My notes from the combined session based on proposals from Kathleen Lowe (Build It and Will They Come) and Franky Abbott (Building Local Collaborations) are in the Google doc Building Programs and Local Collaborations in the Digital Humanities.

Heather Martin

About.me, Bufferapp, and ifttt.com are examples of tools that allow you to update multiple accounts for maximum impact.

What kind of apps and softwares help us do are own work?

Dropbox works well but doesn’t play well with EndNote. It does play well with Zotero.

Google calendar can be shared between members of a group/class.is

Google drive is a good cloud storage option with the added bonus of built in collaboration.

Doodle is good for setting meetings with optional times.
Wiggio is good for setting meetings with standing, continual groups of people.

Many different tools do the same thing.

Writeroom app gives you a clean slate and shuts off your Internet connection to enable you to write distraction free.
Scriviner allows segmenting, moving of chunks of text.

Evernote, notability, and Iannotate are all good places for storing notes. Make sure you can do with them what you want in the end. If you intend to export them, make sure the tool allows that.

Hastac was recommended as a place to set up a group for continued discussion about changing tools.

ALT AC: converting interest/ability into a job. Are Humanities programs preparing students for outside jobs. ALT AC: converting interest/ability into a job. Are Humanities programs preparing students for outside jobs. ALT AC: converting interest/ability into a job. Are Humanities programs preparing students for outside jobs.

Tension in SLIS between traditional and new-media approaches, young and old. Established and tenured librarians set in tension against clinical positions. Tenured folk unhappy with clinical positions (and the people accepting them) while the market doesn’t offer the choice. Tenure like marriage, so clinical faculty can be looked upon with “live-in” disapproval.

Two thirds of the professoriate transforming from tenure to clinical or adjunct, which also strips power away from the faculty. Also, librarians who must go through tenure process often aren’t seen as teachers by other tenured faculty.

Taking skills from working as an editor to MLS, working on databases, instructional technology; these skills are portable across multiple categories and potential careers. Lots of room in instructional technology.

Digital Humanities as what librarians may be doing in the next ten to fifteen years. Project management skills cropping up a lot in job ads, and these skills overlap with library skills. Silos may break down over time. True organizationally, but on an individual basis people are often conditioning themselves around heavy specialization. They may collaborate with other specialists but not outside their specialization, not sharing their experience or mentoring others.

Are these essentially support staff jobs? Many positions non-tenure track, non-faculty. At the same time, tenured and tenure-track faculty increasingly asked to incorporate digital in their work, and calling upon this support staff.

Collaboration may fly in the face of existing tenure expectations. Might the erosion of tenure go hand-in-hand with the promotion of what DH values?

Politics as very important, especially in one’s first job, in the sense of the department or organizational culture and political structures. Administrators want solutions, not problems. Continuing within that culture and matching organizational priorities as necessary to retaining a position. Research the director’s background, experiences, stated values. Know who is there in advance.

Private library work: purchasing and organizing books for private individuals (ie. Oprah). But this small business seems risky.

Book arts and Makerspaces, especially for large metropolitan libraries: knitting libraries, papercraft libraries, where people can come to experience making.

Presses are being moved into or partnered with libraries. Digitization, building up metadata, developing other resources (like conference notes) which aren’t strictly peer-reviewed.

Developing tutorials, instructional videos and the like, explaining clearly how to do things. Frequent updating/changing of digital resources makes these things in need of constant reworking. Need to communicate quickly, 2.5 minutes or less.

Ability to shape or continue to train yourself, set with or against need to instruct/teach/train or provide direction to others.

Research whatever workplace you’d apply to. Research the language and the duties. Be specific and focused in your responses to questions.

If you want a library job, you need to stay invested in library-world jobs.

If there is enough interest, I would be delighted to show off our space and discuss how we have built a community around DH. It will have to be in the 4-5 Session 1 time slot today. The Libraries are closed tomorrow.

In my own research for my dissertation, I visited approximately 60 libraries around the country ranging from the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, to the Historic New Orleans Collection, to more regional, smaller libraries such as the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society library in Honolulu and the Delaware Historical Society.  Every library had a different policy regarding the use of digital media for research purposes, particularly regarding the use of cameras and laptop computers in reading rooms.  Most libraries were friendly towards the use of these research materials, but many libraries and/or librarians viewed them with ire and scorn.  In almost every instance, those that allowed the use of such materials limited the number of images to be photographed and/or required a signed form specifying that none of these images could be circulated.  Although I was grateful for their permission, I have tens of thousands of images and other similar materials that I can neither use for my own publications nor share among my colleagues and other interested parties.

My proposal session consists of two parts: 1) sharing my own experiences and thoughts about digital research, and 2)  hearing feedback from others who have done similar research.  Finally, we would discuss if or how libraries are dealing with this issue and what is being done (if anything) to bring about a more uniform treatment of digital research.

This workshop examines the basic contours of copyright law as it applies in scholarly communication. What is intellectual property, what is the public domain, and how does fair use apply? What should be in a request when permission is needed, and what is worth negotiating for? Finally, what rights do scholars have as creators of intellectual property and how can those rights be exercised?