Working with the Arts & HumanitiesCreating a process manager digital scholarship in humanitieswithin the library

Demmy Verbeke

An ‘old’ dream

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January 2013:

white paper about thesupport of DH in libraries

April 2013:

‘Designing the Leuven Library Lab (DH3L)’

Digital Humanities Spring Event, Leuven

http://www.imagesbuddy.com

Implementation

actual start of “building” Artes

January 2015

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July 2014 reorganisation of the library services for the arts & humanities (creation, on paper, of “new” library division called Artes (in essence a merger of former smaller divisions), with a.o. theintention to realise a new expert position within the library for a DH officer)

process manager digital scholarship in the humanities

January 2017

Artes goes live

December 2015

ContextProcess manager digital scholarship in Artes does NOT work in isolation:

- subject librarians Artes

- research coordinator Arts Faculty

- research coordinators HSS Group

- ULS Digitisation and Document Delivery

- ULS Metadata Services and Acquisitions

- ULS Research data management support desk

- ULS Open Access support desk

- LIBIS

As a modern-day scientific library, Artesactively responds to the digital needs of researchers and students affiliated with

the Groep Humane Wetenschappen(Humanities Group). Thanks to close

collaboration with other services of the KU Leuven Libraries, including a state-of-the-art imaging lab and support offices

for Research Data Management and Open Access, Artes houses substantial

expertise in the mechanisms of scientific inquiry and (electronic) scholarly

publishing.

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Tasks

to support the academic workflow from the construction of initial data sets to the valorization of electronic publications

• supporting education, training and courses in digital scholarship – e.g. teaching digital literacy to BA students and PhD students at the Faculty of Arts, supervision of internships for the advanced master Digital Humanities

• organizing events that make digital scholarship more accessible, including lecture series and hackathons – e.g. Wikipedia edit-a-thon, workshop Jeffrey Schnapp

• helping humanities researchers find durable hosting solutions for their research data and output

• assisting humanities researchers in writing grant proposals

• testing and providing support for new research tools, databases and techniques – e.g. Daily Mail Historical Archive

• exploring alternative, electronic publication formats – e.g. OSEDHRI

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Selling points

• Better technical support, with more expertise, for less money

• Sustainability

“Collaboration with the university library is the only realistic option for long-term sustainability of digital humanities projects in the current environment.” (William A, Kretzschmar – William Gray Potter, “Library Collaboration with Large Digital Humanities Projects.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 25, no. 4 (2010): 439–45, doi:10.1093/llc/fqq022)

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Secret convictions

• Providing the best possible service, by not providing a service

• Job of process manager in Artes essential to make sure the balance local-central remains satisfactory for everyone and to capture needs of researchers

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