This document discusses the design of the Library Lab at the University of Ghent. It begins by defining digital humanities as involving three groups: programmers, scholars, and libraries/repositories. It then discusses the role of libraries in digital humanities, including preservation, digitization, discovery/dissemination, and managing data. Reasons for having a digital humanities center are given, such as collecting expertise, enabling funding/stability for projects, and fostering collaboration. Digital humanities centers provide training, workshops, collections, tools, research support, and act as hubs connecting technology and scholars. Some centers are based in libraries. The document concludes by introducing the new Library Lab at the University of Ghent.

1. Designing the Leuven
Library Lab
Demmy Verbeke

2. Who is doing DH?
Digital Humanities is a three-legged stool:
―one leg is the programmers (those creating the
tools), one leg is the scholars (those using the
tools) and one leg is the Library and Digital
Repository (where the scholars are getting their
information to use the tools)‖
(Whitacre 2013)

3. The collaboration triangle
Humani t i es r esear ch
I nf or mat i on
t echnol ogy
I nf or mat i on
management
DH

4. The collaboration triangle
Humani t i es r esear ch
I T I nf or mat i o
n
management
I T
I nf or mat i o
n
management
Humani t i es r esear ch
DH
DH

5. The collaboration triangle
Humani t i es
r esear ch
I T
I nf or mat i o
n
management
I T
I nf or mat i o
n
management
Humani t i es
r esear ch
DH
DH

6. DH and the library
How fitting! Because of all scholarly pursuits, Digital Humanities most
clearly represents the spirit that animated the ancient foundations at
Alexandria, Pergamum, and Memphis, the great monastic libraries of
the Middle Ages, and even the first research libraries of the German
Enlightenment. It is obsessed with varieties of representation, the
organization of knowledge, the technology of communication and
dissemination, and the production of useful tools for scholarly inquiry.
But DH is also, itself, a scholarly activity — concerned not just with
presenting knowledge or helping to locate it, but with creating it.
(Ramsay 2010)

7. Why the Digital Humanities? (Spiro 2011)
1. Provide wide access to cultural information
2. Enhance teaching and learning
3. Transform scholarly communication
4. Make a public impact
5. Enable manipulation of data

8. detail of a 17th-C
representation of
Leiden UL

9. Joe & Rika Mansueto Library,
University of Chicago

10. Role of libraries in DH (Showers 2012; Vandegrift 2012)
• Preservation
―Collaboration with the university library is the only
realistic option for long-term sustainability of digital
humanities projects in the current environment. ... If
digital humanities projects stand still, they will indeed die,
and the library is the only part of our institutional
structure that can keep them moving enough to save
them.‖ (Kretzschmar – Gray Potter 2010)

11. Role of libraries in DH (Showers 2012; Vandegrift 2012)
• Preservation
• Digitization

12. Role of libraries in DH (Showers 2012; Vandegrift 2012)
• Preservation
• Digitization
• Discovery and Dissemination

13. Role of libraries in DH (Showers 2012; Vandegrift 2012)
• Preservation
• Digitization
• Discovery and Dissemination
• Managing Data

14. How to organize DH?

15. Why a DH Center? (Unsworth 2007)
• Collect and sustain staff expertise

16. Why a DH Center? (Unsworth 2007)
• Collect and sustain staff expertise
• External funding

17. Why a DH Center? (Unsworth 2007)
• Collect and sustain staff expertise
• External funding
• Long-term stability for individual research projects

18. Why a DH Center? (Unsworth 2007)
• Collect and sustain staff expertise
• External funding
• Long-term stability for individual research projects
• Collaboration + job experience

19. Why a DH Center? (Unsworth 2007)
• Collect and sustain staff expertise
• External funding
• Long-term stability for individual research projects
• Collaboration + job experience
• Point of connection

20. What do DH Centers do? (Zorich 2008; Bryson et al. 2011)
• Offer training
• Organize workshops, seminars, lectures, and/or conferences
• Provide support & context for collaboration
• Create a zone of experimentation and innovation for humanists
• Build digital collections as scholarly or teaching resources
• Act as a repository for humanities-based digital collections
• Create tools
• Use digital collections and tools to generate new intellectual products
• Conduct research in humanities and humanities computing

21. What do DH Centers do? (Zorich 2008; Bryson et al. 2011)
―digital humanities centers are key sites for bridging the
daunting gap between new technology and humanities
scholars, serving as the crosswalks between
cyberinfrastructure and users, where scholars learn how to
introduce in their research computational methods,
encoding practices, and tools and where users of digital
resources can be transformed into producers‖
(Fraistat 2012)

22. DH Centers as (mostly) virtual hubs
Digital Humanities Network @ University of Cambridge
UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

23. DH Centers as academic departments
Department of Digital Humanities @ King's College London

24. DH Centers in libraries
• Alabama Digital Humanities Center (Gorgas Library)
• Digital Humanities Center (Butler Library @ Columbia University)
• Scholarly Commons (University of Illinois Library @ Urbana-
Champaign)
• Library Lab (Faculty Library of Arts and Philosophy @ University of
Ghent)
• Harvard Library Lab