The Library In The Digital Humanities: Surveying Institutional Practices In The UK And Ireland

It is widely accepted that research libraries play an important role in facilitating academic research and teaching (e.g. RIN and RLUK, 2011). However, given the technological advances of the last few decades, this role has been continuously transforming; the fundamental changes that information technology has brought to various academic fields, such as the Arts & Humanities, can be regarded as one of the reasons. This paper reports on work conducted to explore the role of research libraries in digital humanities across the UK and Ireland.
The emergence of digital humanities, in particular, raises new challenges for libraries. But which are the qualities of this type of scholarship which instigate a change in the support system traditionally provided by libraries to Arts & Humanities researchers? According to Spiro (2012), interdisciplinarity, openness and collaboration are some of the core characteristics of digital humanities scholarship, making it distinct from the work conducted in the context of more traditional Arts & Humanities fields. In addition, scholars in the field increasingly create, use and communicate various forms of digital data in previously unimaginable ways, while libraries are often expected to adapt and respond accordingly. As Vandegrift and Varner (2013: 72) argued, ‘the library can no longer be simply a place to get the right answers or to be directed to the correct resource […]’.
In the context of the current information and academic landscape, it becomes apparent that a more collaborative approach to the facilitation of scholarship is needed. In fact, library professionals can constitute ideal partners in digital humanities research, offering solutions to several problems that can be met during the lifecycle of a project, such as around the building and maintenance of digital projects and tools or the management of data (e.g. Maron and Pickle, 2014; Zhang, Liu and Mathews, 2015). Yet, there is little research on how UK libraries engage with digital humanities researchers - most of the studies so far have focused on US libraries (e.g. Waters, 2013; Schaffner and Erway, 2014; Keener, 2015; Maron, 2015) - including the degree of their involvement and the models of support or collaboration they employ. Thus, this institutional aspect of the digital humanities field in the UK and Ireland remains largely unexplored.
For the purposes of this project, 27 institutions across the UK and Ireland took part in a survey designed to investigate current library practices and opinions concerning the support of or involvement in digital humanities research. Moreover, through further data collection, we looked at specific cases of institutions where library professionals closely worked with digital humanities scholars to understand the role that libraries played at different stages of a research project as well as the circumstances under which different types of collaborations were formed.
Generally speaking, our findings showed that many research libraries in the UK and Ireland have started moving from being mere service providers to being active participants in research and teaching. For example, many of the library professionals who participated in the project were actively involved in the co-creation and co-management of tools for research and teaching; these ranged from digital collections and resources to tools used at different stages of the research lifecycle (e.g. methodological tools, data sharing and management). Additionally, the survey results uncovered the variety of DH activity conducted by scholarly communities at the participating institutions and showcased the range of library services designed to support various projects as well as the innovative contributions made by library staff.
Furthermore, in this project, it became possible to examine in detail three different models of library engagement in digital humanities research (based on the models by Maron, 2015), currently followed by some of the participating institutions which were highly active in the area. Therefore, the proposed poster, will also provide evidence of the role of research libraries in organising, conducting and communicating DH research; providing specialist DH services and actively engaging in the creation, archiving, curation, and preservation of tools; and proving leadership in the areas of digital preservation and data management. Exploring the different models of engagement that libraries follow when it comes to working with digital humanities researchers, the nature of these professional relationships well as the benefits and challenges they involve will hopefully increase our knowledge about an institutional side of the digital humanities in the UK and Ireland that remains largely undocumented.

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