A common theme I've run into the past week is that of convergence. Not just in my personal life (because everything seems to be colliding together in positive and negative ways), but also in my academic and professional work. I have interviewed for an internship which would have me as a part of a Digital Humanities working group. The team is comprised of members who each have interrelated yet focused fields (I won't haul out the dreaded Venn diagram). Digital librarians form one "wing" of the group, and would be the members I would work closest with. As I have before, I will deal with concepts of metadata, schemata, classification, and data management/curation. But that sounds a bit more complicated than what the main task will boil down to, and that is: metadata quality control. Looking back, I will actually apply some of what I learned as a quality assurance employee (read: video game tester/monkey)!
On the other side are the other members, both technical and administrative, which is where the convergence comes into play. We have the Unix administrator, dealing with the physical expression of the project, and the web services specialist. Finally there are the head and co-head, who collabrate with researchers and the college's administration(s), as well as the all-important role of securing funding.
This project meshes well with this semester and the direction of my studies this year. I am taking database administration to supplement and strengthen my metadata knowledge. Digital Libraries is giving me a good "macro" vision of what a digital library is and what it should be in the future. And my Policy class is yet another cog in the whole machine. It's unfortunate I'm not also taking Copyright, since it is also a crucial aspect tying everything (i.e. digital libraries!) together.
When reading in my Policy class about how advocacy groups struggle(d) to unite against international bodies to accomplish their agenda, it made me think about the larger library world. And at the end of the day, if you want to get something monumental done; if you really want to break new ground, convergence is the only path. Not doing so will result in limited, local, or uneven accomplishments. It's incredibly difficult (ew, politics), requires everyone to have an open mind and a strong commitment, and is necessitated on connections. I hope I can infuse these sorts of concepts into the Digital Humanities project.
