Digital Humanities at Edmon Low Library: Home

The digital humanities (DH) is a field of scholarship that explores the intersections of computing and the humanities. It encompasses a wide range of activities, such as creating digital editions of texts, analyzing large corpora of data, developing interactive maps and timelines, designing digital games and simulations, and building online platforms for collaboration and dissemination. The digital humanities also engages with critical questions about the nature, impact, and ethics of digital technologies and methods on humanistic inquiry and society.

The digital humanities is not a monolithic or homogeneous field, but rather a diverse and dynamic community of scholars, practitioners, and students from different disciplines, backgrounds, and perspectives. The digital humanities values interdisciplinary collaboration, experimentation, innovation, and public engagement. It also fosters a culture of openness, sharing, and reflection, as well as a commitment to social justice and inclusion. The digital humanities aims to enrich and transform the humanities through the use of digital tools and approaches, as well as to contribute to the broader understanding and critique of digital culture and society.

DH at Edmon Low Library

The OSU Library has a range of resources available for students and faculty working in the digital humanities and in digital scholarship more generally. We have regular workshops, as well as faculty and staff, who can assist you with learning the basics of various tools and approaches. We also have a range of technology available that you can either check out or use at the Library, and spaces specifically designed for digital scholarship and collaboration.

The Edmon Low Library has been working for the last few years to build capacity for digital humanities research, both through the creation of collaborative, technology-based work spaces and through professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. The Edmon Low Creative Studios opened in August 2015 with a focus on making technology available to all OSU patrons. This is the one place on campus where media labs, 3D printers, and loanable technology are available to any OSU student, faculty, or staff member regardless of department or college affiliation. These studios make it possible for faculty to assign digital humanities projects to their classes, knowing that students will be able to access the hardware, software, and expertise needed. The space includes Mac and Windows studios with enhanced audio mixing capabilities, a recording and presentation space with a green screen, and a 3D printing studio.

The McCasland Foundation Data Visualization Studio is also found in the Creative Studios and features a Microsoft Surface table linked to a wall-mounted touchscreen. This is a space for collaborative research among student and/or faculty groups, and it provides the software and hardware necessary to do comparative visualization of data, which is important in many subfields of the digital humanities. The library’s Maps and Spatial Data Services Librarian, Kevin Dyke, has expertise in this area and is available to consult with faculty and classes on various means of data visualization, including GIS (Geographic Information Systems). Virtual reality (or VR) has also become an important new tool for digital humanists and other researchers, and the library used donor funding to support the installation of VR capabilities in three spaces (two in the Creative Studios and one in the Architecture Library).

Additionally, McCasland Maps and Spatial Data maintains a collection of over 150,000 sheet maps, 100,000 aerial photographs, and hundreds of atlases. The collections focus on Oklahoma, but also include many maps and atlases covering neighboring states, the United States, and the world. More than 10,000 historical maps of Oklahoma are included in the Oklahoma Digital Maps Collection. McCasland Maps and Spatial Data also offers workshops, consultations, and software related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS).