Whose voices are missing from the digital humanities (DH) and libraries discussions?
The users. Both DH and librarianship are inherently connected with users, yet user voices, especially those arising from empirical studies, are often missing from planning, developing, and implementing initiatives related to digital scholarship.
Humanists’ data management across the research lifecycle is a recent area of scholarly exploration that illustrates this problem. As Posner (2015) points out, digitization of humanists’ research sources has resulted in a situation where humanists “desperately need some help managing their stuff, and libraries are in a great position to help them.” In order for this much needed collaboration to be successful, librarians and DH specialists need nuanced understanding of humanists’ research practices, that is, the insights arising from empirical studies of user behavior and needs.
Read More: Developing Research Tools via Voices from the Field ← dh+lib