Resources and Suggested Reading

This section highlights key examples of long-running digital scholarship collectives and organizations that support knowledge- and resource-sharing, mentorship, and the development of collectively owned infrastructures. It also provides information on networks that foster community-centered projects and practitioners. The resources listed here are intended to guide and inspire those looking to create or sustain collaborative efforts in digital scholarship, emphasizing interdisciplinary and cross-sector partnerships.

• Long-running digital scholarship collectives and organizations

• Knowledge-sharing and mentorship networks for community-centered projects and practitioners

• Context: Scholarship on cross-institutional and -community networks for sustaining initiatives

• Community engagement and development

Long-running digital scholarship collectives and organizations

• The Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC), https://hastac.hcommons.org/, one of the longest-running interdisciplinary community spaces and conferences.

• Code4Lib, https://code4lib.org/, a collective of library technologists working on digital libraries and digital information technologies.

• The multi-institutional Praxis Program, http://praxis-network.org/, and the CUNY Futures Initiative, https://futuresinitiative.org/, both of which provide support for graduate students undertaking diverse digital scholarship.

• The Association for Computers and the Humanities https://ach.org/ for faculty, staff, and students that runs both workshops and an annual conference with a focus on promoting sustainability and social justice in American digital humanities communities.

Knowledge-sharing and mentorship networks for community-centered projects and practitioners

• For communities engaged in community archiving and for other digital scholarship practitioners and creators, we highlight the following:

  • The Community Archives Collaborative, https://communityarchivescollab.org/, a growing network of organizations supporting skill sharing and shared resources for community-based archives.

  • The Diaspora Solidarities Lab, https://www.dslprojects.org/, a Mellon-funded consortium that supports solidarity work toward transformative justice and community accountability for students, faculty, and community-partners in Black and ethnic studies.

  • The African American Digital and Experimental Humanities Initiative (AADHum), https://aadhum.umd.edu/, supporting digital and experimental research at the intersection with Black studies, and offering innovative programs to help faculty, graduate students, and independent creators build their skills and their communities of practice.

  • The US Latino Digital Humanities Center, https://artepublicopress.com/digital-humanities/, which provides both physical space and communal virtual space to share knowledge and projects related to Latino digital humanities for communities both within and beyond the academy. The related Recovery Program is a community archiving program offering grants-in-aid and other resources, based at the University of Houston’s Arte Público Press. https://artepublicopress.com/recovery-program/.

  • The Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium, https://digitalethnicfutures.org/, which is developing a network of social-justice-engaged researchers and practitioners at the intersection of digital humanities and ethnic studies fields and which focuses on reciprocal and redistributive community relationships and the development of pathway and student mentorship opportunities.

  • For Native and Indigenous DH communities, we suggest Local Contexts https://localcontexts.org/, which aims to “enhance and legitimize locally based decision-making and Indigenous governance frameworks for determining ownership, access, and culturally appropriate conditions for sharing historical, contemporary, and future collections of cultural heritage and Indigenous data.”

Context: Scholarship on cross-institutional and -community networks for sustaining initiatives

• For faculty and administrators looking to support training networks for digital scholarship, we suggest two collected volumes that provide a wide range of perspectives and insights into how to support collectives and training across a range of institutions:

  • Guiliano, Jennifer, and Laura Estill, ed. Digital Humanities Workshops: Lessons Learned. London: Routledge, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003301097.

  • McGrail, Anne B., Angel David Nieves, and Siobhan Senier. People, Practice, Power: Digital Humanities Outside the Center. Debates in the Digital Humanities Ser. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/people-practice-power.

• For reflections on sustaining and supporting digital scholarship networks across centers and academic institutions, we highlight:

  • Maron, Nancy. “The Digital Humanities Are Alive and Well and Blooming: Now What?” Educause Review, August 2015. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/8/the-digital-humanities-are-alive-and-well-and-blooming-now-what.

  • Spiro, Lisa, Geneva Henry, Toniesha Taylor, and Amanda French. “Establishing a ‘Resilient Network’ for Digital Humanities.” Abstracts of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Digital Humanities 2017. https://dh2017.adho.org/abstracts/360/360.pdf.

  • Coll, Fiona, Serenity Sutherland, and Candis Haak. “Finding Our Way to a Digital Humanities Community at SUNY Oswego.” IDEAH 1, no. 1 (May 31, 2020). https://doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.6bbe5e96.

