By Tierney Gleason, Reference and Digital Humanities Librarian

Wednesday, April 29th is the Day of DH 2020, an initiative led by centerNet where people working on digital humanities (DH) projects share their work with an international community through tweets and blog posts. What is “digital humanities” you might ask? While there is no agreed-upon definition for digital humanities, we tend to generally view DH as any form of humanities scholarship or creative expression that utilizes the web to enable access to the wider public. 

On the #DayOfDH2020, we are excited to highlight some of our DH work in the library and talk about notable projects happening across the Fordham University community.

DH at the Fordham University Libraries

One of the ways librarians practice DH is by digitizing items in our print collection. We hope readers at home will explore our Digital Collections that cover a range of Fordham history topics, including student publications, photos, lectures, and oral histories. We also have images from our Archives and Special Collections including manuscripts and rare books, as well as images from the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art.

(Pro-tip: If you are looking for a hip Zoom background to show off your Fordham pride, try the Fordham Photograph Collection or the Postcard Collection.)

We also archive digital items for future use and recently launched the Fordham University COVID-19 Digital Archive. This collection will document the experiences of the Fordham University community during the global pandemic for research and reflection in the coming years. Stay tuned for updates and calls for participation.

Librarians engage with DH scholars through providing direction on metadata creation for collections of digital assets to ensure that items follow standards that allow them to be used across different platforms and make them as accessible as possible. For more information, check out our Digital Collections Metadata Guide. Researchers can also reach out to the Metadata Management Librarian at mlewis83@fordham.edu or email the general digital collections email at digitalcollections@fordham.edu.

Another way librarians support DH work is through offering guidance on copyright. Curious about using an image on your website? Confused about how Creative Commons works? Looking for music that you can use legally in a video? Check out our Copyright Resources Guide or contact the Copyright Team for help.

We also have a Digital Humanities Research Guide curated by Tierney Gleason, Reference & Digital Humanities Librarian. This guide has an array of resources to learn about DH, from introductory resources to instructional books and tutorials. This guide is developed to meet the teaching and research needs of the university community, with recent additions on Game Studies and Teaching Resources created at the request of graduate students and faculty. If you have questions about managing a project, want to partner with the library on a digital research assignment, or would like to request a workshop, please get in touch.

DH Projects Across Fordham

To get a feel for the exciting DH work happening at Fordham, check out the following projects:

• The companion website for Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth by Magda Teter, Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies and Professor of History. 

• The Medieval Londoners Database managed by Maryanne Kowaleski, Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J. Distinguished Professor of History and Medieval Studies.

• Moving Saints of the Bronx, a digital class project for a Modern Latin American Art course taught by Barbara Mundy, Professor of Art History.

• Bronx Italian American History Initiative (BIAHI), an oral history project co-directed by Kathleen LaPenta, Senior Lecturer in Italian and Jacqueline Reich, Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies. (Check out their current social media campaign as well!)

• Wavelengths, a student-run internet radio station founded by undergraduates at the Lincoln Center campus.

Additional Acknowledgments

In closing, we also wanted to give a special Day of DH 2020 shout-out to our colleagues in Faculty Technology Services, the Center for Medieval Studies, the Department of Art History, and the Fordham Digital Scholarship Consortium for their work supporting projects and sustaining a community of DH practitioners across campuses.