DH Happy Hour at ALA

Join us on Sunday, June 30 from 5:30-7:30pm at La Cantina Grill for a Digital Humanities Happy Hour. We will make the trek to La Cantina Grill, which is a 5 minute walk from the convention center, after the Digital Humanities Discussion Group session (4:30-5:30pm on Sunday). So if you’re glued to your chair during ...

CFP: ADHO Calls for Proposals for New Special Interest Groups

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) has issued a call for proposals for Special Interest Groups (SIGs). From the announcement: By forming a SIG, those with similar professional specialties, interests, and aptitudes can exchange ideas, stay current, and mobilize to pursue common goals across the boundaries of ADHO’s individual Constituent Organizations. According to the ...

Make It New? A dh+lib Mini-Series

  Introduction We launched dh+lib with an eye towards creating community and facilitating the burgeoning conversation that was developing around the library and information professions and the digital humanities. Naturally, we took note when a special issue devoted entirely to libraries and DH was published by the Journal of Library Administration in January 2013. As ...

On Remembering There Are Librarians in the Library

The 2013 Digital Humanities and Libraries special issue of the Journal of Library Administration largely focused on how libraries might adapt organizationally to the overall problem of Big Digital Humanities initiatives, exemplified by larger-scale projects requiring substantial librarian and staff hours over the longer term, primarily in the context of large research libraries. However, the ...

The Digital Liberal Arts, Libraries, and Timidity

Satchel Paige had a saying: “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” When we speak of forming a vision for libraries in the digital now we expend a great deal of energy looking behind, worrying and wringing hands about what might be gaining or surpassing us. It may arise from a professional timidity, ...

In Service? A Further Provocation on Digital Humanities Research in Libraries

Editor Barbara Rockenbach has assembled an insightful collection of perspectives on the current “digital humanities moment” in librarianship. There is, however, one crucial perspective missing: a historical one. In her introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Library Administration (JLA) devoted to the topic of digital humanities in libraries, Rockenbach highlights several themes ...

Evolving in the Face of Tradition

Micah Vandegrift and Stewart Varner’s contribution to the Journal of Library Administration special issue on digital humanities in libraries offers readers a wonderful exploration of some key texts for digital humanities scholars as well as connections to how those works can inform the work of librarians (Vandegrift and Varner 2013). The article is full of suggestions ...

Three Steps for Humanities Subject Librarians Interested in DH

Subject librarians’ responsibilities may involve providing virtual and in-person reference services, advanced research consultations, bibliographic instruction sessions, collection development duties, and liaison services. Given the burgeoning interest in DH and the high likelihood that they will be required to possess a certain degree of familiarity with it, how might subject librarians, already overburdened as they ...

Openly Uncertain, Certainly Open

The often noted (and equally often lamented) “vagueness” of the overall digital humanities endeavor points to one of its greatest strengths. Though the boundaries of the field, community, or set of practices known by the name “digital humanities” are difficult to establish (as Barbara Rockenbach points out in her introductory piece to the recent issue ...

RECOMMENDED: “A Map and Some Pins”: Open Data and Unlimited Horizons

Tim Sherratt (@wragge on Twitter) has published his keynote address to April’s Digisam Conference in blog form, in which he makes an inspired and passionate case for making cultural heritage data openly available. Sherratt reminds us that this data is infused with history and “resists our attempts at reduction,” while calling into question the notion ...

PROJECT: Founders Online

The National Archives has beta launched Founders Online, a collection of over 119,000 transcribed and annotated documents from six of the major shapers of the United States: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. The site, a cooperation between National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the University of ...