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, administrators, and funders, we suggest this exploration of how we might ensure a more equitable global system of digital scholarship through “participatory design that foregrounds public engagement, shared interest, and long-term relationships with stakeholders to create networks from which equal opportunities and new forms of connections can emerge” from Pawlicka-Deger, Urszula. “Infrastructuring Digital Humanities: On Relational Infrastructure and Global Reconfiguration of the Field.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 37, no. 2 (2022): 534–550. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab086. For further background, see Risam, Roopika. New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy. Northwestern University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv7tq4hg.

Community engagement and development

• For nonprofit, community-based initiatives, the Educopia Institute offers a wealth of resources and research. As a starting point, we highlight this guide, part of their Community Cultivation Resource Library, which “provides scaffolding and tools that help support and sustain collaborative groups, communities, and organizations,” for community cultural and GLAM initiatives: Skinner, Katherine. Community Cultivation—A Field Guide. Educopia Institute, 2018. https://educopia.org/cultivation/.

• Guide to establishing governance and developing community toward sustaining open-source software programs in cultural and scientific heritage: Arp, Laurie Gemmill, and Megan Forbes. “It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability.” 2018. https://itav.lyrasis.org/.

• Reflection on building cross-institutional networks in libraries: Schonfeld, Roger C. “Restructuring Library Collaboration: Strategy, Membership, Governance.” Ithaka S+R, 2019. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.311147.

This section presents models of partnership, best practices, and guidance for communities and institutions, including academic and research institutions, libraries, archives, and museums. It focuses on fostering equitable partnerships in digital scholarship by providing exemplary values statements, structures, and ethical guidelines. The resources listed here aim to support and inspire those involved in community-institutional collaborations, emphasizing the importance of inclusivity and social justice in these partnerships.

• Project values statement and structures

• Guidance for community partnerships with libraries, archives, and museums

• Examples of community/university partnerships

• Guidance on ethical academic research with communities

• Context: Scholarly reflections on equitable community-academic partnerships

• Context: Articulations of core values of digital scholarship

• Context: Integrating social and racial justice into digital scholarship

Project values statements and structures

• For examples of values statements and best practices guiding digital projects and centers as well as practitioners and creators focused on community-centered work, we highlight:

  • Colored Conventions Project Principles, https://coloredconventions.org/about/principles/.

  • US Latino Digital Humanities Best Practices, https://artepublicopress.com/digital-humanities/ from US Latino Digital Humanities Center and Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage. Co-directors: Commissioner Gabriela Baeza Ventura and Carolina Villarroel.

  • Co-Creation Goals and Structure guiding Northwestern University’s Reckonings Project, https://reckoningsproject.org/.

  • Princeton Center for Digital Humanities Project Charters, https://cdh.princeton.edu/research/project-management/charters/.

Guidance for community partnerships with libraries, archives, and museums

• For libraries, archives, and museums developing external partnerships, we suggest this guide to developing memoranda of understanding (MOUs), which offers guidance and templates for crafting MOUs; see Mirza, Rafia, Brett Currier, and Peace Ossom Williamson. Memorandum of Understanding Workbook, Version 1.0. 2016. https://doi.org/10.32855/utalibraries.2016.01.

• For Native and Indigenous communities in partnership with libraries, archives, and museums, we suggest the following resources:

  • Smith, Landis, Cynthia Chavez Lamar, and Brian Vallo, facilitators. Guidelines for Collaboration. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research, 2019. https://guidelinesforcollaboration.info/. The authors write, “The Guidelines are intended as a resource for museums and communities planning and carrying out collaborative work. These documents do not present a set of rules; instead, they offer principles and considerations for building successful collaborations … There are two separate and complementary sets of guidelines; one for communities and the other for museums.”

  • In addition, we highlight this work on protocols of return grounded in the concept of rematriation; see Gray, Robin R.R. “Rematriation: Ts’msyen Law, Rights of Relationality, and Protocols of Return.” Native American and Indigenous Studies 9, no. 1 (2022): 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1353/nai.2022.0010, and Callison, Camille, Loriene Roy, and Gretchen Alice LeCheminant, eds. Indigenous Notions of Ownership and Libraries, Archives and Museums. IFLA Publications Series 166. De Gruyter Saur, 2016. https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1077.

