At KU I have seen an increase in the number of faculty in humanities that have come to the Libraries to for guidance and support for teaching digital humanities in the classroom. These faculty instructors may not have the skills or experience to integrate DH into their courses, yet they recognize that their students will be well-served by introducing them to the topic. This semester alone librarians have been working with faculty on various classroom DH activities: an introductory session on digital humanities, an introductory level digital humanities assignment, and a collaborative group project to build a curated digital collection over the course of the semester. In addition we get regular inquiries for project or assignment ideas, and we have hosted workshops and brainstorming sessions with faculty to develop class projects.

I would be interested in a session to discuss and share these kind of efforts. How can librarians help support DH in the classroom: what are effective assignments? How can we be involved in the classroom in a way that is scalable and effective? Can we use digital humanities in the classroom as a way to increase engagement with special collections, archival material, and other library resources? What do we ourselves need to know about DH in order to provide this kind of support.

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.