Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 155.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-07-28 08:34:34+00:00
From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 37.154: the librarian's position
Dear Willard,
Having worked in a library school (School of Information, The University of
Texas at Austin), I have observed the critical distinctions between DH research
agendas pursued by humanists, those pursued by computer scientists (thanks to my
CS PhD in a strong DH group), and those pursued by librarians--whether in an
operational library setting or in a library/information science school, I agree
with you that the research agendas from the LIS perspective are distinct and add
to our body of knowledge about the increasing digital materials and AI methods
that inform several research projects.
My experience from the US (Texas+) is that the digitization affected the support
roles that librarians play in research workflows--in terms of helping to find
digital resources or training researchers in using analytical tools--but not in
terms of their employment status. In the US, "research" librarians are
considered a part of the research faculty and have research deliverables or
requirements in order to be tenured. In contrast, "service" librarians have no
research requirements but also cannot get tenure, meaning that their employment
is subject to state-specific employment regulations. Texas, for example, is an
"at-will" state, where any employment can be terminated without cause, but
tenure protects faculty from such termination. I am not sure whether this
distinction applies in Europe/Britain.
Texas A&M University Libraries shifted their employment status for librarians
from research to service model a couple of years ago
(https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/texas-am-changes-libraries-rescinds-
librarian-tenure). It seems to me that the pressures that drive such changes are
ideological (tenure is bad, librarians don't do real research... what have you),
financial (minimizing longer-term financial commitments and prioritizing short-
term, reversible commitments), or for government-supported institutions,
legislative (which can again be ideological but from a different group). I
haven't seen the evidence to draw a clear line from increased digital access to
the specific role of library-based research agendas.
Certainly, there are discussions about the need for fewer library staff since
patrons "have the internet", for the last twenty plus years but, in my view,
that's a different argument than specifically minimizing library-based research.
I would love to hear the experiences and perspectives from those who have
observed the situation in Europe evolve.
With warm regards,
-unmil.
-----Original Message-----
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2023 10:04 AM
To: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: [Humanist] 37.154: the librarian's position
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 154.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-07-25 06:30:24+00:00
From: Andreas Gálffy <andrisgalffy@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.152: the librarian's position
Dear Willard,
thank you very much for raising this comment which in fact pursues me since I
attended the colloquium "Digital Library" at University of Cologne nine years
ago. There, the future of the library itself has been raised and a tendency
towards competence centres could be vaguely seen, i.e. towards metadata centres
etc. Maybe the research data infrastructure services may be regarded as such.
That is what I observe and in my humble opinion, research librarians develop
into data libarians or related professions, at least a part of. But more
experienced colleagues may complete me.
[...]
Yours sincerely,
András Gálffy
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 at 08:21, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 152.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2023-07-25 06:11:06+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: the librarian
>
> The previous posting, which crossed my desk this morning, leads me to
> wonder what has become of the librarian's position in consequence of
> digital corpora and tools. In some universities and research centres
> this position brings with it or allows serious scholarly
> responsibilities; in others, it's all about following the lead of
> academic colleagues. In my institutional library, service (in the
> limited sense) delimits it. The position of the 'research librarian'
> seems to have disappeared. I would welcome being corrected on one or
> more of these points. I raise them, however, because I'm persuaded
> that the research librarian's position--with the liberties and
> responsibilities to do research, publish etc--is crucial to the
> development of digital humanities in its potential for
> interdisciplinary research. By that I mean all that lies beyond the
> application of cool tools to problems in history, literature, sociology, art
etc.
>
> Comments?
>
> Yours,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary
> Science Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk
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