Collaboration and Co-Teaching: Librarians Teaching Digital Humanities in the Classroom

Abstract

Digital Humanities (DH) as an area of engagement with students, staff, and teaching faculty has been rapidly evolving at the University of Kansas Libraries (KU Libraries) over the past several years. As the popularity of DH tools, platforms and methodologies has increased, so has the demand to support and engage teaching faculty with incorporating DH in their courses and with their own research interests. Many academic libraries, including KU Libraries, are both adjusting to and leading this shift, figuring out ways to support digital scholarship for research and teaching, while at the same time gently delineating our roles, responsibilities, and limitations.

This chapter will describe three examples of efforts by librarians with subject, instruction, and digital scholarship expertise to provide digital humanities instruction and training to students and faculty, and will look at how these efforts relate to our previous and evolving roles within the library. We will also provide concrete examples of in-class assignments, describe what worked well and what could be improved, and discuss some possible ways that we ourselves might develop the knowledge and skills needed to engage in this kind of work. We hope that these examples and observations can serve as models, starting-points, or inspiration for subject specialists to both learn more about digital humanities and to develop their own course activities.