Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH), University of Nebraska-Lincoln

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Designated an official Center in 2004 by act of the Board of Regents and confirmed by the Nebraska Post-Secondary Education Commission in 2005; in existence since 1998 under a different name.
Katherine Walter, Co-Director, and Professor and Chair, Digital Initiatives & Special Collections

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The strategic focus of staffing in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has been to create a combination of faculty lines in multiple academic departments (Libraries, English, and History, so far) and to create staff positions within the Center itself. Establishing faculty lines in the departments makes the work of the Center very visible to the specific faculties and it emphasizes the importance that CDRH places on the “humanities” side of “digital humanities.” Moreover, it is University policy that tenure homes are in departments rather than in centers, so this is a practical approach as well as a philosophical one. Co-directors of the CDRH hold academic positions as full professors in the UNL Libraries and English respectively, and the staff positions in the Center report to the co-director from the UNL Libraries–either directly or indirectly, as do all Center-related faculty hired into positions within the Libraries. Center faculty in Arts & Sciences report to their respective department chairs, and memos of understanding between the departments and the Center concerning responsibilities of the faculty to the Center are mandatory under University policy. With one exception, all faculty lines associated with the CDRH are tenure track, and (to date) faculty have been successful in moving through the tenure and promotion process.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities is a joint initiative of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries and the UNL College of Arts and Sciences. The co-directors report to two deans, the Dean of Libraries and the Dean of Arts & Sciences. Faculty positions have tenure homes in Arts & Sciences or the Libraries. Note: Faculty report directly to chairs in their tenure home departments.

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1. Co-Director (Faculty: Professor and Chair, Digital Initiatives & Special Collections or DISC in the UNL Libraries) With the co-director from Arts & Sciences, responsible for strategic planning and general oversight of the CDRH. The co-director from the Libraries prepares the annual budget with the approval of the Dean of Libraries and the Dean of Arts & Sciences, and if applicable, the appropriate financial administrator of PoE funds in the Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Office; does fundraising; provides overall coordination for the various programs and space under the purview of the Center; encourages associated faculty to undertake studies and activities that are consistent with the purposes of the Center, and as feasible, assist in obtaining funding for these studies and activities; serves ex officio to all Center committees; selects staff members and evaluates their performance; is responsible for evaluating faculty and support staff in the Libraries; responsible for providing input on evaluations of digital humanities faculty in humanities departments or input at time of tenure or promotion review; reports on the activities of the Center to the Dean of Libraries and the Dean of Arts and Sciences; assumes, upon consultation with the Deans, such other responsibilities as are consistent with the purposes of the Center.Direct Reports:
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   1. Administrative Assistant (Staff member on Libraries funding) Keeps the calendar of the co-director from the Libraries, schedules meetings and phone conferences; takes minutes of meetings; designs publicity, etc.
   2. Metadata Encoding Specialist (CDRH funded and administratively part of the Libraries): Responsible for encoding exts using a variety of metadata schemes in XML. Provides assistance in understanding encoding, ranging from theories of encoding to training individuals. Responsible for hiring, training and supervising student assistants. Develops templates to assist students in encoding.
   3. Postdoctoral Fellows (CDRH funded): Fellowships are filled based on availability of funding. The positions may be funded by particular endowment funds or through funds created for the position through pooled resources or through grants. Usually report to the CDRH co-director from the Libraries.
   4. Faculty (Libraries-funded, 2 tenured Associate Professors, appointments in DISC): have research projects, mostly grant-funded, and all teach digital humanities either as part of their ongoing responsibilities or in some other capacity, whether courses in English or History relating to digital humanities or independent study in Digital Initiatives & Special Collections or contributing to classes taught by other CDRH professors. Apportionments vary with research ranging from 25% to 40%.
   5. Associate Research Professor (endowment funding, appointment in DISC): Serves as the Senior Associate Editor of the Walt Whitman Archive and contributes to other projects in the Center. Because this individual reports also to the editors of the Walt Whitman Archive, the Co-Director from Arts & Sciences contributes to his evaluation. Apportionment: 90% research; 5% teaching; 5% service.
   6. Digital Resources Designer (CDRH funded and administratively are part of the Libraries): Designs, develops, and updates open source digital resources in CDRH for humanities research purposes. Must work closely with the Programmer/Analysts. Functional supervision of design students.
   7. Programmer/Analyst II (CDRH funded and administratively part of the Libraries): Responsible for server-side programming, building web applications intended to operate in a UNIX system. Back-end programming or application skills such as relational databases, XML programming or processing, and scripting. Communicates with sys admin about systems issues for CDRH work. Functional supervision of programming student(s). Programmer reports to one of the Associate Professors in the CDRH (Libraries faculty).
2. Co-Director (Faculty, English, Professor with an endowed University Professorship position): With other co-director, responsible for strategic planning and general oversight of CDRH; encourages associated faculty to undertake studies and activities that are consistent with the purposes of the Center, and as feasible, assists in obtaining funding for these studies and activities; prepares agenda for CDRH meetings, chairs these meetings; makes appointments to standing and ad hoc committees of the Center; serves ex officio to all Center committees; responsible for providing input on evaluations of dh faculty in humanities departments or input at time of tenure or promotion review; with the co-director from the Libraries, reports on the activities of the Center to the Dean of Libraries and the Dean of Arts and Sciences; assumes, upon consultation with the Deans, such other responsibilities as are consistent with the purposes of the Center.
3. Professor (History, Chair of the department of History with an endowed academic chairship provided as match toward CDRH Program of Excellence funding): Has digital research projects with CDRH.
4. Associate Professor (English): Teaches digital humanities courses and has digital humanities research projects with CDRH. Reports to Chair of English. Apportionment: 50% teaching; 40% research; 10% service.
5. Assistant Professors (English and History): These individuals teach digital humanities courses and have digital humanities research or editing projects with CDRH. Report to chairs of English and History respectively. Apportionment: 50% research; 40% teaching; 10% service.
6. Adjunct Positions (Part-time): Professor and director of computing operations and research services (CORS) in the Libraries; a programmer/analyst III (funded 0.5 FTE by CDRH); and a systems administrator. Adjunct positions are administratively in CORS.
7. Student Assistants (Part-time): undergraduate students perform scanning, ocr, locating problems in programming codes or scripts, and some basic encoding or simple web design; graduate students (including graduate research assistants) perform higher level work, such as in-depth encoding under supervision of the metadata encoding specialist, mapping using GIS, proofing of online texts against original source documents, etc.
8. Graduate Interns. Typically, CDRH hosts 3-4 per year, either paid through grant monies or unpaid. Typically the arrangements are made cooperatively between two or more universities. The co-director from the Libraries may negotiate to place interns with various faculty in CDRH or with faculty fellows of CDRH.