THATCamp, me, and Virginia Tech Libraries


This is a “book.” That is, an audio cassette. This other “book” is a screen
and a microchip. This other “book,” the sky.

–Albert Goldbarth, “Library,” Saving Lives, Ohio State University Press. Originally published in The Iowa Review 29.1 (Spring 1999). Reproduced by Poetry Daily by permission.

 

Going to the second-ever THATCamp at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media back in 2009 was definitely one of the best career decisions I’ve ever made. It was exciting, and interesting, and informal, and generally one of the most fun, productive, and collegial academic experiences I had ever had. I was therefore thrilled when Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt asked me to come to RRCHNM to serve as THATCamp Coordinator on a two-year grant from the Scholarly Communications program of the Mellon Foundation. Building on the work that Jeremy Boggs, Dave Lester, and Josh Greenberg had done in creating THATCamp was easy, not least because other visionaries like Ben Brumfield and Julie Meloni and Erin Bell and Daniel Chamberlain and Ethan Watrall and Marin Dacos had begun to organize THATCamps of their own in Austin, the Pacific Northwest, Columbus, Southern California, and Paris before I ever entered the picture officially. Seemingly without any effort on my part besides the obvious (cough website), THATCamp spread and spread and spread, and more and more people told me that it was fun, productive, collegial, and, above all, useful.

It’s been just over a year since I left RRCHNM upon the expiration of the second two-year Mellon THATCamp grant, a grant whose primary purpose was to make sure that THATCamp could sustain itself through volunteer efforts. I joked fairly often from 2012-2014 that my job was to eliminate my job, and I’m actually quite proud of the work I did in that period to make THATCamp mostly self-sustaining (although I must admit that a fair amount of work has fallen on Patrick Murray-John in the last year as RRCHNM appointee and as Chair of the THATCamp Council in the last year: you rock, Patrick!). I always believed that THATCamp should be a community-run project: the last thing I wanted was to milk the funding agencies for unnecessary money just to keep myself employed. But, of course, personally, I was getting very tired of bouncing from term-limited job to term-limited job. It would be nice to say that I’ve spent the last year writing a book or developing software, but in fact I’ve spent the last year doing freelance grant-writing (notably for the Modern Language Association’s new alt-ac Connected Academics initiative), running the second instance of Northwestern’s Arthur Vining Davis Digital Humanities Summer Faculty Workshop, participating in a couple of book sprints, working a little bit on my online catalog of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s personal library, and, of course, job-hunting.

I’m therefore very pleased to announce that after a long search (46 rows in my job-hunting spreadsheet, 39 cover letters written, 14 or more phone or online interviews, and 4 on-site interviews), I’ve found a position I’m really excited about. I will be joining the Virginia Tech Libraries as Director of Research and Informatics beginning Wednesday, April 22nd. The Virginia Tech Libraries are clearly heading in a great direction under the leadership of Dr. Tyler Walters, who is also the founding director of the new and interesting SHARE project, and I can’t wait to work with him and with Associate Dean of Research and Informatics Julie Speer Griffin (to whom I’ll be reporting). The announcement was made at Virginia Tech last Friday, on the first day of THATCamp Virginia 2015, where I got to meet and re-meet many of Virginia Tech Libraries’ terrific team of librarians and archivists as well as many smart and friendly Virginia Tech faculty and grad students from English, History, and Computer Science. A more perfect welcome for me is impossible to imagine (obligatory “closing of the circle” reference, gratuitous link to corny Joni Mitchell song).

Virginia Tech is the place where Electronic Theses and Dissertations got their first strong start; it’s the place where the universally-used ILLIAD system for Interlibrary Loan was invented; and it’s the place where I plan to spend my own foreseeable and unforeseeable future, helping to develop and implement all kinds of libraryish and libraryesque technologies and initiatives. Libraries are my happy places, and this library in particular, I’m certain, is going to be a particularly happy place for me to spend a good long time. I’ll do my very best to fulfill the tremendous early promise of this promising beginning.

Special thanks to Trevor Owens, who suggested I apply, and to Dan Cohen, from whom I’ve borrowed a title.

6 thoughts on “THATCamp, me, and Virginia Tech Libraries

  1. Way to go Amanda. I’m very Happy for you. I am also very proud of you. Knock ’em dead!
    XOXO,
    John

  2. Congratulations! just be careful of the politics of digital humanities there, it is somewhat messy (and i should know, i still direct a project or two).

  3. Congratulations Amanda – that is great news and wonderful to hear.

    Anytime you are looking for collaboration, ideas or support then please feel free to call on me and my colleagues at the Dept of Dig Humanities in London.

    Best wishes for a bright future at Virginia Tech!

    Simon

  4. Congratulations Amanda! I grew up in Blacksburg (born at Montgomery Co. Hospital, graduated from Blacksburg High School), it’s a great place to live. I still miss it and sometimes dream of returning! I hope you love the town and the job – and if you ever run into a grumpy dude with a big red beard named Chuck Porter, be kind to him, he’s my brother 🙂

    Dot

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