Mission Statement

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The Humanities Lab at Bucknell

Drafted by Diane K. Jakacki, July 2018

Overview

The Humanities Lab (HumLab) at Bucknell supports and sustains collaborative digital humanities projects and initiatives developed by members of the Bucknell community that involve the analysis, curation, and presentation of text, data, image, and audio-visual media.

As an entity existing within the Bucknell Humanities Center, in collaboration with Library & Information Technology and the College of Arts & Sciences, the HumLab provides space, resources, and support for the application of digital methods for research and publication that are rooted in forms of humanistic inquiry.

The HumLab is a space for:

  • Research
  • Collaboration
  • Training
  • Presentation

We are dedicated to facilitating and supporting the DH research needs and interests of Humanities faculty, staff, and students through:

  • Mentoring and consultation
  • Tool training and mastery
  • Project management

HumLab supports technological needs related to DH projects through:

  • Coding and encoding
  • Application customization, design, and building
  • Data management and maintenance

Oversight and Affiliation

Steering Committee:

In order for the HumLab to function properly and remain in line with Bucknell’s institutional and academic objectives, it is necessary that faculty have oversight. A steering committee comprised of faculty members engaged in DH research at Bucknell, appointed by the Humanities Center Director, will meet on a periodic basis to set priorities, review activities, and generally ensure that the lab’s energies support faculty-driven research in a responsible, sustainable manner.

Affiliated Faculty and Staff:

Faculty members and staff who are engaged in DH research projects supported by the HumLab will be recognized as having “affiliated” status in promotional materials published on the HumLab website, social media, etc. Publicly acknowledged affiliation can be valuable for outreach and fundraising efforts. Such status is in line with practices of other DH centers.

Mission

The Humanities Lab at Bucknell is a place for research and knowledge production. It is a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for collaborative scholarship and new forms of humanities inquiry. The Humanities Lab fosters a collective of scholars who honor and encourage diversity and difference through intellectual engagement. Here Bucknell faculty, staff, and students from across the university and around the world come together to develop and produce scholarly projects in digital publication environments. To do this, we recognize that:

  • Doing and making in the digital humanities requires learning and experimentation.
  • All collaborators on research projects and initiatives at whatever rank or capacity should be respected for their contributions. Labor should always be acknowledged in the published data and metadata produced through digital research.
  • Resources – human, technological, financial, institutional – are finite, and care should be taken to balance project needs with these resources.
  • Technology and the purveyors of technology should not be considered to be benign. Wherever possible, ethical, equitable, and environmentally responsible tools and applications will be employed in the production of research projects.
  • All research projects have life cycles that are guided by the investigators’ abilities and commitments; project development, therefore, must respond to, prepare for, and anticipate these cycles through:
    • The training and mastery of tools and methods;
    • The sharing of new approaches and best practices;
    • The hosting of digital materials; serving of databases, content management systems, and web applications;
    • The funding of projects at all stages of development, through internal and external financial sources and commitment of human labor.

In addition to research project support, the Humanities Lab sponsors events and initiatives designed to encourage better understanding of the fields and disciplines that make up the digital humanities; bring the Bucknell community into dialogue with scholar-practitioners from the digital humanities in the U.S., North America, and globally; and encourage awareness and understanding of the complexities and landscapes of digital culture, through:

  • Affinity and working groups
  • Student mentoring
  • Invited speakers
  • Symposia and colloquia
  • Digital activism programs

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