  • We also suggest Nayyer, Kim Paula. “Issues and Intersections of Indigenous Knowledge Protection and Copyright for Digital Humanities.” In Access and Control in Digital Humanities, edited by Shane Hawkins. Routledge, 2021, available at https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/c1270255-42e8-4a87-b9b5-d2c02bfc669e/content for insights into the complexities of protecting Indigenous knowledge within the framework of copyright and digital humanities.

  • For additional exemplary protocols, we suggest The Protocols for Native American Archival materials, which “build upon numerous professional ethical codes as well as international declarations recognizing Indigenous rights and the ground-breaking ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives, and Information Services.’” https://www2.nau.edu/libnap-p/, as well as the American Philosophical Society’s Protocols for the Treatment of Indigenous Materials, https://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/attachments/APS%20Protocols.pdf.

• For libraries, archives, and museums engaged in reparative description efforts, we highlight Frick, Rachel, and Merrilee Proffitt. Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-Informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice. 2022. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/223, which offers a framework of guidance including “actions and exercises that can help frame local priorities and areas for change and also provides examples to inspire local work. Inclusive and reparative description work is highly dependent on local context, and therefore a specific course of action must be created that is unique to each institution’s readiness and position relative to communities.”

• For libraries, archives, and museums and community-centered conservation initiatives in partnership with communities, we suggest Foundation for Advancement in Conservation. Held in Trust: Transforming Cultural Heritage Conservation for a More Resilient Future. 2023, which “articulates a vision of a vibrant and resilient future for conservation [physical and digital] grounded in social justice, equity, and environmental action.” Accessible at this link: https://www.culturalheritage.org/about-us/foundation/programs/held-in-trust/held-in-trust-report.

Examples of community/university partnerships

• Humanities for All, https://humanitiesforall.org/, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance Foundation, showcases more than 2,000 examples of public humanities projects at US higher education institutions. For example, it includes guidance and examples of how university presses have partnered to serve diverse local communities in publicly engaged humanities work: https://humanitiesforall.org/blog/university-presses-as-partners-for-public-engagement.

• Community-centered sustainability toolkit, including a database of exemplary community-institutional partnerships: Fenlon, Katrina, Jessica Grimmer, Alia Reza, Amanda Sorensen, Travis Wagner, and Nikki Wise (2024). Community-centered sustainability toolkit. https://go.umd.edu/sustaincommunities.

Guidance on ethical academic research with communities

• For examples of guides to ethical community-based research, for academic researchers and communities
  of different types, we highlight the following resources.

  • For academic and research institutions and scholars in partnership with Native and Indigenous communities, we highlight Reciprocal Research: A Guidebook to Centering Community in Partnerships with Indigenous Nations by the Native American Institute at Michigan State University. https://inclusion.msu.edu/_assets/documents/resources/Guidebook-to-Centering-Community-in-Partnerships-with-Indigenous-Nations.pdf.

  • For guidance on employing critical refusal, “a method whereby researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy,” particularly in activism and research that poses risk of harm to communities, see Zahara, Alex. “Ethnographic Refusal: A How to Guide.” Discard Studies, August 8, 2016. https://discardstudies.com/2016/08/08/ethnographic-refusal-a-how-to-guide/.

  • For a set of principles based on concepts of refusal and resistance to harmful or oppressive data practices, see Cifor, Marika, Patricia Garcia, TL Cowan, Jasmine Rault, Tonia Sutherland, Anita Say Chan, Jennifer Rode, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, Niloufar Salehi, and Lisa Nakamura (2019). Feminist Data Manifest-No. https://www.manifestno.com/. This same resource also provides an extensive, curated guide to relevant resources and guidance for different communities, the Manifest-No Playlist, https://www.manifestno.com/playlist.

  • For principles for conducting ethical research within online communities, from the Association of Internet Researchers, see Franzke, Aline Shakti, Anja Bechmann, Michael Zimmer, Charles M. Ess, and The Association of Internet Researchers. “Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0,” 2020. https://aoir.org/ethics/.

  • For academic publishers, this working paper reflects on the challenges associated with publishing publicly engaged humanities scholarship: Burton, Kath, Catherine Cocks, Darcy Cullen, Daniel Fisher, Barry M. Goldenberg, Janneken Smucker, Friederike Sundaram, Dave Tell, Anne Valks, and Rebecca Wingo. (2021). “Public Humanities and Publication: A Working Paper.” http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/gpvb-x279.

