Digital Commons Network^™

Museum Preparedness In The Digital Age, Mary Jatkowski

School of Information Sciences Student Scholarship

In 2001, Neil Beagrie coined the term, “digital curation” at the Digital Preservation Coalition sponsored conference in London. This new term launched a field of study which has since beenadopted by various disciplines within the sciences and humanities. Cultural heritage organizations like libraries and archives adapted the new field, by refining and formalizing standards and practices of digital curation to cater to their diverse cultural and historical collections. LIS graduate programs have embraced the field of study with rigorous curricula like DigCCurr which trains students in the various aspects of curation and preservation, from metadata standards to selection and …

Representing Minority Groups And Their Heritage Across Access And Preservation Of Unique Audio Recordings A Grant Overview, Veronica Gonzalez, Ximena Valdivia

Athenaeum: Scholarly Works of the FIU Libraries Faculty and Staff

In 2021, the Florida International University (FIU) Libraries received the Recordings at Risks (R&R) grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The funds allowed us to digitize, create metadata, and provide online access to hundreds of unique Caribbean and Latin American songs produced between 1900 and 1935 that are included in the Diaz Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection (DAC) Cassette Series. The digitized materials comprise more than 1,000 cassettes with approximately 1,200 songs, recorded originally in 78rpms by Columbia, Victor, and other historical record companies. The music represents a variety of genres and is …

“I’M Not Searching The Right Words”: User Experience Searching Historic Clothing Collection Websites, Arden Kirkland, Monica Sklar, Clare Sauro, Leon Wiebers, Sara Idacavage, Julia Mun

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This study investigates the search processes of users accessing public websites representing historic clothing collections, examining where their searches are supported by the metadata in the collection databases and what factors could make their experience more inclusive. With IRB approval from four universities, we performed a recorded experiment with twenty adults: ten students of historic dress and ten fashion professionals. Four tasks included search scenarios and images representing diverse historic garments. Results indicate that both the descriptive metadata and search features on collection websites present challenges for the typical user search process. Users search for historical dress content the way …

Linked Data, Wikidata And Their Implementations, Sai Deng

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

An introductory session on linked data, wikidata and related implementations delivered to participating students for a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Major Collaborative Archives Initiative Grant led by Dr. Rosalind J. Beiler in History and Dr. Amy Giroux in Center for Humanities and Digital Research at the University of Central Florida.

Libraries And The Problem Of Digital Humanities Discovery, Roxanne Shirazi

Publications and Research

Why is it so hard to find digital humanities projects? While digital humanities librarians emphasize their crucial role in producing DH work as partners in developing, sustaining, and preserving digital resources, scant attention is paid to the library’s role in resource description and discovery, their contribution to disciplinary formation that goes beyond technology stacks and campus service models. This chapter explores the implications of the producer/creator model of digital humanities librarianship and imagines alternatives in which the problem of DH discovery is understood as a broader issue for academic libraries curating open access digital scholarship. By attending to the discovery …

Contextualizing Performers In Circus Route Books: Linked Data Entities And Open Data, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The presentation will discuss the final phase of the 4-year project Step Right Up: Digitizing Over 100 Years of Circus Route Books made possible by the Digitizing Hidden Collections program, a national grant competition administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This segment of the project concentrated on making data open and reusable to aid in optimal discoverability and create data relationships with the collection. The culmination of these efforts resulted in the digital humanities project, Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books 1875-1925. This exhibition …

Accessing 3d Data, Francesca Albrezzi, John Bonnett, Tassie Gniady, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lisa Snyder

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, as well as community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. This chapter will cover modes, audiences, assets and decision points, technology requirements, and limitations impacting access, as well as providing recommendations for next steps.

Scaling Up Video Digitization At The University Of Maryland Libraries: A Case Study, Elizabeth M. Caringola, Pamela A. Mcclanahan, Robin C. Pike

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

In 2015, a team at the University of Maryland Libraries collaborated on a pilot project to digitize 100 VHS tapes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange collection and, in doing so, established organizational workflows for video digitization and access. After completing the pilot phase of the project, staff who worked on the project published a case study in this journal that articulated a question echoed throughout that process: “Is this enough?” Enough descriptive metadata? Enough technical metadata? Enough storage space? This article will reflect on the pilot project, detail how the digitization specifications and workflows established during the pilot project …

More Than Meets The Eye: Proximity To Crises Through Presidential Photographs, Laurie J. Bonnici, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We look at three photographs, each made at a time of profound crisis, in order to tease out notions of proximity. Vision gives us proximity at a distance. Photographs may give us a similar proximity. Human vision depends on experience built up from individual events of seeing. Can a photograph made in a fraction of a second by someone else at some other time and some other place provide anything more than data about some surfaces in front of the lens? Can words and other images from the photographers enhance the viewer’s proximity to the original? Can we make use …

