What is the DH Lab?
Created in 2022 as a partnership between the School of Liberal Arts and the Kaufman Library, GGC’s DH Lab is a collaboration space that supports faculty and students who do work in the digital humanities. The lab is located on the second floor of the library and is open by reservation to all members of the GGC community, following the lab’s rules and procedures. We offer workshops and consultations to help faculty and students launch successful digital projects. We also have a limited collection of hardware and software that can be signed out.
In his essay “Digital Humanities and the Great Project,” R. C. Alvarado wrote that the digital humanities is the authentic “desire of humanists to work with digital technology on their own terms.” The lab was created in this spirit. We want to help humanists use the most cutting edge tools to push the boundaries of inquiry, teaching, scholarship, and resource development. We want the lab to be a place for learning, experimentation, exploration, and fun.
The Lab is new and eager to earn. We support a broad-based “Big Tent” definition of the digital humanities. Our work is essentially experimental and we are always looking for ways to help digital humanists be successful.
Who Are We?
The DH Team is a group of intellectually curious faculty, staff, and students:
- Dr. Daniel Vollaro – Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of Digital Humanities for the School of Liberal Arts.
- Catherine Downey – Head of Access Services and Information Commons, Kaufman Library.
- Dr. Tobias Wilson-Bates – Assistant Professor of English.
- Camerin Dillingham – English major and student assistant.
Special thanks to Dr. Teresa Winterhalter, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, and Barbara Mann, former Dean of Library Services, for their strong administrative support of this project. Also, we appreciate the support of Chris Walker, application developer at GGC, who patiently enabled and supported the creation of this website.
What Do We Do?
- Create pathways for our constituents to successfully find support for their digital projects by connecting them to on-campus partners.
- Assist faculty and students by helping them brainstorm, create, and support digital projects related to the humanities. The lab facilitates projects of others; it does not create, control, or pay for them. In selected circumstances, it will host them.
- Work closely with the Kaufman Library’s “General Space,” preferring project files to be housed there wherever possible but accessible to a wide variety of audiences through other digital platforms.
- Promote learning and skill acquisition in the digital humanities for research, scholarship, project work, and teaching through direct consultation, training, workshops, and guest lectures.
- Help our constituents conceptualize, build, and launch projects.
Photo of Sappho statue by William Wetmore Story taken by Steve Snodgrass and cropped for the banner.