Collaboration-as-Service: Humanities Librarians, Technologists, and Researchers

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Date

2018-03-11

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Abstract

Liaison librarians of all disciplines must increasingly draw upon distributed functional expertise within their libraries to meet the shifting, complex demands of university faculty and students. As more research services, funded scholarship, and course projects are built upon digital resources and complicated technology, it becomes more essential for liaisons to translate user needs to developers, repository managers, and technical support teams. In particular, humanities librarians must deftly bridge sometimes large gaps in understanding and knowledge between scholars, students, and technologists to support these projects. However, the invisible emotional labor that supports collaboration within successful projects is often devalued by university administrators—and, crucially, prospective funding sources--in comparison to visibly working code. Further compounding the problem are differences in compensation for project-specific work, and buyouts that may be available to technical specialists, but not to the librarians who are “just doing their job.”

Notes

Part of a panel discussion at the NFAIS 2018 Humanities Roundtable exploring how humanities librarians are conveying and marketing the breadth and depth of services to faculty, students and researchers. Presenters address how perception equates to funding for humanities, and how the role of humanities librarians is changing.

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