I would like to have a discussion about reskilling or training librarians to support digital humanities work. I am thinking in particular of liaison or subject librarians with expertise in specific subject areas. What do these librarians need to know about digital humanities in order to better engage faculty, graduate students and undergraduates? And what strategies are libraries pursuing to reskill or build that expertise among their subject librarians. What is working well and what needs improvement? What resources are there for librarians to build this kind of knowledge.
The topic could be expanded beyond subject liaisons to include instruction librarians with instruction expertise but not so much in specific tools and methods of the digital humanities; special collections or archivists who oversee unique collections and want to do something that goes beyond simply digitizing and making items available online ; or metadata and cataloging librarians with experience in working with library data.
I know there are some interesting efforts along these lines, such as Maryland’s Digital Humanities Incubator, and Columbia’s Developing Librarian Project, and if anyone from those programs will be here I would like to hear more them.
IU is gearing up a similar initiative modeled after Columbia’s Developing Librarian Project. We have a public wiki space tracking our progress (or lack thereof) and soon, our triumphs: . +1 for this session.
This is a topic that I’m interested in, as we all need to figure this out. Talking with others would be a great start.