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Digital Humanities: DH: The Bodleian Libraries

An introductory guide to the Digital Humanites and aspects of Digital Scholarship in Oxford and beyond

DH: The Bodleian Libraries, Taylor Institution Library and beyond...

 

The Bodleian Libraries and the Taylor Institution Library

Supporting the Digital Humanities is part of the Bodleian Libraries' ten-year Digital Shift initiative, which launched at the beginning of 2014. The Libraries' digital objectives are contained in its Strategic Plan 2018-22 (opens as PDF), which in turn reflects objectives in the University's Strategic Plan and the IT Strategic Plan.

As part of the Bodleian Libraries' work in this area, the Taylor Institution Library collaborated with colleagues at The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH), Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) and Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services (BDLSS) to explore ways in which subject consultants and reader services librarians could play a part in supporting the Digital Humanities. As a result of these discussions Taylor librarians worked on projects to upgrade the People and Projects section of the digital humanities @ oxford website. See the site.

In Trinity 2018, the Taylor ran a pilot Digital Editions course for library staff. It included sessions on beginner's TEI encoding, creating digital images, transcription principles, preservation, metadata, delivery and dissemination. Course participants each worked on a digital edition of a text they had chosen from the library's collections which were uploaded to a dedicated website. Participants also added images from the editions to the Bodleian Special Collections Flickr account and deposited a record for the edition in ORA-Data.

Following the success of the pilot, the course now runs termly and is open to anyone within the University who is interested in creating digital editions, whether students, researchers or library staff. For further information, contact emma.huber@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

** Update **

Introduction to Digital Humanities
The Taylor now also runs an Introduction to Digital Humanities course.

 

Useful links

You might find this US report on library support for the Digital Humanities interesting: Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center? Reading the first pages of the report, one phrase stands out:

'...observe what the DH academics are already doing and then set out to address gaps.'

Also, have a look at this example of a current Modern Languages-related DH project: 15cBookTrade.

And here are a couple more Bodleian links, some DH tweeters and the EADH Project lists webpage: