Unsworth Visit Sparks New Developments for Humanities Digital Workshop

A team of Washington University faculty and staff recently invited John M. Unsworth, Ph.D., to visit the campus to discuss the ongoing development of the Humanities Digital Workshop in Arts & Sciences (HDW), in coordination with Digital Library Services. Unsworth is currently dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he formerly served as the first director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia. The visit was coordinated by Dennis Martin, associate vice chancellor and associate dean of Arts & Sciences.

During his visit, Unsworth reviewed Arts & Sciences digital projects, including The Spenser Archive, directed by Joe Loewenstein, professor of English; Race and Children’s Literature of the Gilded Age, directed by Gerald Early, Merle Kling professor of modern letters; Creating a Federal Government, directed by Peter Kastor, associate professor of history; and the St. Louis Circuit Courts Historical Records Project and The American Lives Project Prototype, directed by American Culture Studies. Unsworth also reviewed Digital Library projects, such as the Eyes on the Prize Interviews from the Henry Hampton Collection, the Dred Scott Case Collection, and the Whipple Fire Insurance Maps Collection.

Unsworth stated during his consultation that successful digital humanities projects must involve strong faculty leadership, with a focus on developing scholarly resources to insure the continuation of long-term projects. Moreover, these projects should provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to participate and thereby gain valuable experience.

Several developments for the HDW emerged out of the consultation with Dr. Unsworth. First, the HDW announced that Joe Loewenstein will serve a two-year term as the first faculty co-director of HDW. Ken Keller, director of Arts & Sciences Computing, will serve as staff co-director. Perry Trolard, previously an academic programmer, has been promoted to assistant director of HDW. An additional position has been created to allow for the hiring of a staff member to provide programming and project support. The HDW staff will work closely with an advisory board of faculty to set HDW direction and guide projects. Second, the HDW will continue to provide opportunities for graduate students to work on digital projects in the humanities and will begin a new undergraduate internship program. Third, based on Unsworth’s recommendation, the HDW and University Libraries are considering a joint membership in the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, which would provide a means of participating in a supportive community of scholars, educators, and others working in text encoding in higher education.

In suggesting the next steps for HDW and the Digital Library projects, Unsworth offered the following list of projects that might serve as models, assist with initiatives, or provide valuable contacts for Washington University faculty and staff:

• The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
• The DLF Aquifer Project of the Digital Library Federation
• The History Makers, a video and oral history archive
• The Uncle Tom’s Cabin Digital Project at the University of Virginia
• The Valley of the Shadow Project at the Virginia Center for Digital History

Unsworth also pointed out that issues of intellectual property have prevented the development of digital means of access to many works of literature, art, and criticism that are important to teaching and research in the humanities. Access to rare holdings is further complicated by the fact that these materials are often distributed among many institutions. Therefore, most successful digital humanities projects involve collaborations across multiple institutions.

Unsworth offered three criteria that can help ensure success for institutions considering which digital humanities projects to support: the project should pose interesting problems that are acknowledged by scholars within the particular discipline to advance understanding; potential projects should present technical challenges whose solutions may be extended and applied to other challenges in similar or dissimilar projects; and funding beyond start-up support should be secured for any projects that will move beyond prototype phases.

Unsworth’s visit provided an occasion to solidify plans for the growth of the Humanities Digital Workshop, which will continue to develop through strong collaborative ties with University Libraries.