The emergence of digital humanities from a relatively marginal space in the academy to its recent celebrity has clearly had an impact on libraries. Positions have been created, resources have been reallocated and staff have been re-skilled.

However, it is also true that libraries have shaped the evolution of DH. Some of the best known and longest running projects have been created in partnership with libraries and those projects bear the marks of the librarians who worked on them. While we are always searching for better ways to do it, librarians have insisted that accessibility and sustainability be part of the DH conversation. Librarians have also worked with faculty partners to advocate for Open Access as well as ethical use of materials. This is not to mention the digitized collections, server space and technical expertise that the library often provides.

In this session, I would like to start putting together the history of libraries and DH and remember the projects, people, users and relationships that got us to this point. I would also like to assess what these partnerships have meant; what values have emerged, what traditions have been established and what problems reoccur? Also, what can a look back tell us about the way forward?

I am with St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio.  The law library has been using Omeka to build a digital collection.  A critical missing piece of this as a repository platform is that Omeka does not have a preservation layer.

I have the idea that a universal preservation layer can be made to overlay any content management system, by making a program to run check sums on a static file structure.

For any CMS it is possible to find a plug in to modify file structure into a static meaningful file structure.  Daniel Berthereau’s Archive Repertory plug-in modifies the file structure in Omeka, so that files can be stored in meaningful directories and assigned meaningful names (the default is to rename files with a random alpha numeric string and put all in the same directory).  So, technological barriers are low for getting a good file structure, no matter what repository platform or CMS you are using, no matter what repository platform or CMS you are using.

Rather than make a plug in to do digital preservation, it would be possible to code something that lies on top of a static file structure. It looks at the file structure, makes a list of files, runs a check sum for each file and stores that check sum along with the file location, then at a later date reruns the check sums and gives a report of which files have a different check sum (ie. gives a report of which files have changed from bit rot).  This would not be like a plug in, which installs on a specific CMS and only works with that CMS, but instead is something that overlays files on any web server.

By overlaying any set of files on a web server, such a program could do digital preservation independent of repository platform or CMS. This would greatly lower technological barriers to smaller institutions performing digital preservation.

I am interested in talking with anyone who has worked with digital preservation, and would like to meet anyone who knows about coding automated check sum reports.  I understand conceptually how to do this, but want to connect with more experienced coders who are interested in similar software.

Ultimately, I would like to code this alone or, better, with others.

Inspired by Char Booth’s closing keynote presentation, I would like to discuss how we ensure our DH projects are accessible to the widest possible audiences.  Where does the accessibility review happen in your project workflow?  Are your institutions crafting accessibility policies?  If so, how are you educating your staff about the policy? Who are our campus partners when thinking about accessibility issues?  As you can tell, I have more questions than answers, but would love to have a conversation.

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Digital Humanities (Winter 2011) published Moya Z. Bailey’s article “All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave.” Her title draws on a vital text of feminist history, the collection All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith and published by the Feminist Press in 1982. Recently, Moya Z. Bailey put together a Storify of the tweets around the 2013 Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference (CESA 2013) panel “Representing Race: Silence in the Digital Humanities.” These moments track an ongoing conversation about race in Digital Humanities.

The discussion around race and the Digital Humanities addresses multiple facets of the issue from what kinds of work gets called digital humanities work to how accessible the tools of the work are and who’s involved in creating them.

I’m interested in talking together about the role of librarians (in conversation with faculty and students) in collaboration with/as creators of projects by digital humanists of color and digital humanities projects considering racial justice. Librarians’ responsibilities here seem to stem both from our involvement in shaping the futures of digital humanities and how our resource pages, classes, and orientation sessions say something about what we think counts as the humanities and whose work belongs there.

Within librarianship we rarely talk about how our own identities affect our perspectives, our practice, and our outreach. I’m interested in how we can enact such accountability and engagement in our digital humanities practice. I’m a queer feminist and white antiracist ally in librarianship, teaching, and other collaborations.

It would be exciting to imagine together an ethics for our practice, to share tools and resources we know about, to take a look at ongoing projects (like those highlighted by Moya Z. Bailey or by Anne Cong-Huyen in her post of the talk she gave at CESA 2013 “Race in DH: Transformative Asian/American Digital Humanities,” and more), and how librarians’ ethnic identities and sociopolitical locations are important to these futures.

When the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University was planned, NCSU Libraries made the strategic decision to build immersive visualization spaces throughout the building, including four large, public, architecturally-integrated video walls. These visualization displays allow the Hunt Library to be a storytelling building: a building that provides a narrative window for the teaching, research, and learning activities on campus.

Video walls and immersive digital environments are creating new opportunities for digital humanities research and pedagogy. In this session, you can learn a little bit about our walls, but more importantly, we’ll brainstorm about potential DH applications for this kind of technology and discuss the challenges around implementing projects and services.

Who else does DH or DH-like activities on campus? From the isolated faculty in a corner, to pockets of activity in specific schools, academic departments, or other campus units, all the way to a full fledged “DH Center” elsewhere on campus: how do you map out that activity, and start developing connections and partnerships? What works, what does not? Have you encountered administrative barriers? Institutional sub-cultures that need to be bridged? Let’s talk about our experiences, good or bad, and discuss our developing plans in that area.

I am just becoming acquainted with digital humanities. I don’t have any resources to learn about it at my institution. I have a couple of projects that I am interested in doing. One has to do with a file of 2000 Victorian letters that are only cataloged in a card catalog. The other has to do with doing a digital edition of a book. I post a blog, so I know a little about html. I have a background working with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and I know a little about Dreamweaver. I have downloaded OxYgen. Can anybody help me get started?

In a recent tweet from THATCamp New England, archivist Andrew Berger asked: “Thinking about DH projects and discovery: do libraries put these kinds of resources in the catalog/discovery layer/etc? #THATCampNE.” Berger pointed to the University of Virginia’s catalog record for The Valley of the Shadow as an example of a cataloged DH resource.

How can libraries apply expertise in discovery, access, metadata, and publishing to make unique DH output findable? Do customs, standards, and best practices exist around discovery of digital humanities projects and complex objects? Are they emerging? As Saskia Scheltjens tweeted, are the projects the preferred cataloged resources, or would searchers “rather look for the data itself and the products resulting from #DH projects in an OPAC?”

THATCamp Digital Humanities and Libraries has been very popular and we have hit our attendance cap.  Please continue to register on this site to be added to the wait list.  The earlier you sign up, the higher on the list you will be should we have more openings.

The Digital Humanities & Libraries THATCamp event, as part of the Digital Library Federation Forum post-conference activities, now has a twitter handle: https://twitter.com/dhlibthatcamp.  Follow us and re-tweet like mad.

Make sure to also join us for online discussions as we kick around themes, session proposals, workshop ideas and more.

The hash tags for the event are:

• #thatcamp
• #dhlib2013