I’d like to propose a session that would address the question of how to ensure that born-digital humanities scholarlship–books, journals, web sites–is made easily and reliably discoverable; for instance, through library catalogs.

I’ve been working on collecting digital stories from Columbus community members since the spring of 2009. The Knowledge Bank folks have been very generous and provided a portal for the work completed in the Hilltop area of town and will, no doubt, be willing to set one up for other neighborhoods if a grant I submitted allows for work in Old Town, East; Linden; and the University Area (District). Other colleagues around the country in English studies and related areas are doing similar work and looking for a national archive to which we can all submit work. In addition, the director of the Center for Digital Storytelling <www.storycenter.org>, Joe Lambert, indicated several months ago that he too is interested in an archive of this nature: that one did not already exist. (Lambert will be in town for the Innovate conference next week. I’ll touch base with him again.)

The characteristics of such an archive are to be determined but should include a simple submission process, a long-term archival plan for many media types, IRB approved permissions, Creative Commons-type IP assignments, interactive components, a “spacialized” interface, etc.

Questions that participants in a session of this type might address collectively include

• Does such an archive already exist? (I haven’t found it.)
• Would OSU and the OSU Libraries be interested in this type of systems development?
• Are the OSU library’s dspace or OJS installations sufficient for all or part of this effort?
• What other HE, state, or national institutions might want to contribute to an effort of this type?
• What grant opportunities are their for a multi-institutional development team?
• Can the “tool” being developed be of use to other disciplines not as tied to story telling?

Dickie Selfe.3

It is fitting that the Libraries is the primary sponsor of THATCamp OSU, since libraries are a major player in the digital humanities world. Many DH centers are located in libraries, and librarians often serve as project partners or PIs. The best model for library involvement in DH is still an open question, however. We certainly hope that there will be some discussion at THATCamp of how the Libraries can best support DH at OSU.  Keep reading for some resources and session ideas.

Resources

• Tom Scheinfeldt, “Nobody cares about the library: How digital technology makes the library invisible (and visible) to scholars,” Found History blog post, 2/22/12. About library invisibility – good and bad- and how digital humanities can bring scholars and librarians into closer collaboration.
• Miriam Posner, “Digital Humanities and the Library: A Bibliography.” A heck of a bibliography on the subject. Visit for lots of further reading.
• Ben Showers, “Does the library have a role to play in the Digital Humanities?,” JISC Digital Infrastructure Team blog. Identifies possible roles for libraries in DH work, including digitization and curation, and discovery and dissemination.
• The Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Humanities Discussion Group, a low-traffic email list that is only a few months old, but has already hosted some interesting discussion on the intersection of DH and libraries.

Session ideas

• A general discussion session on how the Libraries can/should support DH work at OSU.
• Project planning session introducing an item or collection held by the Libraries that could form the basis of a collaborative DH project.