Digitizing the Humanities

Abstract

Scholarship in the humanities is rapidly becoming digital, and patrons expect libraries to offer new resources. The influence of Web 2.0, especially social media, amplifies these changes and enhances digital scholarship. The collaborative creation of digital collections allows libraries to modernize their available resources while encouraging dynamic patron participation in the educational process through initiatives like crowdsourcing. The developing digital elements of humanities scholarship and how they can be affected by the participatory web is examined through discussion and review of literature, and applied and observed through a case study of The Skeptiseum, a digital museum of physical artifacts, and how digitization contributes to modern scholarship in the humanities.