PResentation given at the HAB Wolfenbuttel, July 25, 2014.

1. Digital Humanities
Research + the
Academic Librarian
Research Collaborations
at the University of Illinois
Harriett E. Green
July 25, 2014
HAB Wolfenbüttel

2. Libraries and DH: A History
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

3. Digital humanities + the
library
Library as support service?
Library as a humanities laboratory?
Library as research partner?
Different models in different places….
But at the heart are users.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

4. People, not Projects
“What if you saw that training period as an
investment in healthy, long-lasting relationships?
What if we saw digital humanities as a long-term
investment in scholarly growth, not a short-term
investment in projects?”
Miriam Posner, UCLA
http://miriamposner.com/blog/commit-to-dh-
people-not-dh-projects/#more-1687
Public Student Faculty/researcher
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

5. Research and the DH
Librarian
Digital
Humanities
Librarian
Library
Support
Research
Collaboration
Undergraduate
Research
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

6. DH @ Illinois: A History of
Research
IMLS Digital Collections and Content
(IMLS DCC)
Digital library program:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/dcc/
National Digital Newspaper Program
OpenEmblem Portal/Emblematica
Online
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

7. Emblematica Online
New phase,“Emblematica II” funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities’
Humanities Collections and Reference
Resource program
New contributions of digitized emblem books
from the University of Glasgow, Duke University,
Utrecht, Getty Institute
Other key aspects of this phase: Revised portal
with new functionalities and user engagement
study
http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

8. Search Speed and Interface
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

9. New Tabbed Interface
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

10. Institutional Branding
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

11. Enhanced IconClass

12. User Engagement for
Emblematica Online
Goals
Understand the research practices of humanities
scholars working in literary studies, early modern
studies, Renaissance history, emblem studies, and
other humanities fields that draw upon emblem
books for research.
Understand behaviors of researchers working with
Emblematica Online and similar digital archives.
Gather input from researchers to assess the new
functionalities and services added to Emblematica
Online, and determine future functionalities that
could further enhance the portal.
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

13. “While a greater reliance and dependency on digital
resources is inevitable, the quality of the data and their
organization and accessibility in service to teaching
and scholarship are major concerns.
“Without the guiding voice of scholars, the tremendous
effort now being devoted to digitizing our cultural
heritage could in fact impede, not facilitate, future
research.”
—Charles Henry, The Idea of Order:Transforming
Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
Why Users?
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

14. User Engagement Study
Methodology: Semi-structured interviews with
scholars
SO FAR: Importance of digitized emblems for use in
the classroom; can promote increased research
around emblems and visual cultures
TO COME: Develop usability testing protocol for
conducting usability testing of Emblematica Online in
the fall
Do you use Emblematica Online? Come talk to me!
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

15. What’s Next for
Emblematica
Annotation Tool
Collection Building Tool
Improvements to IconClass navigation
Expansion of content and cataloging – addition
of more digitized emblems and books,
increased cataloging of emblems
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

16. HathiTrust Research
Center
Research arm of the Hathi Trust Digital Library:
Collaboration between University of Illinois and
Indiana University
Goal: provide researchers with access to large-
scale digitized text corpora (“big data”) for text
mining
Conducting research on what researchers need to
conduct large-scale text mining with mass corpora
Ultimate goal: Enable “non-consumptive” research
on copyrighted works
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu
http://hathitrust.org/htrc

17. Research Agenda
MONK text mining user
study
Virtual Verse – e-
literature access and
preservation
Scholarly use of digital
collections
Digital curation of digital
humanities resources
Usability of
DH Resources
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

18. Scholarly Commons
• Digital scholarship center in the library
• Consult for data services, GIS, digital humanities,
copyright, scholarly communications, etc.
• Partner with:
• Campus academic technology services
• Research support: Survey Research Lab
• Graduate College
• Research institutes: Institute for Computing in
Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS)
http://www.library.illinois.edu/sc
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

19. DH + Undergraduate
Research
Students publish their final research projects with
digital publishing tools:
Omeka
Wordpress
Scalar
Other tools:Voyant, Easel.ly
OJS for publishing undergraduate research journals:
https://ugresearchjournals.illinois.edu/index.php/ujlc
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

20. DH Research Collaborations in
the Library
Build
Connections
Project
Collaborations
Consultations
DH centers
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

21. Librarians’ Advantages to DH
Strong Faculty
Relationships
Institutional
Prominence
Information
professional skills
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

22. DH Needs Us
“Digital humanities offers a means by which
disciplines such as bibliography,
palaeography, diplomatic and museum studies
can be brought back to the heart of the
academy. . . . . By forming closer links with such
curatorial disciplines as bibliography and
palaeography, and connecting these with the
theoretical insights of media and cultural studies,
the digital humanities can reshape the academy
and address those cultural imperatives which
confront it.”
—Andrew Prescott, King’s College London
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

23. Not Just A Service…
Scholar Programmer
Innovative
DH Project!
Librarian
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

24. Librarians in the DH Collaboratory
Scholar
LibrarianTechnologist
@greenharr green19@illinois.edu

25. Thank you!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
green19@illinois.edu
Twitter: @greenharr