Context: Scholarly reflections on equitable community-academic partnerships

• For libraries, archives, and museums as collecting institutions, a reflection on decolonial processes generally, see Christen, Kim, and Jane Anderson. “Toward Slow Archives.” Archival Science 19, no. 2 (2019): 87–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09307-x. The authors write, “Our emphasis is on one mode of decolonizing processes that insist on a different temporal framework: the slow archives. Slowing down creates a necessary space for emphasizing how knowledge is produced, circulated, and exchanged through a series of relationships.”

• For how we can create more inclusive and collaborative relationships between historically marginalized communities and academia, we suggest:

  • Fiormonte, Domenico, and Gimena Del Rio Riande. “The Peripheries and Epistemic Margins of Digital Humanities.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan, 19–28. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bloomsbury-handbook-to-the-digital-humanities-9781350232129/.

  • Earhart, Amy E. “Can We Trust the University?: Digital Humanities Collaborations with Historically Exploited Cultural Communities.” In Bodies of Information, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 369–90. Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.23.

Context: Articulations of core values of digital scholarship

• For articulating and defining core values in digital scholarship, challenging traditional academic boundaries, and promoting equitable, socially engaged scholarship, we suggest:

  • Spiro, Lisa. “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv8hq.6.

  • Posner, Miriam. “What’s Next: The Radical, Unrealized Potential of Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 32–41. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1cn6thb.6.

Context: Integrating social and racial justice into digital scholarship

• For reflections on how social and racial justice can be integrated into digital scholarship, we suggest:

  • Risam, Roopika. “Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and the Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9, no. 2 (2015). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000208/000208.html.

  • Gallon, Kim. “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 42–49. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1cn6thb.7.

  • Noble, Safiya Umoja. “Toward a Critical Black Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 27–35. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvg251hk.5.

This section explores the reimagining of technical infrastructures that support digital scholarship and provides technical considerations for sustaining long-lived digital projects. It is intended for digital scholarship practitioners and creators, communities, and institutions, offering guidance on decentralized and academy-owned infrastructures, sustaining digital project outcomes, and technical sustainability in libraries, archives, museums, and digital humanities centers.

• Decentralized and academy-owned infrastructures

• Sustaining digital project outcomes for creators and communities

• Technical sustainability for digital scholarship in libraries, archives, museums, and centers

Decentralized and academy-owned infrastructures

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, communities, and institutions, we suggest the Knowledge Commons as a prime example of an academy-owned, open access, nonprofit infrastructure for collaborative scholarship, https://hcommons.org/. “The Commons was founded as and will remain an academy-owned and governed project, designed to serve the needs of scholars, writers, researchers, and students as they engage in teaching and research projects that benefit the larger community.”

• As context for the value of Knowledge Commons, we also suggest the following reflection on the persistent need for truly equitable infrastructures for digital scholarship, even in the era of open access: Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. “Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, Part 1.” January 5, 2024. https://team.hcommons.org/2024/01/05/open-infrastructures-and-the-future-of-knowledge-production-part-1/.

• For libraries, archives, museums, and academic institutions, as well as funders and administrators, we highlight this report on “values-driven, community-supported approaches to distributed digital preservation” from Meyerson, Jessica, Jackson Huang, Ryan Menefee, Courtney Mumma, Lydia Tang, Alicia Wise, Nathan Tallman, and Sibyl Schaefer. Sustainable Community-Owned Partnerships in Digital Preservation: DPSC Planning Project Final Report. Zenodo, May 13, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11186599.

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, administrators and funders, we highlight the following reflection on alternative models of digital infrastructure, including developing “highly specific distributed web services” as an alternative to large-scale infrastructures or standardization for supporting and sustaining heterogeneous digital scholarship: Zundert, Joris van. “If You Build It, Will We Come? Large Scale Digital Infrastructures as a Dead End for Digital Humanities.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 37, no. 3 (141) (2012): 165–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41636603.

