Stewart Varner

I got my start in digital scholarship in the summer of 2003 when I took a summer job in the Beck Center working on the Emory Women Writers Resource Project (EWWRP). I started out scanning books and eventually found myself encoding the texts with TEI tags. After taking a couple of years off to finish course work and start my dissertation, I received a Woodruff Fellowship to return to the Beck Center. I had such a good time that I decided to go to library school (while wrapping up my dissertation) and to pursue a career in libraries.

In May of 2010 I graduated from Emory with a Ph.D. in American Studies. Later that summer, I graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in Library and Information Science. I worked at Emory as the Digital Scholarsip Coordinator until February of 2014 when I started as Digital Scholarship Librarian at UNC. I love that I am able to use my background in academic research, my experience with digital humanities and my training as a librarian to help UNC build a 21st century library that is a center for research and focused on engaging the academic community.