Nine Months In! Supporting Digital Scholarship at the University of Delaware Natalia Lopez, Digital Scholarship Librarian
What is digital scholarship?
Digital Scholarship @ Morris Library We’re here to connect you to expertise & resources when you are working on research that incorporates digital projects:
Web publishing Data visualization Database building
Text mining Text encoding
Data Management Etc!
Data literacy and scholarly communications
“[Humanities’] scholars will sometimes describe elaborate visualizations to me, involving charts and graphs and change over time. “Great,” I respond. “Let’s see your data.” “Data?” they say. “Oh, I don’t have any data.”
-Miriam Posner, Assistant Professor in the Information Studies department at UCLA
http://miriamposner.com/blog/humanities-data-a-necessary-contradiction/
Before digital scholarship librarian
Colored Conventions Project (CCP)
http://ccp.lib.udel.edu/
The Colored Conventions Project
The Center for Digital Collections NEH Delaware Digital Newspaper Project
The digitization of historic Delaware newspapers published as part of the state's participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) from master negative microfilms held by the University of Delaware Library.
Student Multimedia Design Center (SMDC) Mapping & Multimedia
Fall 2017 -Spring 2018
Projects
The Baltimore Collection Class Website
The digital:
The knowledge:
The takeaways:
The Baltimore Collection Class Website The digital: wordpress sites administered by central IT; google drive; artstor
The knowledge (as provided by library): metadata; data management
The collaboration: three instruction sessions by librarians; administration of artstor and data cleaning and upload of metadata; metadata “help-line;” design assistance and set up of wordpress site; library space use
The takeaways: ● A one pager to outline responsibilities and deadlines when multiple staff are collaborating ● Helpful things to include in the consult:
○ Is the goal digital pedagogy or publishing a digital project? [creating “sandboxes”] ○ “Lifespan” of the project helps us select the right tool and the way we design the backend ○ How much are students engaged in the design of the digital project? What is their role?
● Introducing students to scholarly communication issues (creative commons, copyright, etc)
ThingStor
ThingStor The digital: initially Omeka; transition to AirTables; google drive (google sheets)
The knowledge: data management; metadata
Collaboration: initial set-up of system; support in developing workflow and data management practices, training of students
The takeaways: ● Differentiate when to focus on data management versus the design of the tool ● Supporting project teams in developing workflows (timelines, documentation, etc) ● Supporting relationships with partners who can help customize digital projects ● Input from staff with copyright expertise
Wilmington Archive Project
Wilmington Archive Project
The digital: scalar, digital storytelling
The knowledge: digital storytelling; archival research; metadata
The takeaways: ● Collaboration that involves many library staff from various departments; figuring out the best way
to communicate ● Critical to establish communication lines with faculty teaching classes as soon as possible;
project goals versus class goals
Instruction
Instruction Requests
Dr. Persephone Braham’s SPAN875010 “Seminar: Spanish Literature”
Dr. Edward Larkin’s English 480-010 “Visualizing Early American Literature and Politics”
Dr. Laura Helton’s ENGL/AFRA 382 “The Civil Rights Movement: Word-Image- Sound”
Dr. Sarah Wasserman’s English 101-010 “Tools of Textual Analysis: Intro to Digital Studies”
Dr. Jessica Horton ARTH602010 “Seminar: Curatorial Studies: NATIVE ART & INSTITUTIONS”
Consultations
Instruction Requests The digital: wordpress sites administered by central IT; google drive; Carto; Tableau
The knowledge: writing for different audiences, data management, basics of data manipulation/cleaning/visualization
The collaboration: working with existing tech systems in place by units across campus (museums, special collections) to support instruction requests; initial consult with faculty is very important here
The takeaways: ● Developing instructional materials that go beyond buttonology, meant to complement one-two
sessions ● Recognizing appropriate scope when trying to get started
Library workshops
● Data Collection with Qualtrics and Excel ● Data cleaning with Excel (and an intro to OpenRefine) ● Data visualization with Tableau
The takeaways: ● Disciplinary versus interdisciplinary focused workshops ● Solving authentic problems; more hands-on
Next steps...
What next?
● Environmental scan project ● Workshop development with different departments (i.e. metadata? Discipline specific?) ● Fleshing out our workshop and resources to reflect data literacy (beyond buttonology) ● Developing internal projects to grow our collective expertise with digital scholarship methods
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