ATGthePodcast 320 - A Conversation with John Unsworth, Library Dean, English Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with John Unsworth, Library Dean, English Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia. John is a distinguished humanities scholar and professor, and retired last September as University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at University of Virginia. He earned his PhD in English from the University of Virginia in the 1980's, with his doctorate being in contemporary literature. John talks with Michael about how he combined his interest in the humanities with a career in libraries, not becoming a library director until later in his career in 2012. He discusses how he sees the role of libraries today: essential for not only preserving print collections but providing access to complex digital collections. He also discusses the role of a humanities scholar, the shift in digital humanities and the challenges brought on by AI with the aggressive scrapping done by large language models and the disruption caused to digital humanities projects and libraries and the inability to solve digital copyright issues as he sees it. He also covers how the Google Books Initiative helped Libraries with the work of Hathi Trust. Lastly, he talks about the imminent challenges he sees currently for Universities in the U.S. The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/vpeP9DfpBJw Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-unsworth-2709995/ Keyword #DigitalHumanities #DigitalPreservation #DigitalCollections #LibraryScience #DataScience #MachineLearning #TextMining #DigitalScholarship #LibraryLeadership #LibraryInnovation #PracticalLibrarianship #Library Resources #InformationLiteracy #LibraryInstruction #LibraryCollaboration #CriticalThinking #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #LearningResources #EdTechTools #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts