Talking, Tools, and Trials: Building a Physical and Digital Presence for Digital Humanities in the Library by Daring Greatly

The presenter pursued conversations, learned tools, and experimented with spaces and services at the intersection of libraries and digital humanities for the last seven years. These efforts led to a partnership in the proposal of a digital humanities major and the hiring of a new faculty member specifically for digital humanities, new teaching partnerships, and the introduction of a makerspace in the Library. This session will discuss the process and lessons learned as the Bethel University Library grew from an interested party in digital humanities to a key partner and leader on campus. We valued core concepts like committing to conversation as a service model (David Lankes’ Mission for New Librarians) and the Web as a key service point for teaching and scholarship (Mita Williams’ keynote address to the Library Technology Conference in 2014). Researching the practitioners, concepts, and tools (TimelineJS, Omeka, and CONTENTdm) of digital humanities and building local relationships based on that knowledge was crucial to being able to move deeper into conversations. Through this learning, we were able to support more faculty who wanted to experiment with their teaching or pursue projects and later provide those opportunities to their students. This session will encourage, inspire, and equip others to pursue digital humanities conversations in their own organizations