Free from some of the constraints of traditional departments and the faculty tenure track, Scholar-Librarians have been very active in producing digital humanities projects. However, there are some challenges to housing these hybrid-professionals and striking the balance between independent research and the traditional service mission of the library is one of the biggest. How might libraries re-imagine some staff roles as they embrace digital humanities work?

Some libraries have their own IT departments while others use their campus IT division. In either model, that support may be highly centralized, highly decentralized or, in some cases, confederated. In this session, I want to compare notes about how these various approaches work, what are the pros and cons, and – if necessary – to try to imagine new ways of conceptualizing IT in the library.

In particular, I am interested in ideas about IT support for Digital Humanities. This often presents special challenges because the work can be experimental and done in collaboration with partners who have very busy schedules.

I would like to propose a panel on digital publishing and libraries. I have more questions than answers at this point but I think this is a potentially exciting direction for libraries.

My interest in this stems from my experience working with a number of online journals at Emory but is also related to the growing collection of digital projects the library has developed in partnership with scholars. At many libraries, such projects are handled on a case-by-case basis but as they become more numerous, libraries will want to develop standard tools and procedures.

If there is a workflow and if the library is providing technical and design support and if the library is hosting the projects, then it would appear that the library is operating as a publisher. In this session, I would like to hear ideas about how we could do better at this job and what sorts of personnel are needed. Could the jobs of existing staff be re-configured or are entirely new positions needed.

I am also interested in the how a library-as-publisher might approach the issue of selecting projects. The library traditionally helps anyone but has no say in whether or not the project is published. This dynamic is likely to change if all stages of the scholarly process – research, development, launching, hosting and archiving – are vertically integrated in the library.