Digital Humanities is for Everyone: Building a Center and Platform to Empower Public Creators
Nick Szydlowski,
Digital Scholarship Librarian
San José State University
How can library support for digital and public humanities work survive in our rapidly evolving political context? In a December 2024 report, Other Stories to Tell: Recovery Scholarship and the Infrastructure for Digital Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies highlighted the need for those working in digital scholarship to “build two-way streets for knowledge to travel between institutions and communities.” In the months immediately following the report’s release, changes in the federal government have radically reshaped the funding environment in libraries, digital humanities, and many other fields, creating challenges for institutions and practitioners that remain committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in a digital scholarship context. At King Library’s Digital Humanities Center, a unique collaboration between San José State University and the San José Public Library, we remain committed to building technical and social infrastructure that supports the idea that the digital humanities can reach beyond academia and be for everyone. Rondo, a digital exhibit platform developed in the center using minimal computing principles, supports resource-constrained projects by allowing anyone to create a self-hosted digital exhibit simply by editing a spreadsheet. Rondo builds on minimal computing projects like Wax and Collection Builder, but takes a different technical approach to remove barriers for new site builders. Situating Rondo in the broader context of the center’s community-focused work underscores the continued importance of values-based software development in an increasingly challenging environment.
https://library.sjsu.edu/digitalhumanities
https://sjsu-library.github.io/rondo
https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ACLS-Digital-Scholarship_V7.pdf
From Space to Strategy: Building Sustainable Digital Scholarship Services
Sarah Dorpinghaus
Director, Digital Strategies & Technology
University of Kentucky
Jennifer Hootman
Coordinator of Digital Scholarship & Data
University of Kentucky
Academic libraries increasingly invest in dedicated digital scholarship spaces, but arguably the greater challenge lies in building sustainable programs and staffing that advance institutional research priorities. The session will share the University of Kentucky Libraries’ experience building impactful and sustainable services out of The Stacks, a new center to support digital scholarship and data-intensive research across disciplines. The session will highlight the Library’s success in securing external funding to hire a data analysis librarian and how this position catalyzed growth in its capacity for advanced data support. The briefing will outline how existing library staff were realigned, peer institution models were adapted, and a faculty-researcher advisory board was established to expand expertise and ensure program sustainability. Partnerships with marketing, communications, and IT have been essential to promoting services, reaching researchers, and building technical infrastructure. The briefing will emphasize lessons learned in moving from “space” to “program” and strategies to align investments with institutional research priorities.
https://libraries.uky.edu/locations/king-library-annex/stacks-digital-scholarship-center
