In a talk delivered at the NINES Summer Institute last year, Bethany Nowviskie asserts that, within a discipline where collaborative work is the norm, “healthier scholarship will result from generous and full acknowledgment of the contributions of collaborators.” Even more recently, in her response to Miriam Posner’s “Some Things to Think About Before You Exhort Everyone to Code,” Nowviskie makes a case for giving more attention to “the professional and intellectual development of the people already steeped in humanities computing technology and for whom this work is a primary focus and responsibility,” in order to facilitate “correlat[ion] of their local work with the bigger trends, technical and intellectual, in humanities scholarship.” Given that, as Nowviskie notes, “a gap exists, in critical vocabulary and in the norms of discourse between these groups (even including developers with deep backgrounds in humanistic research),” how do we ensure that all participants in a project enjoy an opportunity to derive professional benefits from the collaboration, including rights to access, publish about, and build upon the resulting code and artifacts? In this session, I propose we use the “Collaborators’ Bill of Rights” as a starting point for discussion. How might we instantiate these recommendations in our own projects? What other practices or policies might we add to the list? Given the ad hoc process through which digital humanities working groups and projects are sometimes formed, how do we integrate a conversation about giving credit where it is due and rights of ownership (including, but in no way limited to copyright) as an essential first stage? Can we begin drafting sensible, user-friendly model policy for which we can advocate within our disciplines and institutions to help ensure adequate recognition of collaborators’ rights?

Having left an institute, Texas A&M, with a strong DH community and coming to ORNL which does not have a community of its own. I’ve been thinking about trying to bring together people to create a local community.

This session would be to talk about strategies, techniques, and challenges others are facing and have faced in their own localities and how we can get build DH even in areas where the activity may not be seen as favorably.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an initiative that has brought together “leading experts in libraries, technology, law, and education” to develop a “realistic and detailed workplan” for launching “the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all.” (see dp.la for more information about the project)

This session will offer an opportunity to get caught up on the latest DPLA developments from DPLA Workstreams.

As a former member of the DLF DPLA Beta Sprint and IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project, I am able to lead a variety of discussions about DPLA.  We also hope that Emily Gore, member of the Technical Aspects Workstream, will be able to join us.

In the spirit of an un-conference,  this post is also a call for your comments. What do you want to know about DPLA?  Are you working on a DPLA project?  Want to know what DPLA means for your collections?  What does should a DPLA mean for academic and public humanities scholars? Join us!