Skill Sets Required For Librarians In The Post Pandemic Scenario: An Assessment, Dr. Jaison Thomas

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Since December 2019, the world as a whole has been gripped under the pandemic Covid 19. The pandemic spread in such speed that countries had to shut down their all activities. Libraries are also affected a lot because of this and their clientele were restricted to approach the libraries as per the Standard Operating Protocols. When the clientele are not coming to the libraries, the library professionals have no other way, but to depend on alternative solutions to serve them. Fortunately, they had the most pragmatic solution, the ubiquitous network of networks. In the normal circumstances, to manage a …

Learning About Metadata And Machines: Teaching Students Using A Novel Structured Database Activity, Andrew Iliadis, Tony Liao, Isabel Pedersen, Jing Han

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Machines produce and operate using complex systems of metadata that need to be catalogued, sorted, and processed. Many students lack the experience with metadata and sufficient knowledge about it to understand it as part of their data literacy skills. This paper describes an educational and interactive database activity designed for teaching undergraduate communication students about the creation, value, and logic of structured data. Through a set of virtual instructional videos and interactive visualizations, the paper describes how students can gain experience with structured data and apply that knowledge to successfully find, curate, and classify a digital archive of media artifacts. …

Sideshow Sounds: Black Bandleaders Respond To Exoticism, Elizabeth C. Hartman, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Everyone knows P. G. Lowery, broadcaster of African-American music. Less known are those whose sideshow leadership predates that of Lowery. The pioneering entrepreneurial-entertainment legacy of bandleaders like Solomon P. White, J. 0. McNutt, and James Wolfscale set the stage for Lowery's phenomenal success. This presentation investigates their personal histories in the context of mainstream and circus cultures; their indispensable contribution to the success of the circus and the popularization of African-American music; and their role as the sinew of African-American communities through newspaper distribution and correspondence.

Black sideshow bands-first documented in 1881 within Milner Library's Circus Route Books Digital Collection, …

Native Performance And Agency In The Wild West Show, Mariah Wahl, Angela Yon

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

"The Wild West" has been romanticized and criticized as historical American trope. Much of this idea is based on the Wild West shows of Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and other traveling circus shows throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Often these shows functioned as propaganda for American imperialism, condoning and perpetuating cultural genocide against Native American populations.

The presentation will use autobiographical information to explore how many Native American Wild West performances and exhibits worked subversively to critique racist American institutions. Exhibits like the 1904 World's Fair placed Native performers of the Wild West show in stark contrast …

Crowdsourcing Metadata: The Revolutionary Cataloging Interface And How It Can Help Your Library Expose And Promote Hidden Collections, Samuel T. Barber

Digital Initiatives Symposium

The crowdsourcing of metadata to expose and promote hidden collections is a significant and growing development in libraries, archives and museums, and offers hitherto unparalleled mass-collaborative potential for digital humanities projects. Originating from the field of citizen science, the online Zooniverse platform has been successfully utilized for this purpose by institutions including the Imperial War Museum, the Folger and the Huntington. This session presents recently published original research¹ in order to analyze and explain the automated quality control features of this major metadata crowdsourcing digital platform. The results, it is argued, are truly revolutionary. We conclude with a brief …

Modeling Black Literature: Behind The Screen With The Black Bibliography Project, Brenna Bychowski, Melissa Barton

Library Staff Publications

The Black Bibliography Project (BBP) plans to produce a bibliographic database of printed works by Black writers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. With the support of the Beinecke Library and a grant from the Mellon Foundation, project co-PIs and codirectors Jacqueline Goldsby and Meredith McGill collaborated with a team of librarians from Yale to develop the data model for their database. Drawing on Beinecke’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection to pull case studies, the team of librarians developed a Linked Data model for BBP in an instance of Wikibase and trained and supported a group of graduate student …

Categorizing Queer Identities: An Analysis Of Archival Practices Using The Concept Of Boundary Objects, Pauline Junginger, Marian Dörk

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this paper, we present a field study that examines the development, application and maintenance of classification systems and controlled vocabularies in three archives documenting lesbian, trans* and queer-feminist histories. Queer archives face the challenge of documenting identities that are inherently characterized by embracing fluidity and ambiguity. Thus, queer identities are diametrically opposed to archival procedures of unambiguous classification. At the same time, queer activism relies partly on coherent identity categories in order to be able to act politically. We examine the pragmatic solutions that queer archives establish when dealing with tensions between those requirements. Our goal is to contribute …

Review Of Ethical Questions In Name Authority Control, Itza A. Carbajal

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is a new and thoughtful addition to the metadata and cataloging field of study and practice. Consisting of eighteen essays written by a number of libraries, archives, and information scholars, this edited volume investigates and responds to a number of ethical questions regarding name authority control.These include topics such as the privacy of the creator, use of geographic names for contested lands, critique of the use of gender in authority control systems, as well as considerations around multilingualism, to name a few. While the title mostly appeals to a particular field of work and …

