Good morning,
My name is Katrin Voelkner and I am the director of the Weinberg Multimedia Learning Center (MMLC) and a faculty member in the German Department. My scholarly background is in the history of the book and it has been thrilling to add multimodal environments and practices to my work and somewhat neglect my research on linear narratives and bound books. (But I still consider myself a book addict and the Improbable Libraries is one of my favorite sites.)
As my professional focus has shifted more towards pedagogy and the role digital technologies play in teaching and learning I want to advocate for including pedagogy in our definitions and discussions of digital humanities. How do digital technologies impact our teaching methodologies and our students’ learning? What types of digital literacies do we want to see our students developing? How can we include the development of digital literacy regularly into our classrooms? What are sustainable practices for working with the various resources on campus? How do we as humanists best collaborate with librarians, technologists and IT people?
And speaking of teaching: I teach from 12 to 12:50 on Fridays and apologize that I will come late to our Friday discussions.
Katrin — I love Improbable Libraries, a fascinating example of how the digital can, perhaps, enhance the physical and material qualities of libraries and books that I suspect almost all of us humanists love and want to share with students. To me, there has been so much pitting of DH against the book, against the physical library, it’s fascinating to consider how the virtual and the physical might be reassembled in powerful, pleasurable, innovate, and inspiring ways. Thanks for being involved, and please keep us all posted on developments at the MMLC as well as in your own thinking and work. All best, Michael