Notes from the Digital Humanities Institute — Beirut 2017

This panel presentation is designed to “share back” to the experiences of librarians, faculty and technologists who attended of this spring’s Digital Humanities Institute in Beirut. The discussion will focus on cross-institutional and consortial partnerships available in professional development in the digital humanities.

The Digital Humanities can be described as the convergence of diverse interdisciplinary academic practices of research and pedagogy within digital environments. In order for them to get off the ground, a diverse skill set is needed. The AMICAL digital scholarship committee identified introducing digital methods for research as one of its key goals for 2016-17. An organizing committee of faculty, a technologist, a librarian and a student at the American University of Beirut received a grant from AMICAL to bring up to fifteen AMICAL participants to Beirut for the Digital Humanities Institute (dhibeirut.wordpress.com). The number of applicants for this event was large. There are no doubt others in the AMICAL community who would like to learn about digital scholarship and the collective effort it entails within institutions. This panel is an opportunity for five AMICAL participants in DHIB to give back to the community. Three main questions: (1) based on what you learned in Beirut, what kinds of mutually-beneficial partnerships must be built within in your institution to launch digital research projects? (2) Are there others within AMICAL with whom you share scholarly goals and you could build relationships? (3) what additional professional development in digital scholarship is most useful?