Jacob Heil
WHO I AM I am the Assistant Director for Digital Learning in Davidson College's E.H. Little Library.
My Professional Path
Jacob Heil, PhD
Digital Scholarship Librarian and
Director of the Collaborative Research Environment
College of Wooster
@dr_heil
The Year of Searching
@dr_heil
Teaching:
Rutgers Camden
A former advisor worked at RU-Camden, knew that their English Department needed a fill-in for some Shakespeare classes for a semester, so I did that. Commuting to Camden from Baltimore for a semester.
Part-timing:
Retail
And because that was only a semester, I still had bills to pay, so I worked at a book store. Because, why not?
@dr_heil
Postdoc no.1
Texas A&M
@dr_heil
Teaching
I was teaching more Shakespeare courses, as well as intro writing and a lit survey...
Exploring
...but I also went back to A&M as the IDHMC was getting off the ground. I benefitted from supportive peers and was able to tap into incredible mentoring, both of which changed my trajectory.
@dr_heil
Postdoc no. 2
IDHMC (@ TAMU)
@dr_heil
From Postdoctoral Researcher
During my teaching postdoc I was helping to shape the Mellon grant application that would become the Early Modern OCR Project. I was then hired onto that project as a Book Historian and Typography consultant.
To Project Manager
As a human, I like structure and planning, and while eMOP had overall structure we found that the day-to-day needed to be more intentionally driven. So I started driving, with a lot of help from colleagues. As I result, I was wearing two hats on the project.
@dr_heil
"Postdoc" no.3
The Five Colleges of Ohio
@dr_heil
Project Coordination
From a position in the libraries, I listened to the constituencies of the Five Colleges and worked with colleagues on all campuses to establish a project-development workflow. I then tracked and consulted on those projects.
Large-scale
Culture-building
A good deal of my work was (and is) talking out loud and often about the value of digital scholarship for our pedagogies and our research questions. This means a lot of talking about the value of working together to overcome habitual silos.
@dr_heil
First Non-Tenuous Position
Digital Scholarship Librarian & Director of CoRE
(at the College of Wooster)
@dr_heil
Digital Scholarship Librarian
The modern academic library is as much a hub of campus activity as it is a space in which information is navigated and produced. As a librarian, I have responsibilities to a team and to the campus community, but I am also in a position to advocate for digital scholarship in many forms and to build relationships across campus.
Director of CoRE
The Collaborative Research Environment is a space in the library. I was able to craft a position that would steward this space but also build programming into the space that would encourage innovative, collaborative, and project-based student research. I also teach Intro to Digital Humanities.
@dr_heil
What has helped me?
What might help you?
@dr_heil
Embrace Your Options
Do you love teaching? Teaching happens in many places in Higher Ed (and beyond!): libraries, educational technology areas, diversity centers...
You are more qualified than you think to do things that interest you. And you don't know what the job ad is thinking: vision and energy can go a long way.
@dr_heil
Seek Out Mentors
I (we?) got into this work, not because I wanted to be an expert in something but because I wanted to learn about many things.
Seek learning opportunities. Ask questions.
@dr_heil
Practice Partnerships
I have benefitted greatly from the grace of colleagues at every step, largely because I've needed to learn from them.
Create productive partnerships and collaborate regularly; be honest about that work.
@dr_heil
My Professional Path
By Jacob Heil
My Professional Path
This is the deck for my presentation from MLA 2018.
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