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Zoe BorovskyLibrarian for Digital Research and Scholarship

Lisa McAulayLibrarian for Digital Collection Development

Digital Humanities in the Library

DLF November 5, 2013

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Archaeology of Egypt and Sudan

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Entrance to the Research Commons

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The Renovation

Pods

Reading Room

Conference

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Opportunities for group work?

New DH Program Undergraduate MinorGraduate Certificate

Or a quiet study hall?

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A Case Study

An undergraduate seminarAncient Near East Studies, DH eligible

Faculty: Willeke Wendrich DH Faculty Member Professor, Department

of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

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The Research Commons: a case study

Group work

Lecture

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Group work

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Each group had 6 roles

Project Coordinator

Content Developer

Copy Editor

Image Coordinator

Metadata specialist

Markup specialist

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A successful experiment?

Faculty and student perspectiveLibrary

Takeaways

Challenges ahead

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From faculty perspective

“Students felt they created something meaningful, which was then published online for the whole world to see.

For some students this was a transformative experience and the reactions were surprisingly emotional.

Especially the publication part was something that was much appreciated, as was the experience with team work and learning new practical skills.”

Prof. Willeke Wendrich….

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From library perspective

We are observing more group work in the Research Commons

Programming

Reservations

Observe and evaluate

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Take-awaysEngage with faculty in creating meaningful assignments that are based on real research  

Demonstrate the process of doing digital scholarship – making it as open and transparent as possible

Utilize Digital Humanities projects to engage students in course content as they also learn practical skills

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Embedding librarians or embedding students?

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Challenges, or the road ahead…

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Challenges, or the road ahead…

Will this success repeat? Was the first time a rarity? When we teach the class again in the Winter, will we see the same results?

Can we measure our success?  (core DH courses may require a different ratio of practical skills and content)

How can we scale this approach to include more courses?

What other forms of engagement can be similarly fruitful?