2015 Charleston Library Conference

As increasing numbers of scholars and students continue to experiment and engage in Digital Humanities, real value is generated as scholars create new knowledge, whether using technology to address age-old questions in a novel way, or identifying new questions to pursue. Many forays into Digital Humanities produce not just knowledge, but also discrete digital outputs, whether it be a website, digital images, software code, or other digital objects that have a value well beyond the scope of the original work. Once the digital humanities research is complete, where do these assets go? Our panel will address how these can be preserved, expanded on, shared, and promoted over time.

Drawing on Artstor’s experience with our 2015 Digital Humanities Award Winners (projects include Historic Dress – Smith College, and Sacred Conflicts: Religious Violence in Comparative Perspective – Northern Illinois University) and on the 2014 Ithaka S&R study “Sustaining the Digital Humanities Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase”, our panel (consisting of HE librarians and Nancy Maron
Program Director, Sustainability and Scholarly Communications at Ithaka) will talk attendees through some of the challenges faced by project leaders. Attendees will learn about the value that digital humanities projects and resources deliver, how these can bolster that institution’s mission and aims, the tools and institutional costs required to undertake and to support them for the long term, and about the most effective ways to marshal that support across an institution.

A question and answer session will follow the discussion.