Digital Humanities Scholarly Commons at Beijing Normal University Library

Abstract:Digital humanities is a new field in the data age that introduces computing technology into humanities literature. Many libraries have built digital humanities scholarly commons, but it is rare in China’s libraries. Through literature and website research, digital humanities database construction practice, questionnaires, and interviews with humanities scholars, we explore the path to build digital humanities scholarly commons at Beijing Normal University Library. We constructed an educators’ prosopography database, collected database construction suggestions from humanities scholars, and assessed their willingness to construct a digital humanities commons with us. Combined with the feedback, we found that humanities researchers are interested in digital humanities methods, but they need relevant tools training. Beijing Normal University Library can provide humanities scholars with training workshops on digital humanities concepts, methods, tools, platforms, and database construction, and the library is good at full-cycle data service including data collection, management, storage, and publishing. The library should strengthen data mining, text analysis, and visualization in the digital humanities study, focus on the authority and reliability of data, cooperate with humanities scholars to collect and verify data, and then enhance the library’s influence in the academic community.