• For practitioners and community partnerships, we highlight the Mukurtu Content Management System, https://mukurtu.org/, as an exemplary project of building digital infrastructures that can further social and reparative justice. For more on the project, see Christen, Kimberly, Alex Merrill, and Michael Wynne. “A Community of Relations: Mukurtu Hubs and Spokes.” D-Lib Magazine 23, no. 5/6 (May 2017). https://doi.org/10.1045/may2017-christen, where the authors write:

  “Built directly from community needs and input, the TK [Traditional Knowledge] Labels are a prime example of a feature designed around specific cultural and historical needs. Because Indigenous communities do not legally own much of their patrimony, traditional or Creative Commons’ licenses do not apply. Over two iterations of Mukurtu development, we created TK Labels to provide context to public domain and third-party owned works circulating to the general public.”

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, as well as digital humanities centers, libraries, archives, and museums, and academic institutions responsible for maintenance of digital projects, we highlight this Digital Humanities Quarterly special issue on minimal computing as an approach to more sustainable infrastructure development, including counterpoints: Risam, R., & Gil, A. “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing.” Digital Humanities Quarterly, 016, no. 2 (2022). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/2/000646/000646.html, and suggest the following examples of this approach:

  • The Programming Historian, https://programminghistorian.org/.

  • CollectionBuilder, https://collectionbuilder.github.io/.

  • Wax, https://minicomp.github.io/wax/.

• We also highlight again in this context this guide, which includes aspects of governance, community engagement, technology, and resources, toward sustaining open source software programs in cultural and scientific heritage: Arp, Laurie Gemmill, and Megan Forbes. “It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability.” 2018. https://itav.lyrasis.org/.

Sustaining digital project outcomes for creators and communities

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, we highlight the Sustainable Heritage Network, a community/institutional collaborative focused on the stewardship of Indigenous cultures, which offers comprehensive workshops, online tutorials, and web resources dedicated to the life cycle of digital stewardship of value to communities of all kinds: https://sustainableheritagenetwork.org/.

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators, we highlight the Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap, “a module-based workshop intended to help you and your team approach the seemingly daunting task of sustaining your digital humanities project over time”: Visual Media Workshop at the University of Pittsburgh. The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap. Accessed March 19, 2024. http://sustainingdh.net.

• For communities of practitioners and creators as well as libraries, archives, and museums, we highlight this Community-Centered Sustainability Toolkit, which includes a framework of factors for community-centered approaches to sustaining digital scholarship, a database of exemplary community-institutional partnerships, and other resources: Fenlon, Katrina, Jessica Grimmer, Alia Reza, Amanda Sorensen, Travis Wagner, and Nikki Wise (2024). Community-centered sustainability toolkit. https://go.umd.edu/sustaincommunities.

• We also suggest the following reflection on how digital scholarship “sustainability planning … needs to consider data and technology but also community, communications and process knowledge simultaneously” from Edmond, Jennifer, and Francesca Morselli. “Sustainability of Digital Humanities Projects as a Publication and Documentation Challenge.” Journal of Documentation 76, no. 5 (2020): 1019–1031. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2019-0232.

• For organizations, communities, and individuals across sectors engaged in preserving digital content, we highlight the Digital Preservation Coalition. Digital Preservation Handbook. 2nd ed. 2015. https://www.dpconline.org/handbook, which offers a peer-reviewed, open-access knowledge base on digital preservation.

• In addition, we highlight this foundational guide to data curation for digital humanities practitioners and communities, which offers insights on understanding humanities data and their representation, relevant standards and policy, and other considerations: DH Curation Guide: A Community Resource Guide to Data Curation in the Digital Humanities. https://archive.mith.umd.edu/dhcuration-guide/guide.dhcuration.org/index.html.

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators and communities, we suggest the following guidance on ethical approaches to collaborative data science research that is reproducible and reusable. This guide offers pathways for different stakeholders, including early-career researchers, research software engineers, and project leaders, to open accessibility, research transparency, and longevity for research results: The Turing Way Community. The Turing Way: A Handbook for Reproducible, Ethical and Collaborative Research. Version 1.0.2. Zenodo, 2022. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3233853.

Technical sustainability for digital scholarship in libraries, archives, museums, and centers

• For funders, administrators, and practitioners in libraries, archives, museums, academic institutions, and other stewardship institutions, we highlight the 2020 National Digital Stewardship Alliance report on challenges and key areas for research and development supporting global capacity for digital stewardship: National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Agenda Working Group, “2020 NDSA Agenda,” April 2020. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BCETD.

