the dh+lib Review Slack. Slack is available as both a desktop and mobile application, and can be accessed via a web browser. We recommend setting up your Slack, its notifications, and visibility settings, in whatever ways are best for your experience as an EAL, and to protect your time and energy. For instance, you might like to mute all notification sounds and suppress message previews. Navigate to the Preferences and then Notifications. Learn more here.

Reviewing and Nominating Content

Two dh+lib Review editors will setup a new post in Slack for every shift and with each content category (Recommended, Projects, Posts, etc). This is where you and fellow EALs will share nominations:

Review Editors will create threads for each content type, for you to add nominations during your shift.

When you find something that you think should be considered for the Review, reply to the appropriate content category’s thread and add a short title and web link (e.g. as seen below with a CFP thread). Be sure your nomination has not already been featured on the dh+lib Review or DHNow; nominations from previous weeks are welcome. Towards the end of your shift, your Review Editors will prompt the EALs to upvote () the collection of curated content, with a deadline of 12noon Pacific Time (7pm UTC) that last Wednesday.

slack threads of nominated content with weblinks, and upvoted with thumbs-up emoji
In Slack, reply to the appropriate content thread (e.g., CFPs), with web links to your nominations. Towards the end of your shift, upvote other EALs’ nominations.

After upvoting concludes, the Review Editors will signify which content will be included on dh+lib with a Trophy emoji (). The Review Editors take it over from there and begin their editorial processes. You will be acknowledged on the dh+lib Review posts for posts you contributed to vis-a-vis nominations, and we’ll tag and credit you on Twitter and an end-of-semester post recognizing all the EALs who volunteered.

The primary factor in determining which pieces are featured is the number of upvotes for each nomination – e.g. a piece that was upvoted by three Editors-at-Large is more likely to be selected than a piece that was upvoted by one Editor-at-Large. The Editors uphold a commitment to ensuring a diversity of opinions are represented in the dh+lib Review. Selections are also based on a piece’s fit within the categories mentioned below, as well as a piece’s quality, relevance, originality, and timeliness. Don’t hesitate to contact the editors at dhandlib.acrl@gmail.com if you have any questions about the nomination or selection process, or anything else.

Evaluating Items: What Should I Look For?

We highlight several kinds of content on dh+lib. Here is what we’re looking for in each:

Recommended

These are indispensable pieces, often a blog post or article, that will be most helpful to the dh+lib community. These pieces will offer original ideas and provide a critical analysis of the broader field of digital humanities or the role of libraries, archives, or museums in digital humanities work. Similarly, we are also looking for works of digital humanities scholarship – research that applies digital methodologies to questions in the humanities or applies critical methodologies to the relationship between the humanities and digital technology, specifically with consideration of libraries, archives, or museums.

Digital Projects

We are interested in featuring new digital projects, both projects that focus on particular research questions and projects that bring particular collections into the digital space.

Posts

These are blog posts that offer a timely analysis of current conversations. They might not fit in the Recommended category but are worth sharing with the dh+lib community.

Resources

This include items such as reports, white papers, conference presentations, and lectures as well as tutorials, tools for digital research, and sources for further information on a topic within the digital humanities. Our preference is to link to items all of our audience will be able to access, and in the case of journal articles, to articles published in Open Access journals or those whose full text is available in open repositories.

Calls for Papers

We interpret “CFP” quite broadly, including calls for participation, calls for projects, and requests for feedback, in addition to more traditional calls for papers.

Funding and Opportunities

For items that are outside the scope of jobs or CFPs but that offer either learning opportunities or monetary support for digital humanities work.

Job Announcements

We are looking for work opportunities that are specifically focused on both digital humanities and libraries. Positions might be postdocs, alt-ac or tenure track, and will likely be situated in libraries, archives, museums, or galleries. We tend not to feature unpaid internships or positions that do not appear to fall within the field of librarianship or are not based in library or library-adjacent environments (in contrast to faculty or postdoc positions outside of library work). We emphasize jobs that: are permanent and paid livable wages, do not require a PhD or ask for unicorns, and reflect a diversity of geographic regions.

 

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