S TA FF PRO FILE
What led you to DH/DS? A conversation with the co-directors of the DSC.
Arlene Johnson (left) and James Lee (standing) in the DSC Arlene Johnson, co-director of the Digital Scholarship Center (DSC), has been with UC Libraries since 2000. Previously, she served as head of circulation and multimedia services. Since 2007, she James Lee, co-director of the Digital Scholarship has served as selector and liaison for the Center (DSC), joined UC in Aug. 2016 and is a Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. joint hire between UC Libraries and the College She has been focused on DH/DS since 2014 and chaired of Arts and Sciences, Department of English and the Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship Comparative Literature. Coming from Grinnell Strategic Initiative. College, James has published widely in the digital humanities and early modern literary In 2011, I developed a proposal for my sabbatical to look at criticism, and brings with him both the the role of the liaison, a librarian working with an academic technical and humanistic expertise in DH that department: How could this change? What were the new has been critical in helping UC to enter into challenges? How could we, as librarians in this liaison role, dialogue with a network of other prominent have a deeper connection with the academic departments players in the DH landscape. we worked with in terms of research and scholarly work? The digital humanities fit quite nicely into that part of my I think that my interest reflects my somewhat research, as well. I also considered how we could be unconventional academic training. The way I’ve put successful in the digital humanities at UC Libraries and UC. it in the past is that I was accidentally crossdisciplinary. For part of my sabbatical work I looked at different possibilities at institutions in the U.S. and Canada. I saw My graduate training is in Renaissance English that some of the most innovative work was being done at the literature, which is a very historical field focusing smaller institutions, not always the large universities. That primarily on the time of Shakespeare. But before my was very exciting, and I decided we had a lot of possibility graduate training, I was a student and researcher in for DH/DS at UC Libraries and UC. That was the beginning the field of molecular biology and genetics. I worked of my interest in DH/DS. in many labs in that field, and I’ve published my research in both. For the longest time I thought that In the summer of 2013, I attended my first the literary and humanistic, and the scientific and international digital humanities conference, the technical parts of my brain were unconnected, but in Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), held in this academic context, DH has emerged now as a new Lincoln, Nebraska. I also attended my first THATCamp (The field. Humanities And Technology Camp). I was able to develop and build relationships in the field of DH through attending I can dust off my previous scientific and technical those conferences. Then, in 2014, I had the wonderful training and merge the different parts of my brain to opportunity to lead the DH/DS strategic initiative at UC participate actively in this new field of DH/DS. Libraries. UC is a great place to begin to make that happen.
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