LES-BLOG

Digital Humanities in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists

Proposal Submission Deadline: December 15th, 2013

Editors: Arianne Hartsell-Gundy (Miami University), Laura Braunstein (Dartmouth College), Liorah Golomb (University of Oklahoma)

Potential Publisher: Association of College & Research Libraries

The ACRL Literatures in English Section is working on a proposal to sponsor an ACRL publication about digital humanities and subject specialists. Our section has sponsored other ACRL publications, including Literature in English: A Guide for Librarians in the Digital Age edited by Betty H. Day and William A. Wortman and Teaching Literary Research: Challenges in a Changing Environment edited by Kathleen A. Johnson and Steven R. Harris. We are looking for approximately 10-15 chapters that examine the role of the librarian subject specialist in digital humanities.

Digital humanities is changing the way that humanities scholars research and teach, and libraries are in a great position to help support these efforts. Subject specialists who work with humanities faculty are in a unique position because they often have good relationships with these faculty and have a strong understanding of their needs, but many subject specialists may lack the training to provide support for digital humanities work. Some subject specialists are lucky enough to work in a library that has a digital scholarship center and has staff that are specially trained to help with metadata and digital projects, but this arrangement can still create challenges for subject specialists as they figure out how to navigate between their faculty and these specialists. This book aims to examine how subject specialists are meeting these challenges and making the most of the opportunities that come their way.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Examples of successful digital humanities projects.
• Examples of less than successful digital humanities projects.
• How a subject specialist trained to be a traditional bibliographer learns the skills necessary to do work in the digital humanities.
• Examples of how subject specialists can collaborate with/support faculty, or collaborate with IT professionals, Special Collections librarians, Digital Resources librarians, etc.
• Using digital humanities projects to answer reference questions.
• How do librarians identify, evaluate, manage, and promote digital humanities projects?
• How to teach undergraduates and graduate students to use and/or create digital humanities projects?
• Thought pieces on the role of subject specialists in digital humanities. For example, should subject specialists be involved with digital humanities, or should that work be done by digital humanities librarians?

Submission Procedure: Proposal Submission Deadline is December 15th, 2013.

Academic library professionals are invited to submit their proposal of not more than 2 pages. Your proposal should include: 1) the names and contact information for all authors (identify a main contact); 2) a clear description of the topic you are proposing for a potential chapter; 3) reason why this topic would be of interest to subject specialists; 4) a brief description of your academic institution; and, 5) information about the author(s) showing his/her qualifications for writing the case study/chapter. Submissions should be in Microsoft Word. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by January 31st, 2014. If the book proposal is accepted, each chapter will be expected to be about 4,000-5,000 words.

Inquiries and submissions can be sent to:

Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Humanities Librarian

Miami University

208 King Library

151 S. Campus Ave.

Oxford, OH 45056

513-529-8494

hartsea@miamioh.edu