Zoe Borovsky, a leader of and partner to UCLA students, faculty and librarians working in the digital humanities, is the recipient of this year’s Librarian of the Year Award, presented by the Librarians Association of the University of California, Los Angeles (LAUC-LA).
She is being recognized for her work in launching the Digital Research Start-Up Partnerships Program, as well as her international impact through her foundation of the Libraries and Digital Humanities Special Interest Group for the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.
In 2015 she began the partnerships program to train graduate students to use digital research tools. The program connects researchers from different disciplines, who work in a team environment to learn tools to build their digital research skills.
One sociology graduate student participated in the program to learn how to use a machine-learning tool to analyze text data (Word2Vec) and to collect, manage and clean news article data using Python. She later wrote that, in addition to accomplishing all that, "I was also exposed to a variety of new digital tools, such as web scraping, data cleaning and visualization, and tools for collaborative research. I also came out with a newfound and deep appreciation of UCLA Library and librarians.”
Because of the program's success, Borovsky was awarded a $30,000 block grant from the UCLA Office for Research to support advanced research data skills training. The next phase is instituting a summer program for librarians to facilitate their own digital research projects.
Others nominating her commented on her ability to bring people together from various backgrounds, experiences and research interests. Borovsky brings “scholarship out of the silo of individual departments and disciplines and into wider spaces for transdisciplinary research that facilitates what might be called ‘public humanities,’” one nominator pointed out.
The award also recognizes her work with the digital humanities minor and graduate certificate and in organizing and sponsoring library-related programming in the wider community of international digital humanities scholars.
The Librarian of the Year Award, established in 1993, recognizes excellence in librarianship that furthers the teaching and research mission of UCLA and responds to the intellectual, informational and cultural needs of the university community.
