Contents
Programming Historian and Jisc are delighted to announce a new shared investment: ENABLAR - ENABling Library and Archive participation in digital Research co-learning communities.
What is ENABLAR?
ENABLAR is a new Jisc-funded project from Programming Historian that will encourage participation and facilitate co-production to empower co-learning communities. It will bring library and archive practitioners into dialogue with digital humanities researchers, creating opportunities for knowledge exchange, skills development, and network building.
- Want to develop your technical writing skills?
- Keen to learn from cross-disciplinary peers?
- Interested in co-authoring a Programming Historian lesson?
If so, we’d love to hear from you. We’re inviting participation from those interested in forming a cross-disciplinary cohort who, over the next 10 months, will have the opportunity to build partnerships, exchange insights, and develop the skills needed to co-produce practical, accessible, sustainable lessons that support computational processing, discovery, or analysis of digital library and archive collections.
How will it work?
The ENABLAR project will evolve through three phases: Phase 1: Gather, Phase 2: Collaborate, Phase 3: Publish.
Phase 1: Gather
- Happening right now. Through this call, we will gather ~10 participants as our cohort, balancing representation across library and archives professionals and digital humanities researchers.
Phase 2: Collaborate
- Collaboration is central to the project, and during December 2025 we’ll facilitate two webinars to teach effective, sustainable technical writing, and create partnerships for cross-disciplinary co-authorship.
- As you begin writing, we’ll support your progress through an online programme of lesson development workshops and writing sprints (January-March 2026).
Phase 3: Publish
- Through April and May 2026, we’ll host community review workshops to share and test ENABLAR lessons-in-progress. These will provide opportunities for the cohort to benefit from broader feedback, as well as each other’s - we’ll invite new voices to join us from the library and archives sector and the digital humanities research community, also seeking expressions of interest for participation in a formal open peer review process.
- ENABLAR participants will be invited to submit their drafts to Programming Historian in English for consideration in June 2026.
- From July 2026 ENABLAR lessons selected for development by our editorial team will be guided through open peer review towards first publication in our English-language journal. If not selected for development, we’ll support the publication of your lesson as grey literature. All lessons will be published under an CC BY 4.0 license.
Who can participate?
We’re seeking a mixed cohort of participants from across the library and archive sector, and digital humanities research community.
- Maybe you’re a librarian who has always signposted communities towards Programming Historian’s lessons, but never found time to develop your own computational research skills?
- Or an archivist responsible for a growing digital collection, seeking to support researchers to use computational methods to analyse or interact with archival data?
- Perhaps you’re a Research Software Engineer working with cultural collections, keen to apply software engineering principles to support and enhance reader services and collections research?
- Are you a technician who builds or maintains tools for data management and analysis, eager to explore ways library staff and researchers could put them to use?
We value diversity of skills, voices, and lived experiences. We are committed to diversity and equal access within digital humanities, we encourage the participation of women, members of marginalised groups, LGBTQ+ community, and peoples from the Global South. All events in the ENABLAR project programme will take place online to maximise opportunities for participation.
When is it happening?
Phase 1: Gather
- Call for participation open: 30 October 2025
- Information webinar: 14 November 2025
- Call for participation close: 30 November 2025
- Notifications sent to successful participants: 5 December 2025
Phase 2: Collaborate
- Orientation 1 (writing digital methods): 12 December 2025 (indicative date)
- Orientation 2 (partnership building): 16 December 2025 (indicative date)
- Lesson development workshops and asynchronous writing sprints: January - March 2026
Phase 3: Publish
- Community Review Workshops: April - May 2026
- Draft ENABLAR submissions due: June 2026
- Selection and support for publication: from July 2026
I’d like to get involved. What’s the next step?
- If you’re interested in taking part, we encourage you to join our information webinar which will include an open question and answer session. After the session, we’ll add a summary of questions asked and answers given to this blog post.
- Complete our short online application via Google Forms: tinyurl.com/enablar-apply. There’s also a plain text version of the form available, which you can complete and email to our Publishing Manager directly if you prefer. It provides space for you to tell us about yourself, your interest in the programme, and what you hope to achieve by participating.
- Applications close: 30 November 2025
- We’ll write to you to let you know if your application has been successful.
People who attended our information webinar on 14 November 2025 asked the following questions which might be useful to others:
- Question: How is this different to the usual Programming Historian lesson development process?
- Answer: ENABLAR is different to the usual lesson development process in several key ways. Firstly, those in the ENABLAR cohort will be supported to establish new, cross-disciplinary co-author partnerships. Secondly, through ENABLAR’s programme of webinars, workshops, and writing sprints, the whole writing process will be facilitated. Thirdly, ENABLAR lessons will be guided to focus on methods, processes, and tools that build digital skills capacity among library and archives professionals.
–
- Question: What will the final output be?
- Answer: The final output will be a set of new co-authored article-length lessons which support computational processing, discovery, or analysis of digital library and archive collections. These lessons will combine instructive narrative with code that readers will be able to adapt for their own use case. While each ENABLAR co-author pair will be invited to submit their draft to Programming Historian in English for consideration, only lessons selected for development by our editorial team will be guided through a formal open peer review process towards first publication in our English-language journal. Drafts not selected for the journal will be published as ‘grey literature’ outputs.
–
- Question: What level of technical skill are you hoping that participants/applicants will have?
- Answer: We’re seeking a mixed cohort of people who are ready to learn from each other. ENABLAR will encourage knowledge exchange, and help build partnerships to advance all participants’ knowledge and skills.
–
- Question: Does the possibility/impossibility to match participants through partnerships have an impact on the evaluation of applications?
- Answer: Yes, in the sense that we seek to bring together a cohort who represent a balance of perspectives across libraries and archives, and digital humanities research communities.
–
- Question: Is it possible to partner collaborators who are known to each other? (that is, could a librarian and a researcher apply jointly and work together?)
- Answer: Yes, it’s possible. We advise you and your collaborator to apply separately, mentioning your idea for forming a co-author partnership. We still want to understand what interests you individually, and learn what each of you hope to achieve by participating in ENABLAR. We’d also like to be able to cultivate and explore some new collaborations!
–
–
- Question: Is there any financial support available for time spent participating?
- Answer: No, participation would be voluntary. It will be important to ensure you have capacity within your schedule to participate without financial compensation.
–
- Question: Will there be any need for travel?
- Answer: No, ENABLAR is an online-only programme to maximise opportunities for participation.
About the authors
Anisa Hawes, Publishing Manager, Programming Historian.
James Baker is Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton.