Working Session on Digital Humanities

Enabling Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Digital Humanities at Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Convened by

Richard Fyffe, Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Librarian of the College, Grinnell College

Digital methodologies and new media are changing the landscape of research and teaching in the humanities. Scholars can now computationally analyze entire corpora of texts or preserve and share materials through digital archives. Students can engage in authentic applied research linking literary texts to place or study Shakespeare in a virtual Globe Theater. Such developments collectively fall under the name “digital humanities,” which includes the humanities and humanistic social sciences and has largely been characterized by computing-intensive, collaborative, interdisciplinary projects at research institutions. While awareness and funding opportunities in this area have grown, most liberal arts colleges have yet to commit to sustained engagement in the digital humanities due to its unclear connection to their mission of undergraduate education. Furthermore, many liberal arts faculty who are interested in the digital humanities do not know where to begin and lack access to core infrastructure and expertise that would allow them to accomplish their pedagogical or research goals.

To justify institutional commitment, campus leaders and humanities faculty and staff must develop a clear understanding of the value of digital humanities—and more generally of digital scholarship—to the liberal arts academic mission. The digital humanities offer undergraduates opportunities to engage in authentic, applied research in the humanities and help prepare leaders for the 21st century world of webs and networks. In turn, small liberal arts colleges are helping establish the value of pedagogy within this field. Given these values, session participants will consider ways to encourage engagement in the digital humanities at small liberal arts colleges.

Potential outcomes include collectively defining, exemplifying, and promoting the value of digital humanities at small liberal arts colleges; establishing paths into the digital humanities at small liberal arts colleges, including providing support to those with an interest; sharing standards for evaluating digital scholarship at small liberal arts colleges; collectively seeking partnership with the larger digital humanities community to advance projects and initiatives; and collaborating to provide the expertise, support, and community typically offered by a digital humanities center.

Key Questions

• What is the value of the digital humanities for the academic mission of small liberal arts colleges?
• • How do the digital humanities connect to traditional liberal arts values such as critical thinking and practices like undergraduate research, community service, and experiential learning?
  • How can the digital humanities help prepare students to be citizens in a networked world?

• What challenges and obstacles hinder engagement in the digital humanities at an institutional level?
• What advantages do small liberal arts colleges bring to work in the digital humanities?
• What kind of strategic alignment of resources is merited and needed to enable engagement in the digital humanities?
• How can we help faculty, staff, and students develop expertise in the digital humanities?
• What kind of curricular collaborations in the digital humanities are possible?
• What are the challenges of supporting digital scholarship?
• What models exist for supporting digital humanities at small colleges?
• How can small colleges partner with each other to support digital humanities projects? What areas would work best for such partnership; e.g., how can colleges share expertise (such as software developers) or resources?
• How can small colleges partner with large institutions to support the digital humanities, and what would the benefits be for each type of institution in such a partnership?

About the Session Convener

Richard Fyffe has been the Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Librarian of the College at Grinnell College, Iowa, since 2006. From 2000 to 2006, he was Assistant Dean of Libraries for Scholarly Communication at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, where he oversaw collection development, policy for electronic licensing, and preservation, and co-led the digital initiatives program, including development of the digital repository KU ScholarWorks. He has a long-standing interest in digital humanities, and participated in the 1995 Summer Seminar of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities at Princeton University. He has also published and made presentations in areas related to scholarly communication, information policy, and digital preservation.

Mr. Fyffe started his library career as a rare book cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. His other positions have included Director of the Library and Curator of Printed Books at the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., and positions in special collections, collection development, and library administration at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He currently serves on the NITLE Advisory Board, the Board of Directors for the Center for Research Libraries, and the Editorial Board for College and Research Libraries. He holds BA and MA degrees in Philosophy from the University of Connecticut, and an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, Boston.