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

About this episode

The episode features a conversation between Michael Upshall and John Unsworth about the evolving role of libraries and the impact of digital humanities and AI on scholarship.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Michael Upshall

Guest: John Unsworth

Topics covered

• libraries
• digital humanities
• AI challenges
• print collections
• University challenges
• humanities scholarship

Keywords

• libraries
• digital collections
• humanities
• AI
• copyright
• University of Virginia
• Hathi Trust
• Google Books
• scholarship

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Virginia, Hathi Trust, Google Books Initiative

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