Every semester, students tell me that diving into DH can be daunting, especially because of the diversity of the field—there’s much to learn, much to read, much to play around with. I also suspect it’s harder for LIS students because their programs are not squarely grounded in a humanities discipline and they don’t have the same domain/content background, research questions, or intellectual support as humanities students. LIS professionals also have to facilitate work across various humanities disciplines, making specialization impossible in every case.

Here are my top five recommendations for LIS graduate students (and others) who want to become familiar with digital humanities:

(1) Read TaDiRAH, the crowdsourced taxonomy of digital humanities activities, objects, and techniques.

(2) Subscribe to dh+lib or follow @dhandlib for a weekly roundup of recommended readings, resources, posts, calls for papers/participation, jobs, and more.

(3) Join ACRL’s DHIG listserv (Association of College & Research Libraries’ Digital Humanities Interest Group), where members share info and discuss current issues in their DH work.

(4) Follow @DHtrends, a weekly digest of DH tweets during fall and spring semesters, curated by students at Pratt SILS.

(5) Read Lisa Spiro’s excellent post on “Getting Started in the Digital Humanities,” which is useful and comprehensive for all audiences.

If you’re interested in how to foster DH work on your campus, I have some suggestions in the conclusion of my article on DH and libraries.

For more advanced reading, the Journal of Library Administration published a special issue on digital humanities in 2013 and open-access articles are available through the following links:

• Introduction – Barbara Rockenbach
• Digital Humanities and Libraries: A Conceptual Model – Chris Alen Sula
• Supporting Digital Scholarship in Research Libraries: Scalability and Sustainability – Jennifer Vinopal and Monica McCormick
• No Half Measures: Overcoming Common Challenges to Doing Digital Humanities in the Library – Miriam Posner
• Skunks in the Library: A Path to Production for Scholarly R&D – Bethany Nowviskie
• Evolving in Common: Creating Mutually Supportive Relationships Between Libraries and the Digital Humanities – Micah Vandegrift and Stewart Varner
• NYPL Labs: Hacking the Library – Ben Vershbow