Information Services and the Humanities Scholar

Abstract

In the university community, humanities scholars have research strategies and IT needs that are very different from those of scientists; consequently, humanist demands on library collections and services are also different. Make no mistake: humanities scholars are passionate about electronic databases, the internet, desk top access and delivery; still, humanities research lies mostly in the contemplative connection of past to present to potential future, and that means that humanists may need not only the latest article, but also the last two centuries of articles on their topic. No publication or author ever becomes obsolete to humanists, who still read Plato and Confucius and and the Venerable Bede (as well as Foucault and Slavoj Žižek). Neither are the humanities Americo-centric; they depend on research materials from all over the world. Most of their research materials, many of them archival, are not digitized (and may never be). Convenient or not to modern library theory, humanities faculty will still need books for a long time to come, and libraries must find a way to accommodate that fact.