Digital Humanities Clinics – leading 
Dutch librarians into DH

LIBER 2017 – 5 July 2017

Ben Companjen, Michiel Cock and Lotte Wilms

@bencomp @michielcock @lottewilms



Idea
• Interest in DH in academic libraries in the Netherlands

• KB, National Library of the Netherlands – Lotte Wilms
• University Library Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam – Michiel Cock
• Leiden University Libraries – Ben Companjen

• All working on an internal training programme 

• Why not join forces?

• Supported by UKB, organisation of academic libraries in NL



Inspiration
• Library Carpentry: https://librarycarpentry.github.io/ 

• “Library Carpentry introduces you to the fundamentals of computing and 
provides you with a platform for further self-directed learning.”

• Programming Historian: http://programminghistorian.org/ 
• “The Programming Historian offers novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials 

that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and 
workflows to facilitate their research.”

• Digital Scholarship Training Programme of the BL: 
http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/178 

https://librarycarpentry.github.io/
http://programminghistorian.org/
http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/178
http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/178


Ambitions

Create a programme that gives librarians:

• a stepping stone into DH 
• from where they can self-educate to support researchers 
• and/or (semi-)automate work



Goals

1. Teach academic librarians about the basics of digital humanities
• Introductory lectures
• Practical workshops

2. Strengthen relationship between libraries and academic community

3. Build a knowledge network of Dutch librarians working in DH
• University libraries
• Archives
• Museums
• Research institutes



Where to start?
• What does it mean to be a DH librarian?

• Desk research

• Brainstorm to get list of topics to teach 
• Concepts (i.e. computational thinking)
• Software (i.e. MALLET)
• Methods (i.e. topic modelling)

• Get feedback on list from research community
• THATCamp Amsterdam

→ Teach methods, not software



Organisation

• Organise topics according to TaDiRah Taxonomy
• Five topics selected:

• Capture
• Creation
• Enrichment
• Analysis

• Text
•  Nontext

http://tadirah.dariah.eu/vocab/index.php


Setup

• Five full-day training days 
• Morning: 2 lectures
• Afternoon: practical workshop

• Lectures for 40-50 people
• Workshops for 20-30 people
• Training days three weeks apart

• 5 September – 7 November 2017
• Organised in a central location



What do librarians want?

• Get feedback from library community 

• Feedback form via Google Docs
• Short introduction to the programme
• Per day a choice of 3 workshops
• General questions 

• 40 responses from 14 institutions



Lecturers

• Profile for each lecture
“ Is (or was) responsible for a large digitisation project and can share 
knowledge on processes, copyright, techniques and data formats. Added bonus 
would be if the person also has experience with digitisation of audio, video and 
objects”

• Input from CLARIAH (Dutch combination of CLARIN & DARIAH)
• Lecturers who already teach the topic to limit preparation needed
• Experts in their field
• Geographical spread
• Gender balance



Workshops

• Where possible – use existing workshops
• Library Carpentry
• Programming historian

• Specific Dutch subjects: 

• Delpher  

• AVResearcher



Full programme - 1

Day 1:

- Digitisation & Databases
- Workshop: Introduction to data & data modelling

Day 2:

- Computational thinking & Code, tool and data criticism
- Workshop: Introduction to programming with Python



Full programme - 2

Day 3:

- Natural language processing and named entity recognition & linked 
data

- Workshop: Cleaning (NER) data 

Day 4:

- Text analysis with historical sources & text analysis with born digital 
sources

- Workshop: Network analysis 



Full programme - 3

Day 5:

- Working with audiovisual material & GIS
- Workshop: Computer vision



Practical side of things

• GitHub Pages
• General information
• Teaching materials
• Building network (Gitter)

• Enrollment via Eventbrite
• Max. 2 people per organisation in workshops
• Day sponsors to cover catering and travel costs & gifts for speakers



Lessons learned

- Decide your scope
- Community involvement is easy!
- Free up time to work
- Keep talking to your community
- Try to be thorough, but do keep the speed
- Don’t be too quick
- Don’t be afraid to postpone 



Future

• Registration opens this summer
• Improve while we work – continuous feedback from participants

• If successful, DH Project day after completion of programme
• Formulate research question
• Get source material
• Clean data
• Analyse data
• Answer questions
• Share results



Questions/suggestions?

@lottewilms

@bencomp

@michielcock

dhclinicsNL@gmail.com 

mailto:dhclinincsNL@gmail.com
mailto:dhclinincsNL@gmail.com