Hands at computer

Milner Library explores digital humanities activity on campus.

Are you working on or interested in digital humanities projects? If so, Milner Library wants to hear from you.

This semester, the library formed a task force of faculty representatives from English, communication, history, art, philosophy, and (yes) the library, to investigate the campus’s current activities and interest in digital humanities. The task force hopes to determine the types and levels of library support needed.

The task force is holding a focus group at 1 p.m. Friday May 3, in Fell Hall 275. Faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend.

The task force is holding a focus group at 1 p.m. Friday, May 3, in Fell Hall 275. Faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend. The focus group is a follow-up to a survey the task force distributed to faculty and staff last month.

“The library is a natural driver for discussions about digital humanities,” says Anne Shelley, scholarly communication librarian at Milner Library. “Work in the digital humanities is often interdisciplinary, and the library serves all disciplines on campus in terms of research support. I am excited to see how this initiative might bring together faculty from different departments.”

For the purposes of this task force, digital humanities are defined as the application and/or development of digital tools and resources to enable researchers to address questions and perform new types of analyses in the humanities disciplines (CNI/EDUCAUSE 2017). Examples of digital humanities projects include but are not limited to text analyses, transcription and translation tools, visualizations of text and/or data, creating digital audio from physical gestures, using text to add context to maps, and topic modeling.

For more information about the task force, or to discuss your involvement and interest in digital humanities, contact Anne Shelley at aeshell@ilstu.edu.