Where Do Humanities Computing and Digital Libraries Meet?

Abstract

It is in libraries that humanists have always found their basic and essential instrumentation. Libraries can be described as the humanist’s lab. Obviously this applies also to digital humanists, who deal with digital objects for research purposes, and to digital libraries that store collections in digital form. But digital objects produced for research purposes are not just inactive artefacts and ‘digital library objects are more than collections of bits,’ for ‘the content of even the most basic digital object has some structure’ and to enable access and transactions additional information or ‘metadata’ is required. [1] So ‘if, unlike print,’ digital editions ‘are also open-ended and collaborative work-sites rather than static closed electronic objects’ (p. 77), [2] it can be legitimately asked how a digital repository for objects of this kind can enable effective access to the interactive functionalities they provide. In a digital research context, the issue of how the architecture of a digital library could meet the needs of the working practices increasingly adopted by digital humanists seems therefore of primary importance.