Digital Humanities for Librarians

Emma Annette Wilson

Digital Humanities For Librarians.

Some librarians are born to digital humanities; some aspire to digital humanities; and some have digital humanities thrust upon them. Digital Humanities For Librarians is a one-stop resource for librarians and LIS students working in this growing new area of academic librarianship. The book begins by introducing digital humanities, addressing key questions such as, “What is it?”, “Who does it?”, “How do they do it?”, “Why do they do it?”, and “How can I do it?”. This broad overview is followed by a series of practical chapters answering those questions with step-by-step approaches to both the digital and the human elements of digital humanities librarianship.

Digital Humanities For Librarians covers a wide range of technologies currently used in the field, from creating digital exhibits, archives, and databases, to digital mapping, text encoding, and computational text analysis (big data for the humanities). However, the book never loses sight of the all-important human component to digital humanities work, and culminates in a series of chapters on management and personnel strategies in this area. These chapters walk readers through approaches to project management, effective collaboration, outreach, the reference interview for digital humanities, sustainability, and data management, making this a valuable resource for administrators as well as librarians directly involved in digital humanities work.

There is also a consideration of budgeting questions, including strategies for supporting digital humanities work on a shoestring.

Special features include:

Case studies of a wide range of projects and management issues
Digital instructional documents guiding readers through specific digital technologies and techniques
An accompanying website featuring digital humanities tools and resources and digital interviews with librarians and scholars leading the way in digital humanities work across North America, from a range of larger and smaller institutions

Whether you are a librarian primarily working in digital humanities for the first time, a student hoping to do so, or a librarian in a cognate area newly-charged with these responsibilities, Digital Humanities For Librarians will be with you every step of the way, drawing on the author’s experiences and those of a network of librarians and scholars to give you the practical support and guidance needed to bring your digital humanities initiatives to life.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 248 • Trim: 7 x 10

978-1-5381-1644-9 • Hardback • January 2020 • $115.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-5381-1645-6 • Paperback • January 2020 • $50.00 • (£38.00)

978-1-5381-1646-3 • eBook • January 2020 • $47.50 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / Administration & Management

Courses: Library & Information Services; Digital Libraries

Digital Humanities for Librarians

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Digital Humanities For Librarians.

Some librarians are born to digital humanities; some aspire to digital humanities; and some have digital humanities thrust upon them. Digital Humanities For Librarians is a one-stop resource for librarians and LIS students working in this growing new area of academic librarianship. The book begins by introducing digital humanities, addressing key questions such as, “What is it?”, “Who does it?”, “How do they do it?”, “Why do they do it?”, and “How can I do it?”. This broad overview is followed by a series of practical chapters answering those questions with step-by-step approaches to both the digital and the human elements of digital humanities librarianship.

Digital Humanities For Librarians covers a wide range of technologies currently used in the field, from creating digital exhibits, archives, and databases, to digital mapping, text encoding, and computational text analysis (big data for the humanities). However, the book never loses sight of the all-important human component to digital humanities work, and culminates in a series of chapters on management and personnel strategies in this area. These chapters walk readers through approaches to project management, effective collaboration, outreach, the reference interview for digital humanities, sustainability, and data management, making this a valuable resource for administrators as well as librarians directly involved in digital humanities work.

There is also a consideration of budgeting questions, including strategies for supporting digital humanities work on a shoestring.

Special features include:
- Case studies of a wide range of projects and management issues
- Digital instructional documents guiding readers through specific digital technologies and techniques
- An accompanying website featuring digital humanities tools and resources and digital interviews with librarians and scholars leading the way in digital humanities work across North America, from a range of larger and smaller institutions
Whether you are a librarian primarily working in digital humanities for the first time, a student hoping to do so, or a librarian in a cognate area newly-charged with these responsibilities, Digital Humanities For Librarians will be with you every step of the way, drawing on the author’s experiences and those of a network of librarians and scholars to give you the practical support and guidance needed to bring your digital humanities initiatives to life.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 248 • Trim: 7 x 10

978-1-5381-1644-9 • Hardback • January 2020 • $115.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-5381-1645-6 • Paperback • January 2020 • $50.00 • (£38.00)

978-1-5381-1646-3 • eBook • January 2020 • $47.50 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / Administration & Management

