IST 600 - Digital Humanities

Course Description

Introduction to Digital Humanities (DH) in Libraries, Archives, Museums, and other cultural institutions, with a focus on how information professionals can make use of DH methods and approaches and support and sustain DH work in their communities.

Additional Course Description

Over the past decade, the Digital Humanities have emerged as a source of countless conversations, debates, and activities among communities academic and otherwise. Though not always in the foreground of such conversations, Libraries, Archives, Galleries, Museums, and other cultural heritage institutions are at the center of Digital Humanities work: our histories, our collections, our professional practices, our standards, and even our spaces have been critical in the development of the tools, methods, and practices operating in this new arena of scholarship and public work. As the term implies, Digital Humanities involves the application of digital technologies to humanities questions, but it also creates space for humanistic inquiry into the digital systems within which information is created, stored, disseminated, used, and preserved. As information professionals, our voices and our practices are essential operators in the DH ecosystem.

This course will approach Digital Humanities topics in an innately library way. It is designed to prepare information professionals in many environments to understand, support, and make use of the exciting potential the Digital Humanities afford us, our patrons, our institutions, and our larger communities. The course is built around the idea that what we now term the Digital Humanities has deep roots in Library and Information Science, and that those of us trained in the field are uniquely positioned to do, make, develop, talk about, teach, manage, support, sustain, provide access to, and preserve the innovative artifacts, collections, information resources, projects, and potentials it offers. A primary goal for the course is for students to develop fluencies and skills for engaging with Digital Humanities ideas and methods suitable for personally meaningful work in their chosen settings, and inclusive of their preferred roles and functions.

Credit(s)

3.0

Audience

Graduate MLIS students and others interested in Digital Humanities in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course students will be able to:

Define Digital Humanities in terms of their own interests, experiences, and professional goals.

Describe the unique ways information professionals can undertake, support, and affect Digital Humanities work and participate in DH communities.

Plan for and design Digital Humanities projects that make ethical use of collections and labor and that consider implications for development, access, use, and preservation.

Demonstrate facility with an array of methods (including mark-up, text analysis, visualization, geolocation and spatial analysis, network analysis, electronic literature, and others) and describe their potential applications in libraries, archives, galleries, museums, or other relevant settings.

Discuss the critical role LIS and information professionals have played in the growth of Digital Humanities and describe ways that DH methods and tools can augment their own professional work.

Identify, anticipate, and describe the less-visible impacts of underlying technologies on people, cultures, and systems.

Course Syllabi

IST 600 Digital Humanities Spring 2021 Syllabus - Patrick Williams