• For digital humanities centers, libraries, archives, and museums, and academic institutions undertaking maintenance of digital humanities projects at scale, we suggest the following reflection on the King’s Digital Lab “extensive archiving and sustainability project to ensure the ongoing management, security, and sustainability of ~100 digital humanities projects, produced over a twenty-year period … This article details the conceptual, procedural, and technical approaches used to achieve that, and offers policy recommendations to prevent repetition of the situation in the future” in Smithies, James, Carolina Westling, Arianna M. Sichani, Pip Mellen, and Arianna Ciula. “Managing 100 Digital Humanities Projects: Digital Scholarship and Archiving in King’s Digital Lab.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 13, no. 1 (2019). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/13/1/000411/000411.html.

• We also highlight the following technical guidance on gaps in the infrastructures enabling the preservation of digital scholarship, Burton, Matt, Matthew J. Lavin, Jessica Otis, and Scott B. Weingart. “Digits: Two Reports on New Units of Scholarly Publication.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 22, no. 1 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0022.105.

• For libraries, archives, museums, and communities seeking to preserve digital primary sources and other project outcomes, we again suggest the Digital Preservation Coalition. Digital Preservation Handbook. 2nd ed. 2015. https://www.dpconline.org/handbook, and the DPC’s constellation of other resources, including guidance for implementation, policymaking, and getting help with digital preservation.

This section addresses new modes of digital scholarship, reflecting innovative ways of working and necessitating new models of scholarly evaluation, career pathways, and mentorship models. It also considers the broader reconsideration of labor structures. The resources listed here are intended to guide and support practitioners and institutions in evaluating diverse digital scholarship, fostering sustainable and equitable collaborative practices, and ensuring viable career pathways.

• Guidelines and venues for evaluating diverse digital scholarship

• Guidance on sustainable, equitable approaches to collaborative work

• Career pathways in digital scholarship

• Context: Unsustainable labor structures in digital scholarship

Guidelines and venues for evaluating diverse digital scholarship

• Reviews in DH, https://reviewsindh.pubpub.org/about (Editors: Dr. Jennifer Guiliano and Dr. Roopika Risam), offers a peer-reviewed journal and project registry to enable evaluation and dissemination of digital scholarship.

• Journal of Open Humanities Data, https://openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/ (Editor-in-Chief Barbara McGillivray), is a home for peer-reviewed publications describing humanities research objects and techniques, with the goal of facilitating the evaluation and sharing of diverse data and methods.

• The following examples of guidelines from major professional organizations were developed to redress the lack of broadly accepted guidance for the professional evaluation of diverse modes of digital scholarship:

  • Association for University Presses Best Practices for Peer Review https://peerreview.up.hcommons.org/, updated in 2022 to include guidance on digital modes of scholarship.

  • American Historical Association Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History.

  • Modern Language Association Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship (2024), https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Committees/Committee-Listings/Professional-Issues/Committee-on-Information-Technology/Guidelines-for-Evaluating-Digital-Scholarship, which build upon previous Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media, https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Committees/Committee-Listings/Professional-Issues/Committee-on-Information-Technology/Guidelines-for-Evaluating-Work-in-Digital-Humanities-and-Digital-Media.

  • College Art Association & Society of Architectural Historians Guidelines for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in Art and Architectural History, https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/evaluating-digital-scholarship-in-art-and-architectural-history.pdf.

Guidance on sustainable, equitable approaches to collaborative work

• For examples of alternative visions and equitable approaches to valuing the nature of labor of digital scholarship, we suggest:

  • Nowviskie, Bethany. “Where Credit Is Due: Preconditions for the Evaluation of Collaborative Digital Scholarship.” Profession (2011): 169–181. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41714117.

  • Mattern, Shannon. “Evaluating Multimodal Work, Revisited.” Journal of Digital Humanities (2012). https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-4/evaluating-multimodal-work-revisited-by-shannon-mattern/.

• For practitioners looking to undertake sustainable collaborative practices and networks, we highlight the model of the Collaborators’ Bill of Rights: Clement, Tanya E., Doug Reside, Brian Croxall, Julia Flanders, Neil Fraistat, Steven Jones, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Seth Lodato, Laura Mandell, Paul Marty, Dot Porter, Bethany Nowviskie, Susan Schreibman, Lisa Spiro, and Tom Scheinfeldt. Collaborators’ Bill of Rights. 2021. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:31187/.

