Frankfurt2


The Wild West: Promoting Digital Scholarship
at the University of Colorado Boulder

Thea Lindquist | CU Boulder | thea.lindquist@colorado.edu | @lutefisk812

Digital Humanities Task Force Center for Research Data & 
Digital Scholarship

First Outcomes

References

In 2013, a group of 11 librarians and technologists on the 
CU Boulder campus sought to understand researcher 
interest and needs in digital humanities. 

We discovered that digital scholars were scattered across 
disciplines, often with little interaction with each other or 
knowledge of available expertise and resources on campus.

The task force recommended the creation of a digital scholarship 
center to act as a hub to bring a dispersed network of researchers, 
expertise, and resources together.

At the same time, campus Research Computing was thinking 
about creating a center for data analytics and visualization. 

We merged our visions into a campus research center, CRDDS, 
which launched in June 2017: http://www.colorado.edu/crdds/

Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship at the University of Colorado Boulder: 
10.1002/bul2.2017.1720430215  

dh+CU – Future Directions for Digital Humanities at CU Boulder: 
http://scholar.colorado.edu/libr_facpapers/32/

Image credit: Paul Conrad, Los Angeles Times, 1981. 

Here are some of the ways in which CRDDS is meeting or 
plans to meet identified needs:

 Fall seminar series
 Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate 
 Student visualization contest

Due to the interest exhibited across the disciplinary 
spectrum, we realized that using the term digital 
scholarship was more appropriate in our context.

In interviews, some researchers described a hardscrabble 
existence where they felt compelled to “pull themselves up 
by their bootstraps.” Building community was high priority.

The needs faculty and student researchers identified were diverse.

On a campus as decentralized as CU Boulder, no one group could 
hope to support them. 

 Space for workshops and collaboration in main library
 Integrating research data infrastructure
 Ongoing information-gathering on user needs

DS

http://www.colorado.edu/crdds/
http://scholar.colorado.edu/libr_facpapers/32/

	The Wild West: Promoting Digital Scholarship�at the University of Colorado Boulder�Thea Lindquist | CU Boulder | thea.lindquist@colorado.edu | @lutefisk812