Digital Resources

After an overly long hiatus, I'm finally bringing this blog up to date. My last entry was concerned with embedded librarianship, and this remains a strong interest of mine. Equally important to me, however - as a historian and as a librarian - is the issue of digital history. So, I do want to mention that briefly in this entry.

In an issue of the Journal of American History earlier this year, historians Daniel Cohen, Michael Frisch, Patrick Gallagher, Steven Mintz, Kirsten Sword, Amy Murrell Taylor, William G. Thomas and William Turkel engaged in a wide ranging discussion of digital history as it applies to historical scholarship. See: “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History.” Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (September 2008): 452-491.

While those discussions are too detailed to relate here, some points struck me as very relevant to librarians. The first is the idea of the abundance of historical sources made available through digitization. Whether we consider the online images and content now available from the Library of Congress, or the millions of pages of newspapers digitized by ProQuest, historians now have an embarrassment of primary and secondary source riches at their fingertips. Serious historical scholarship has been made much faster and less labor-intensive than it used to be thanks to these technologies. As librarians, we already know this; but often our students (and sometimes faculty) are not aware of the full extent of the resources available.

The second point, however, has more to do with the use of digital resources in a web 2.0 environment. Increasingly, the impetus for active learning across the undergraduate curriculum demands collaboration and interaction through wikis, blogs, podcasts, and social networking. Digital collections can reach the full potential of their usefulness through these modes of interaction. As librarians, we particularly need to make our faculty aware that these tools are available for them and their students, and that we are willing and able to help them use these tools in support of teaching and learning.

Related to this, I was also struck by the findings of a recent study done for the Association of Research Libraries by Ithaka Strategic Services. The study found that scholars in the humanities and social sciences tended to use digital resources that were more geared towards exchanges among scholars - e-journals, discussion lists and blogs - rather than data sites. The latter tended to be favored more by those in the science, technical and medical fields. Nevertheless, fully 50% of those in the survey reported using digital resources at least weekly or daily. In the humanities, e-journals were the most commonly cited type of digital resources used, followed by discussion lists. Other resources that are growing in use are online encyclopedias like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and annotated content like that in the Roman de la Rose Digital Library. Finally, there is the growth of what the study calls 'professional and academic hubs." These are content-rich digital portals that offer e-journals, reviews, conference papers, gray literature, etc. A good example would be the Center for History and New Media.

Of course, the digital resources that we academic librarians are most keen to have students access are those available through the subscription databases provided by our colleges and universities. Not all of the resources in those databases are born digital, but they do represent an efficient way to provide a wealth of academic resources in one location - one that is also connected to the library's catalog. Increasingly, the challenge will be to connect those resources to other online venues that students use more regularly, such as social networking applications and course management software. But, that's the subject for another entry.