Career pathways in digital scholarship

• For leaders and administrators in academic institutions and libraries, archives, and museums, on ensuring career pathways for research software engineers and other digital humanities expertise: “As generational change occurs and in line with reorientations across the digital humanities community (see Boyles et al. 2018) [referenced below], it has become increasingly clear that the surest way to sustainability is to ensure continuity of technical expertise, domain knowledge and tacit understanding,” from Ciula, Arianna, and James Smithies. “Sustainability and Modelling at King’s Digital Lab: Between Tradition and Innovation.” In On Making in the Digital Humanities, edited by Julianne Nyhan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stefan Sinclair, and Alexandra Ortolja-Baird, 78–104. University College London Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084209, and Smithies, James, Anna-Maria Sichani, Tzu-Ting Chang, James Fenner, Matthew Wood, Neil Jefferies, David de Roure, et al. “iDAH Research Software Engineering (RSE) Steering Group Working Paper.” June 20, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8060003.

• For administrators and practitioners, particularly but not exclusively in the domain of scholarly publishing, we highlight this Values and Principles Framework and Assessment Checklist, which aims to help scholarly publishing service providers assess support for agreed-upon academic values and principles, including diversity, equity, and inclusion; transparency; openness and interoperability; access to knowledge; financial and organizational stability; and representative governance, from Skinner, Katherine, and Sarah Lippincott. “Values and Principles Framework and Assessment Checklist.” Commonplace (2020). https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.5175bab1.

• For library administrators and digital humanities librarians, we suggest Smiley, Bobby L. “From Humanities to Scholarship: Librarians, Labor, and the Digital.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 413–20. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvg251hk.38.

Context: Unsustainable labor structures in digital scholarship

• For an introduction to how digital scholarship presents new challenges to academic careers and evaluation structures, we suggest Flanders, Julia. “The Productive Unease of 21st-Century Digital Scholarship.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 003, no. 3 (September 29, 2009). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000055/000055.html, and Flanders, Julia. “Jobs, Roles and Tools in Digital Humanities.” In On Making in the Digital Humanities, edited by Julianne Nyhan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stefan Sinclair, and Alexandra Ortolja-Baird. London: University College London Press, 2023.

• For an overview on how the rise of academic precarity and neoliberal labor practices are shaping digital scholarship, we suggest the following:

  • Griffin, Gabriele. “The ‘Work-Work Balance’ in Higher Education: Between Over-Work, Falling Short and the Pleasures of Multiplicity.” Studies in Higher Education 47, no. 11 (November 2, 2022): 2190– 2203. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.2020750.

  • Boyles, Christina, Anne Cong-Huyen, Carrie Johnston, Jim McGrath, and Amanda Phillips. “Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities.” American Quarterly 70, no. 3 (2018): 693–700. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2018.0054.

  • Brundage, Lisa, Karen Gregory, and Emily Sherwood. “Working Nine to Five: What a Way to Make an Academic Living?” In Bodies of Information, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 305–319. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.20.

• For an overview on how collaboration in digital scholarship can create new opportunities and challenges, we suggest:

  • Graban, Tarez Samra, Paul Marty, Allen Romano, and Micah Vandegrift. “Introduction: Questioning Collaboration, Labor, and Visibility in Digital Humanities Research.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 13, no. 2 (2019). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/13/2/000416/000416.html, which “interrogate[s] critical factors which effect the invisibility of work, and offer a potential framework to
    move forward.”

  • Pilsch, Andrew, and Shawna Ross. “Labour, Alienation, and the Digital Humanities.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan, 335–45. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:50071/, which proposes “ways in which DH can—through small-scale, short-range, and narrow-focused projects and through the careful cultivation of accountability and creativity—intervene in the conditions of academic labour.”

  • We also highlight Griffin, Gabriele, and Matt Steven Hayler. “Collaboration in Digital Humanities Research—Persisting Silences.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2018). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/12/1/000351/000351.html, which studies “three types of DH collaboration: 1) human-human interactions; 2) human-machine/material interactions; and 3) machine/material-machine/material interactions. We argue that engagement with collaboration processes and practices enables us to think through how DH tools and practices reinforce, resist, shape, and encode material realities which both pre-exist, and are co-produced by them.”

