It’s Not Magic: The Soft Skills of Digital Humanities Librarianship
ACRL // Cleveland, OH // April 11, 2019, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM // Roundtable Discussion, Table 8
Mackenzie Brooks, Assistant Professor & Digital Humanities Librarian, brooksm@wlu.edu
Abstract:
For academic libraries, the interest in digital humanities (DH) has been an opportunity to reassert their value. However, the nature of DH librarian positions presents a challenge. As a predominantly female occupation, librarians are no stranger to emotional labor and strong expectations of service. However, the nature of DH librarian positions present a unique challenge. As a field, DH claims to value the work, knowledge, skillset, and presence of librarians. Librarians often hold the keys to important pieces of the research process - access to material, knowledge of preservation practices, or expertise in metadata standards. But the values and motivations of librarians can differ from disciplinary faculty and students. DH librarians often find themselves in the position of having to justify best practices to skeptical collaborators, alleviate technology anxiety to students of all ages, or even convince fellow librarians that DH is not a shiny new toy, but rather the evolution of scholarly communication.
This roundtable discussion will give attendees an opportunity to share effective strategies for developing and employing these skills. As a profession, we’ve dissected the methods for an effective reference interview - it’s time to do the same for the collaborative, long-term relationships inherent in DH librarianship. How do we go beyond “helping out” on a grant project? How do we talk across and between disciplines? How do we guide students through messy projects without a template? How do we ensure that DH is inclusive of all library staff? How do we convince administrators of the time and labor required to develop and sustain a DH project? How do we explain the idiosyncrasies of technology to those who think it’s magic? How do we cultivate these skills in an ethical and healthy way? How do we prepare for these positions, or how do we interact with DH librarians in our own institutions, especially those without a library background?
Objectives:
Questions:
Other Sessions of Interest:
Bibliography:
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