Just a brief follow-up to the bibliography idea we kicked off this past weekend:

The point of the project is to start to build some institutional memory around THATCamp as a whole. As sessions are proposed and conversations and discussions evolve, it could benefit us all to have a central repository of documentation about what has been said, discussed and proposed at other Camps. I consistently refer back to the GDoc Collection that was shared after THATCamp Prime last year, and capturing that documentation, centralizing it, organizing it (there are some librarians involved here right?!) and making it accessible seems to be a cause we all could support.

meta meta

How can you help?

1) Choose a previous THATCamp from this list.

2) Pick through the site and pull out any linked GDocs of notes from the sessions (be sure to check the comments on the session proposals).

3) Create a record for the document in the THATCamp Biblio Zotero Group. Do your due diligence as an ad-hoc cataloger and make sure you aren’t making repeat records.

Suggested Controlled Vocab/Fields:

• Item Type: [Document] for a GDoc. [Forum Post] for a Session Proposal. [Blog Post] for a blog post reflection after the Camp.
• Title: [Session Name] – THATCamp [Name][Year]
• Author: If you can see who owns the GDoc, make them the Author of Record. If not, use whomever proposed the panel in which the notes were produced.
• Abstract: Use your judgement. Pull a paragraph from the session proposal or write 1-2 quick sentences.
• Publisher: [THATCamp] or [THATCamp Press] if you’re feeling frisky.
• Date: Date document was created.
• URL: Include the link to the GDoc.
• Extra: Add any notes that might give the record context. See an example here.
• Tags: Use at least the [THATCamp Name] and [Year]. Any other tags you can come up with to contextualize and link it will be most helpful.

4) If you prefer, download the GDocs that you make records for as PDFs and hold onto them. We are going to find a way to make the documents live somewhere since you can’t attach them to the records in a Zotero Group.

5) If you have time, dig a little deeper and see if you can find related blog posts before or after the specific Camp you are cataloging. These only help to contextualize the work done over the weekend in the real life practices of the Campers. Make records for them too!

6) Share your work! Let other THATCampers, DHers, Librarian/catalogers, and students interested in digital humanities know about the THATCampiography. More hands make light work.

The hope is that with a collection like this, Camps of the future can build on the work that has already been done. For example, its been pretty standard that there is typically a session dedicated to sharing resources (for whatever purpose). Wouldn’t it be great if you could go directly to the THATCampiography, click the “Resources” tag and quickly dig through the past 4 years of resources that have been collated by Campers as most beneficial for this type of work?

(Am I allowed to propose more than once?)

Two ideas I had real quick while mainlining THATCampery prior to leaving:

1) One of the things I’ve really begun to value about digital humanities is how I see its potential and overlap in and across contemporary culture. How about a DH CultureJam session – thinking about, sharing and nerding out over cool ways that DH is happening outside of the academy, in the popular culture, journalism, music, art? We don’t have to get all Matrixy here (leave that for THATCamp Theory), but it’d be fun to think outside the echo chamber and indulge and engage our interests as socio-cultural participants.

A few places to start:

SXSW, Gizmodo, BrainPickings, Bjork, Rhizome, Tumblr/Pinterest, #dhmusic

2) Don’t know if this has even been done either; what if we picked up on a conversation that happened at a previous THATCamp and continued it in a session here? Or, what if we traced a theme through multiple Camps, harvested (copy/paste) their GDocs, and began to create a THATCamp historiography/bibliography? Could we DO something in a session that would be of value to the larger community?

{Inspired by the recent JISC article “Does the Library have a role to play in the Digital Humanities?“}

Pinterested?

I’m a librarian. Sort of. Well, not really. I mean, I work in a research library, I have the MLIS degree (union card) and its part of my job title. But, in the three real months that I’ve been officially employed I’ve not once assisted a patron, I am only truly familiar with the databases and research assistance at my library from my time as a student there, and I do NONE of the typical librarian day-to-day tasks – reference (virtual or face-to-face), departmental liaising, book/journal buying, vendor-negotiating, database culling, collection development, etc. Nada. And it looks like it could be that way for a while.

Which brings me around to the title of this post, which I blatantly borrowed(ripped off) from Bethany Nowviskie’s “#alt-ac,” a term many of us may be familiar with. In defining my involvement in the future of librarianship, I am constantly questioning the role of the library in the digital humanities, one I am interested in professionally, or broader on a ‘digital campus.’ We could go 100 different directions here, but I’ll recall a session I proposed at THATCamp CHNM last year – in light of McMastergate, the fact that the majority of fellowships in DH are post-docs who are placed in libraries, and that I am a hacktivist at heart: what is the role of the LIBRARIAN in the nitty gritty work of digital humanities, and more importantly, is the training matching the needs of the field? Further, when and how will the DH community begin to advocate for alt-LISers and offer fellowships or support to MLIS students in Scholarly Communications, Data Management, Digital Archives or other areas of import in which the community needs qualified individuals? What steps does Library Land need to take to fully join and develop these “collaborative partnerships” with the DHers? Or can it ever be, since library science education broadly trains ALL types of librarians?

To many in the history field and in libraries, it is unclear what the role of the library should be in digital humanities. This is not to imply that there is no role for libraries – only that this role has not yet been widely developed and adopted effectively. Libraries remain very much in transition when it comes to expanding models for supporting research on campus. – RSS4S History Project Interim Report

A colleague of mine often half jokes that librarianship as a whole suffers from an inferiority complex. I’m trying actively to avoid that in my work, and hope this doesn’t come off that way. I’m definitely not trying to stake out a turf war for the soul of the library. I suppose I am hoping to better define my own position as a pseudo-librarian in an evolving digital landscape of library services, and how that will fit with my interests in digital humanities. I’d also like to broach the topic for discussion, especially with our Emory DiSC Colleagues in town, as they seem to have worked out some productive ways of addressing the “Librarian in DH.”

Some readings to consult:

• What’s a Librarian?
• Of Hybrarians, Scholar-Librarians, Academic Refugees and Feral Professionals
• ARL’s Digital Humanities SPEC Kit (Executive Summary and Table of Contents PDF)
• Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries at NYPL
• Or basically anything from Miriam Posner’s fascinating and comprehensive DH and The Library Bibliography.

Ps. What work have I been doing, you ask? Open Access Public Policy advocacy, institutional repository management, Outreach and Education on open access, digital scholarship and author’s rights, and holding lots of meetings with lawyers concerning copyright, fair use and intellectual property. Nothing I was trained to do in library school.

Another meeting with @floridastate General Counsel on copyright and fair use. This is becoming a biweekly thing for me. #scholcomm — Micah Vandegrift (@micahvandegrift) February 23, 2012