  • Huculak, J. Matthew. “Is Promotion and Tenure Inhibiting DH/Library Collaboration? A Case for Care and Repair” is: https://web.archive.org/web/20161123111519/https://acrl.ala.org/dh/2016/07/29/a-case-for-care-and-repair/, which explores how “major cultural differences between the library and humanities community in terms of funding and tenure & promotion models impede closer collaboration—especially when it comes to tool development and envisioning long-term access to digital scholarship.”

This section explores reimagined models of financial and institutional support for digital scholarship. It covers financial sustainability for community-based initiatives and digital scholarship units within institutions, guidance on developing new institutional structures, and guidance for creators on aspects of project management. The resources listed here aim to support and inspire funders, administrators, and practitioners in establishing robust and sustainable digital scholarship practices.

• Financially sustaining community-based initiatives

• Financial sustainability for institutional units

• Developing institutional support and digital humanities units

• Guidance on project management

• Scholarly reflections on alternative models of supporting digital humanities units

Financially sustaining community-based initiatives

• For funders, administrators, and practitioners interested in supporting and financially sustaining community-based initiatives, we highlight:

  • Jules, Bergis. “Architecting Sustainable Futures: Exploring Funding Models in Community Archives.” Shift Design, 2019. https://architectingsustainablefutures.org/.

  • Nowviskie, Bethany. “New Questions, Next Work.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2022). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/3/000632/000632.html, which focuses on the need for “robust networks of mutual aid—based in equity and reciprocity, and meeting actual, core needs of our communities.”

Financial sustainability for institutional units

• For research on sustainable funding and investment models for digital scholarship, and especially for supporting digital humanities centers, we suggest:

  • Zorich, Diane M. “A Survey of Digital Humanities Centers in the United States.” CLIR pub143. CLIR, 2008. https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub143/.

  • Maron, Nancy L., K. Kirby Smith, and Matthew Loy. Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today [ITHAKA Case Studies in Sustainability]. JISC and ITHAKA S+R. Last modified July 14, 2009. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.22408.

  • Maron, Nancy L., and Sarah Pickle. Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase [Research Report]. ITHAKA S+R. Last modified June 18, 2014. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.22548.

Developing institutional support and digital humanities units

• For academic institutions, libraries, archives, and museums supporting and maintaining digital scholarship, we suggest:

  • ECAR Working Group. “Building Capacity for Digital Humanities: A Framework for Institutional Planning.” EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, 2017. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2017/5/building-capacity-for-digital-humanities-a-framework-for-institutional-planning, which provides the following framework to support planning around how to “develop institutional digital humanities support for IT staff, librarians, administrators, and faculty with administrative responsibilities.”

  • Siemens, Lynne. “Starting and Sustaining Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarships Centers: Lessons from the Trenches.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 17, no. 3 (2023). https://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/3/000677/000677.html, which examines 10 digital scholarship centers in North America to identify practices and models in relation to institutional structures, funding, services, staffing, and more.

• For administrators and practitioners, particularly but not exclusively in the domain of scholarly publishing, we highlight this Values and Principles Framework and Assessment Checklist, which aims to help scholarly publishing service providers assess support for agreed-upon academic values and principles, including diversity, equity, and inclusion; transparency; openness and interoperability; access to knowledge; financial and organizational stability; and representative governance: Skinner, Katherine, and Sarah Lippincott. “Values and Principles Framework and Assessment Checklist.” Commonplace (2020). https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.5175bab1.

Guidance on project management

• For digital scholarship practitioners and creators and communities, we suggest this curated collection of resources on digital humanities project management, which offers pedagogical resources on digital project planning, creating project charters, managing teams, obtaining and administering grants, etc.: Siemens, Lynne, curator. “Project Management.” In Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, edited by Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers. Modern Language Association, 2020. https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/Project-Management.

Scholarly reflections on alternative models of supporting digital humanities units

• For all stakeholders considering and imagining alternative mechanisms for supporting digital scholarship, we suggest:

  • Cole, Deirdre, I. A. Mobley, Jacqueline Wernimont, Moya Bailey, T. L. Cowan, and Veronica Paredes. “Accounting and Accountability: Feminist Grant Administration and Coalitional Fair Finance.” In Bodies of Information, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 57–68. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.7, which “highlights the need for a complete reimagining of funding structures” and grant administration processes to support community-based work.

  • In addition, we suggest Otis, Jessica. “Follow the Money?: Funding and Digital Sustainability.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2023). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/1/000666/000666.html.