Open Access

Dawn Childress

• Digital tools and methods are transforming humanities scholarship and teaching, but oftentimes humanities scholars and librarians have no clear infrastructure to support digital research or to sustain digital projects. If we are to foster digital scholarship and strengthen the digital literacies of our humanities researchers, we must find ways to build knowledge and community around the digital humanities and to increase capacity by identifying individuals and units that can support the use of new technologies and methodologies. This presentation will consider the preliminary findings of a multi-institutional environmental scan and will discuss the resulting initiatives and recommendations, as well as next steps. The environmental scan, surveying local digital humanities landscapes and current infrastructures, addresses current digital humanities practice, digital humanities in research and teaching, existing expertise and services, and perceived needs. While focusing on Penn State University, the comparative perspective of the study provides an understanding, in general, of the needs of humanities scholars and offers a point of comparison for further analysis.