Courses: Library & Information Services; Digital Libraries

Author

Dr. Emma Annette Wilson holds a BA and M.Phil. in English from the University of Cambridge, a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and logic from the University of St. Andrews, and an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario. As Digital Scholarship Librarian, by engaging in extensive outreach, consultation, and project management, she grew the Digital Humanities Center at the University of Alabama Libraries from having 5 to over 140 projects, as well as establishing an annual Digital Humanities conference, Digitorium, which attracted delegates from all over the world, a number of whom contribute to the digital component of this textbook. Dr. Wilson used her experience to write Digital Humanities For Librarians to help and to inspire others in the field to kick-start and accelerate sustainable digital humanities programs at their own institutions. She currently works as Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: What is Digital Humanities?
1. What is Digital Humanities?
2. Who is Doing Digital Humanities?
3. Library Models for Supporting Digital Humanities
Part 2: The Digital Part of Digital Humanities
1. Metadata and Digital Humanities
2. Creating Digital Exhibitions, Archives, and Databases
3. Text Encoding with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and Music Encoding Initiative (MEI)
4. Digital Mapping
5. Computational Text Analysis, or, Big Data for Digital Humanities
Part 3: The Human Part of Digital Humanities
1. Outreach for Digital Humanities
2. Who is on My Team? Collaborators in Digital Humanities
3. Project Management for Digital Humanities
4. Managing Humans in Digital Humanities Projects
5. Managing Data in Digital Humanities Projects
Accompanying website: http://dhforlibrarians.com.

Reviews

Wilson has written the comprehensive textbook on digital humanities (DH) work in libraries that she never had as a student or beginning practitioner. She reviews the theoretical and historical underpinnings of DH, then delves into the practice of librarians and their many roles on DH projects. Additional chapters focus on major projects, such as the Text Encoding Initiative, which leverages markup language to describe and provide access to manuscript material, marginalia, and a variety of other corpora. The author also considers technology and provides sample markup language, platform, and vendor information. Each chapter contains exercises that would be useful in a classroom environment, as well as references to more detailed works for further consultation. The real strength is in the third section, which focuses on the “humans in digital humanities,” particularly with respect to establishing an outreach program. This work should be a core text for courses in MLIS programs and will be helpful for librarians beginning work in DH.

— Library Journal

Wilson (Univ. of Alabama libraries) offers an impressively practical guide to the complex, interdisciplinary world of the digital humanities. She explains the technical side of digital humanities, including details on the most relevant digital humanities tools—for example, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), digital mapping, and big data analysis—and their uses in digital exhibitions. She also provides a digestible explanation of metadata types and their uses. In the final section, Wilson offers a lens library professionals can use to clearly define their roles, specifically enumerating the responsibilities of various digital humanities positions in libraries and the tasks involved in digital humanities projects. Wilson closes each chapter with thorough notes and selected resources for additional reading, along with a handful of exercises centered on the chapter’s topic. These exercises support the suitability of this text for a digital humanities graduate course. Wilson’s obvious expertise in the field renders Digital Humanities for Librarians at once a valuable, suitably detailed guide for those already in the library and information science profession and a trustworthy textbook for those preparing to enter the field. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals.

— CHOICE

Emma Wilson’s Digital Humanities for Librarians is a welcome addition to the reading lists of academic librarians, administrators, and faculty who are engaged in DH work or who are toying with the idea of getting started. Building upon her years of experience at the University of Alabama and the convener of several DH conferences, Wilson writes from experience as well as with authority and clarity in answering key questions about what DH is and how and why libraries are at the core of this work before diving into five approaches (focusing on metadata, exhibitions, text encoding, digital mapping, and computational analysis) and the corollary skills and framing required by all collaborators who strive to see every project through to a successful launch. In short, Wilson has created an essential field guide for starting, sustaining, and accelerating digital humanities projects and collaborative environments where the library and librarians are front and center.
— Juilee Decker, Associate Professor, Museum Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology

Emma Annette Wilson has drawn on her experience as head of the Alabama Digital Humanities Center, University of Alabama Libraries, to provide a road map for librarians involved in digital services and other related job positions. Digital Humanities for Librarians is a welcome introduction to this growing, inter-disciplinary field. The author herself is now an Assistant Professor of English, Southern Methodist University, and the book has the distinction of being the first single-author textbook on the digital humanities for librarians, and is intended for use in the classroom. Digital Humanities for Librarians is a useful, well-conceived book, which should be of equal use to both the practitioner and the student.
— Marta Mestrovic Deyrup, professor, Seton Hall University Libraries

Digital Humanities for Librarians

Emma Annette Wilson

Digital Humanities for Librarians

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