Digital Collaborations: A Survey Analysis of Digital Humanities Partnerships Between Librarians and Other Academics

The present study will investigate the perceptions of information professionals about their role in the work of digital humanities scholars, as well as the perceptions of digital humanities scholars on the role of information professionals in their research. While other scholarly literature has considered collaborations between these groups via surveys or interviews with small project teams, the present study will provide a large-scale analysis of collaborations using survey responses from more than 500 scholars, librarians, and archivists. Questions sought to determine the extent to which these groups collaborate with one another on project teams; how these collaborations unfold and who initiates them; whether IPs have begun to adjust and adapt their work to support specific DH projects, or to make their content more appealing and easy for potential future DH projects; and what administrative hurdles are faced during the collaboration. The survey also address how information professionals and DH scholars view the success of the collaboration after completing their work, and whether they intend to collaborate in future. To conclude, the article will consider what these responses tell us about how best to support all members of these collaborations

Past and Present Milwaukee Civil Rights Education: the Significant Arenas of Community Activism and Current Digital Archival Collection Assessment

This thesis explores civil rights education as practiced by civil rights activists from the 1960s to the present day using the city of Milwaukee as a geographical focus. The first part of the thesis focuses on the civil rights historical narratives employed throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with a focus on activists in Milwaukee. The first chapter describes the various social realms in which activists employed civil rights education including law, religious organizations, and schools. The second chapter uses 1964 Milwaukee Freedom School curricula as a case study to analyze a historically significant form of civil rights education. The second part of this thesis analyzes the more recent creation of a digital collection as an effective and increasingly relevant educational tool. The final chapter uses the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights Project collection as a case study to consider how digital archival collections can become effective educational tools in academic institutions and beyond. The final chapter contributes to existing literature by modeling assessment methods specific to a digital archival collection. The thesis argues that the March on Milwaukee digital collection is distinctive because of its community outreach initiatives, which have extended a target audience beyond the confines of higher education to at-risk high school students. This thesis finds that local activists, teachers, and scholars have used civil rights narratives to educate and motivate people residing in cities such as Milwaukee, WI, to actively reflect on the causes of racial inequality as well as possible solutions. The case studies involving the 1964 Milwaukee freedom school curricula and the current March on Milwaukee digital collection provide specific evidence of community-driven education that have successfully engaged people who have traditionally been underserved by academic libraries and archives. The thesis analyzes a wide range of primary sources, including archival documents and newspapers, in addition to germane secondary works relevant to the history of race relations in Milwaukee and the United states. This thesis also uses interviews, historical scholarship, and current assessment models relating to digital collections. The evidence gathered from March on Milwaukee developer interviews and secondary scholarship on digital collections supports the idea that Milwaukee civil rights histories have evolved and continue to be relevant in 2014. The thesis concludes that the success of future digital archival collections will depend not merely on making information available to site visitors but also on the ability of librarians and archives to reach out to communities through partnerships and collaborations similar to those associated with the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights Project. Assessment of engagement efforts of this kind will require librarians and archives to complement quantitative measures with qualitative approaches that consider not just how many people access a site for how long, but also the extent to which people engage meaningfully with the information and find it useful and relevant for their own lives

Augustana College: Scaffolding to Success

Outlines the curricular structure, operations, and assessment practices of the information literacy instruction program at Augustana College, Illinois

Confluence between Library and Information Science and Digital Humanities in Spain. Methodologies, standards, and collections

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2020-0030The purpose of this paper is to study the relevance of heritage collections and the convergence of methodologies and standards traditionally linked to Library and Information Science (LIS) in the development of digital humanities (DH) research in Spain. This paper is based on a systematic review of scientific publications that are representative of DH in Spain and were published between 2013 and 2018. The analysis considered doctoral theses, journal articles and conference papers. The results highlight the synergies between documentary heritage, Library and Information Science and digital humanities. However, it appears that there is a scarcity of scientific literature to support the confluence of LIS and DH and a limited formal connection between heritage institutions and the areas of academia that reuse and enrich these source collections. The review of representative scholarly DH publications was mainly based on the metadata that describe the content of articles, thesis, and conference papers. This work relies on the thematic indexing (descriptors and keywords) of the analysed documents but their level of quality and consistency is very diverse. The topic of the study has not been explored before and this work could contribute to the international debate on the interrelation and complementarity between Library and Information Science and digital humanities. In addition, this paper shows the contribution that standards and documentary methodologies make to projects in which technology is applied to humanities disciplines. We propose that there is an urgent need to strengthen the “scientific relationships” between heritage institutions, as well as enhancing links between the academic field of DH and LIS in order to improve teaching and research strategies in conjunction

Collective Wisdom: An Exploration of Library, Archives and Museum Cultures

The 2016 Collective Wisdom: Library, Archives and Museum (LAM) Conference Exchange program brought together 18 librarians, archivists and museum professionals to form a cohort charged with exploring cross-sector practices and culture with an eye toward increasing interdisciplinary collaborations and continuing education. This white paper presents reflections and provides recommendations based on the cohort experience. Cohort members represented a range of library, archives and museum institutions, academic programs and professional organizations from across the US and the Territory of American Samoa

Great Day Hikes on North Carolina’s Mountains-to Sea Trail

Great Day Hikes on North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail (Southern Gateways Guide). Jim Grode. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2020. ISBN: 978-1- 4696-5485-0. 232 p. $24.00 (Pbk.

Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture

Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture. Grace Elizabeth Hale. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. ISBN 9781469654874 (Hdbk). 384 p. $27.00

Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries

Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library’s role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education. Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls for a reimagining of the roles of libraries and librarians. In many cases, these reimagined roles call for expanded responsibilities, often in the areas of collaborative instruction and digital asset management, and in turn these expanded responsibilities can strain already stretched resources. Laying the Foundation provides practical solutions to the challenges of successfully incorporating digital humanities programs into existing library services. Collectively, its authors argue that librarians are critical resources for teaching digital humanities to undergraduate students and that libraries are essential for publishing, preserving, and making accessible digital scholarship.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/1032/thumbnail.jp

Archives, Access and Artificial Intelligence

Digital archives are transforming the Humanities and the Sciences. Digitized collections of newspapers and books have pushed scholars to develop new, data-rich methods. Born-digital archives are now better preserved and managed thanks to the development of open-access and commercial software. Digital Humanities have moved from the fringe to the center of academia. Yet, the path from the appraisal of records to their analysis is far from smooth. This book explores crossovers between various disciplines to improve the discoverability, accessibility, and use of born-digital archives and other cultural assets