Features

The Digital Scholarship pilot service provides web platforms, provides expertise, and connects you with other scholars and resources for Digital Scholarship (DS) and Digital Humanities (DH) teaching and learning, research, and publishing. The service is designed to address three major needs:*

• Lack of DS/DH web platforms with support for them
• Support that spans teaching and learning, research, and publishing
• A need for DS/DH scholars to find each other, find examples, and find resources (what we’re calling community building). 

Consulting and Platform Hosting

Whether it’s for a class or a research project (or both!), we provide consulting that helps scholars learn what is possible and how to successfully launch digital scholarship projects, as well as find the resources and expertise for doing so. The consulting could include pedagogy and instructional design consulting, and/or research methodology consulting. Through this “getting started” or “how-to” consulting scholars can get assistance using platform hosting services like web hosting (such as Omeka or Wordpress) or mapping (like ArcGIS Online, Carto, and Google). Depending on the specific needs of the project, we may pull in other partners and utilize their expertise and services as well. 

Research and Teaching and Learning and Publishing

Because Digital Scholarship projects can include elements of research and teaching and learning and publishing all at once, we’ve coordinated our supporting services so you don’t have to choose between research or teaching or publishing support. As we learn more about your project we will pull in experts from our support partners across U-M, including the Library and ITS. We’ll form a project team with the appropriate blend of research, teaching and learning, and publishing expertise and support that matches your needs. 

Community Building

We believe that digital scholarship is not just about technologies, but is also about community. A major portion of our service is dedicated to fostering and building the Digital Scholarship community at U-M. To that end, we hold workshops where scholars can learn new skills and meet new people. We hold regular office hours with our cross-campus partners so you can drop in and ask questions, try out new ideas, or see what others are doing. We proudly support the U-M Library Scholar Sprints, and work with the cross-campus Connecting Digital Scholarship group on events programming that brings together scholars, students, and support partners. 

Just the Beginning

If successful, over time we want to work to grow this pilot service offering to include features like a well documented project examples website so scholars and support partners can see examples of what others are doing, additional hosting platforms (such as Scalar), and programming or web development options (like collaborative code environments or custom themes). 

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* Issues identified based off of the hard work and research of:

• Alix Keener (formerly U-M Library), who surveyed 95 faculty on digital scholarship topics

• Tony Gillum and Júlia Martins (UMOR), who conducted interviews and produced a report on “Digital Humanities at Michigan”

• Lisa Nakamura, et al. (Digital Studies Institute), who surveyed and interviewed people from U-M and other institutions and shared their “Digital Studies Design Team Proposal” report with us

• Joe Bauer, Carla Stellrecht, Jan Stewart, and Sean Green (LSA TS), who conducted interviews of U-M faculty, reviewed syllabi, and interviewed people from external institutions

Who can use this service?

• Faculty
• Researchers