This latest installment in our series of interviews with Scholarly Commons experts and affiliates features Harriett Green, the Library’s English and Digital Humanities Librarian.

What is your background education and work experience?

I have a bachelor of arts in History and Literature, a master’s degree in humanities/creative writing, and I earned my MSLIS from Illinois.  My position here at Illinois as English and Digital Humanities Librarian is my first library position, and before that, I worked in scholarly publishing.

What led you to this field?

I saw libraries as an opportunity to remain engaged with academia, scholarly research, and intriguing discoveries, but from the opposite end of publishing: I saw how the cake was made, and now I get to sell delectable treats to others!  And when I learned more about digital humanities and digital libraries, I became really interested in how libraries are at the intersection of technology and society, and the impact we can have in helping people navigate the digital culture we live in today.

What is your research agenda?

My research focuses on several areas related to digital humanities: In one thread, I’m interested in the information behaviors and research practices of humanities scholars, and how they use digital tools increasingly in their work. I also examine digital humanities in the classroom, and have written on digital pedagogy and how librarians can collaborate with faculty in courses. I am also interested in exploring humanities data curation, and the nature of humanities data, and the unique digital curation needs for humanities research.

Do you have any favorite work-related duties?

I enjoy working with students in the classroom and on their research: there’s nothing like seeing a student make a new connection thanks to finding that one resource!

What are some of your favorite underutilized resources that you would recommend to researchers?

The Karlsruhe catalog is the not-so-known World Cat: The portal connects you to a global network of library catalogs and digs up the stuff you can’t find elsewhere!

If you could recommend only one book to beginning researchers in your field, what would you recommend?

It would be Parker Palmer’s The Courage To Teach because the book is more than simply a guidebook on teaching, but a thoughtful discussion on what it means to bring our true, “authentic” selves into our work.

Need assistance with a Digital Humanities project? E-mail Harriett Green or the Scholarly Commons.