Digital Humanities for Librarians

Reviews / Votes

Emma Annette Wilson provides an essential and timely resource for academic librarians across ranks and specializations in Digital Humanities for Librarians. This book stands out as an introductory textbook that delivers practical instruction for librarians to acquire new skills and apply their existing knowledge. Every librarian, and many administrators will want Digital Humanities for Librarians on their desk as both a quick-reference guide and an in-depth manual to developing innovative and sustainable digital humanities programs and instruction in libraries. * Technical Services Quarterly * Wilson has written the comprehensive textbook on digital humanities (DH) work in libraries that she never had as a student or beginning practitioner. She reviews the theoretical and historical underpinnings of DH, then delves into the practice of librarians and their many roles on DH projects. Additional chapters focus on major projects, such as the Text Encoding Initiative, which leverages markup language to describe and provide access to manuscript material, marginalia, and a variety of other corpora. The author also considers technology and provides sample markup language, platform, and vendor information. Each chapter contains exercises that would be useful in a classroom environment, as well as references to more detailed works for further consultation. The real strength is in the third section, which focuses on the "humans in digital humanities," particularly with respect to establishing an outreach program. This work should be a core text for courses in MLIS programs and will be helpful for librarians beginning work in DH. * Library Journal * Wilson (Univ. of Alabama libraries) offers an impressively practical guide to the complex, interdisciplinary world of the digital humanities. She explains the technical side of digital humanities, including details on the most relevant digital humanities tools-for example, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), digital mapping, and big data analysis-and their uses in digital exhibitions. She also provides a digestible explanation of metadata types and their uses. In the final section, Wilson offers a lens library professionals can use to clearly define their roles, specifically enumerating the responsibilities of various digital humanities positions in libraries and the tasks involved in digital humanities projects. Wilson closes each chapter with thorough notes and selected resources for additional reading, along with a handful of exercises centered on the chapter's topic. These exercises support the suitability of this text for a digital humanities graduate course. Wilson's obvious expertise in the field renders Digital Humanities for Librarians at once a valuable, suitably detailed guide for those already in the library and information science profession and a trustworthy textbook for those preparing to enter the field. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals. * Choice Reviews * Emma Wilson's Digital Humanities for Librarians is a welcome addition to the reading lists of academic librarians, administrators, and faculty who are engaged in DH work or who are toying with the idea of getting started. Building upon her years of experience at the University of Alabama and the convener of several DH conferences, Wilson writes from experience as well as with authority and clarity in answering key questions about what DH is and how and why libraries are at the core of this work before diving into five approaches (focusing on metadata, exhibitions, text encoding, digital mapping, and computational analysis) and the corollary skills and framing required by all collaborators who strive to see every project through to a successful launch. In short, Wilson has created an essential field guide for starting, sustaining, and accelerating digital humanities projects and collaborative environments where the library and librarians are front and center. -- Juilee Decker, Associate Professor, Museum Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology Emma Annette Wilson has drawn on her experience as head of the Alabama Digital Humanities Center, University of Alabama Libraries, to provide a road map for librarians involved in digital services and other related job positions. Digital Humanities for Librarians is a welcome introduction to this growing, inter-disciplinary field. The author herself is now an Assistant Professor of English, Southern Methodist University, and the book has the distinction of being the first single-author textbook on the digital humanities for librarians, and is intended for use in the classroom. Digital Humanities for Librarians is a useful, well-conceived book, which should be of equal use to both the practitioner and the student. -- Marta Mestrovic Deyrup, professor, Seton Hall University Libraries Emma Annette Wilson has pulled together a very approachable and packed resource for aspiring Master of Library Science (MLS) students and those new to digital humanities (DH). The book is as easy to follow as it is informative, providing a balance between the practicality of various digital humanities methodologies, the development of those methodologies, and approaches to engage with them. * College & Research Libraries *