How to Create Sustainable Digital Humanities Project Partnerships with Faculty, Students, and Community Members

President's Note: The SSA is excited to bring a top-tier slate of workshops and webinars to our members in 2024 and 2025! Our volunteers on the Professional Development Committee have gone above and beyond to arrange these events, and this one is no exception. That said, you’ll notice that with this workshop the Officers and Board of the SSA have decided to add a small registration fee, just as we did in years past. We want to keep attracting presenters with expertise in the wide variety of topics you’ve been requesting, such as workshops designed for small institutions and lone arrangers. We are also designing that events emphasize the needs of students and new professionals, as well as our retired members. But to ensure all of that, such fees have become necessary. I understand that this an unexpected return to our previous fee structure, so I welcome emails to president@southwestarchivists.org for any questions.

Title: How to to Create Sustainable Digital Humanities Project Partnerships with Faculty, Students, and Community Members 

Presenter: Whitney Russell, Digital Projects Librarian, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries

Presenter Bio: Whitney Russell is the Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. She earned her MLIS and Graduate Certificate in Archives and Special Collections from the University of Southern Mississippi, as well as a BA in History from Mississippi University for Women. Whitney is also certified as a Digital Archives Specialist through the Society of American Archivists.

Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 

Time: 1:00 - 2:30 PM Central Time

Location: Virtual (Zoom)

Description: 

Whitney Russell's role at UTA Libraries is to facilitate digital humanities projects with faculty, students, and community members. These projects come from the desire to give digital open access research or collections, and we have created a steering committee to evaluate the requests, including a rubric for decision making. Outcomes for these projects could include a digital exhibit, website, or digital collection and can involve tools such as GIS, interactive media, oral histories, photographs, videos, etc.

Part of creating a program within your institution to take on digital projects like this, you will need to understand the scope of the project, expectations on both sides of the partnership, capacity, labor, technology needs, stakeholders, timelines and deadlines, and copyright considerations. You’ll also have decisions to make in terms of long-term access and preservation, which will need to be discussed when going into a project like this.

This workshop will discuss the following:

• How to build a digital project program, discussing technology needs, stakeholders, documentation, policies and rubrics, access platforms

• How to set up a project request process

• Accessibility considerations

• Free platforms and Digital humanities tools

• Long-term access and preservation of projects, or decisions surrounding retention schedules

The goal of this workshop is to show that digital projects can be done at any level of organization as longs as proper thought and planning is done beforehand. These projects can give access to special collections and archival materials as well as the research being done by faculty, student, and community researchers.

Duration Length: 90 minutes

The workshop will be recorded and available on the SSA YouTube channel at a later date.

For assistance registering, please email: pdc@southwestarchivists.org

Note: Please ensure you have the latest version of Zoom in order to participate. Please visit the Zoom help center for more information.

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• ChromeOS: version 5.0.0 (4241.1207) or higher.