Tom ScheinfeldtDec 9, 2022

I am increasingly convinced that #DigitalHumanities cannot and should not be operated as a service—of the library or any other unit. We should not be hiring people to help others do #DH. We should hire people to do #DH themselves. Those people should be faculty, yes, but also librarians, archivists, developers, designers, and managers. And they should be empowered to range the campus to build teams of their own making to work on ideas of their own devising.

Putting people in service to others’ work doesn’t scale, isn’t sustainable, and, most importantly, produces bad work. When administrators (especially library directors) recruit a “digital scholarship librarian” or similar to support digital humanities on their campuses, they’re setting them up to fail. @dh

Show threadBen W. BrumfieldDec 10, 2022
@foundhistory @dh I'm curious what role you see for external , for-pay development consultancies in this? I've seen orphaned code messes built by them as well as amazing, reusable tools (and have probably been responsible for both myself).
Show threadTom Scheinfeldt
@benwbrum @dh It’s a great question that I haven’t thought enough about. My gut tells me there should be more. I’d love to have a few, good, trusted commercial partners with a variety of I could call, both for longer term partnerships and also for occasional piece work. But they’re very few and far between and the good ones tend to be too busy to pin down or plan on.
Dec 10, 2022 at 3:26pmWeb
Show threadPeter WebsterDec 10, 2022
@foundhistory @benwbrum I occupy a space something like this, and there aren't many of us in the UK either.
Show threadMiaDec 10, 2022
@foundhistory @benwbrum @dh or too expensive (entirely fair enough, good for them!)