From Digital Arts and Humanities to DASH

Abstract

Academic libraries around the United States have been responding to an emerging style of research, the digital humanities, that promises to expand and revolutionize the humanities. Libraries are finding themselves to be generative sites of innovative partnerships and projects. Seeing a new opportunity to showcase cutting edge research and demonstrate value in an era of competitive demands for financial resources, there is significant incentive for libraries to quickly anticipate scholarly needs. Yet how do academic libraries best support a field of practice that is still developing? To address these issues, the University of Minnesota Libraries conducted a multi-year assessment of scholarly trends and practices, infrastructure needs, and roles of digital humanities centers and academic libraries, the University of Minnesota Libraries have designed and are in the process of implementing a service model as part of its Digital Arts Sciences + Humanities (DASH) program.