The Zine Union Catalog, Lauren S. Kehoe, Jenna Freedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lauren Kehoe and Jenna Freedman have been working on the Zine Union Catalog, aka ZineCat or ZUC, since their Introduction to Digital Humanities course in Spring, 2017: MALS 75500, Digital Humanities Methods and Practices. ZineCat is the home of a union catalog dedicated to zines. A union catalog is a resource where libraries and other cultural institutions that collect materials can share cataloging and holdings information from their individual collections. The most familiar union catalog is probably WorldCat which is used to locate books, journals, CDs, DVDs, and other materials in the world’s libraries. ZineCat facilitates researchers' discovery of zine …

Rent For Rent: Making A Living By Licensing Your Music, Jessica Muñiz-Collado

CAHSS Faculty Presentations, Proceedings, Lectures, and Symposia

Wouldn’t it be great if a composer, music producer, or songwriter could pay their rent by “renting” out their music? This demonstration will simplify the music licensing process, focus on researching music libraries, preparing songs for submissions and much more.

Slow Metadata, Rachel Sagner Buurma, J. Shaw

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Palm Leaf Manuscripts In South Asia, Emera Bridger Wilson, Jessica M. Rice

School of Information Studies - Post-doc and Student Scholarship

Many thousands of palm leaf manuscripts, in South Asia and elsewhere, are currently in danger of being lost due to physical deterioration. These manuscripts contain irreplaceable cultural, religious, scientific, and artistic works. Palm leaf manuscripts, which can be centuries old, are found in numerous private collections, temples, monasteries, libraries and museums. The sheer number and wide dispersal of palm leaf manuscripts provide significant challenges to conservation and preservation, including both ethical and technical considerations. A literature search and examination of palm leaf manuscripts shed light on the urgent need to proceed worldwide along two fronts simultaneously: rapid digitization of critical …

Adam Scriveyn In Cyberspace: Loss, Labour, Ideology, And Infrastructure In Interoperable Reuse Of Digital Manuscript Metadata, Bridget Whearty

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric Faculty Scholarship

This chapter seeks to demystify invisible work at the heart of manuscript digitization. Descriptive metadata and its curation are the unseen elements upon which image discoverability—and later reuse—depends. Seeing and taking seriously that labor, I contend, is fundamental to developing a more rigorous understanding of medieval manuscripts in our increasingly digital age.

The chapter begins by connecting major challenges facing manuscript interoperability to the deeper disciplinary histories of codicology, library studies, and digital humanities. Next, it progresses through three case studies, each of which illustrates different challenges in digital manuscript studies. Studying the Walters Art Museum metadata, I emphasize how …

Getting To Know Our Web Archive: A Pilot Project To Collaboratively Increase Access To Digital Cultural Heritage Materials In Wyoming, Amanda R. Lehman, Bryan Ricupero

Digital Initiatives Symposium

The University of Wyoming is the only four year higher education institution in the state, a unique position amongst colleges and universities in the United States. Given this unusual status it is especially important that the university libraries use their resources to identify and partner with communities around the state to build collections that preserve their cultural heritage. An Archive-It subscription was purchased in 2016, with an initial goal of capturing university related materials. In an effort to expand the scope and meaningfulness of the web archive, a project has been undertaken to use university and statewide relationships to build …

Rethinking The Potential Of Documentation Of Culture As A Data Gathering Practice, Tomasz Umerle

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In this article, I examine the documentation of culture (DoC). This is the practice of gathering and producing the information and data relevant to intangible cultural phenomena. DoC is generally practiced by teams of documentalists generally outside GLAM institutions (i.e., galleries, libraries, archives and museums). As such, it differs from the preservation and description of concrete objects of cultural heritage done within those institutions. I examine how DoC finds it increasingly difficult to clearly define and communicate its role: a) in relation to LIS; b) to the broader academic community; and c) in digital age of information overload. In this …

Piracy, Policy, And Pandora: Outdated Copyright In A Digital World, Stephanie Caress

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project examines how current copyright laws and digital distribution practices in music can be improved for both the creator and the consumer. The laws that govern our digital atmosphere, and thus a large portion of music distribution, are outdated and cause a wide variety of problems for both artists and fans. To create a comprehensive picture and establish the scope of this problem, I start by outlining the process a song goes through from when it is written to when it is in the hands, or rather ears, of listeners. From there, copyright laws are entwined with this process. …

The Representation Of The Canadian Government’S Warrantless Domestic Collection Of Metadata In The Canadian Print News Media, Alan Del Pino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In January 2014, the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that Canada’s foreign intelligence agency CSEC was engaging in warrantless electronic surveillance of Canadians by monitoring communications metadata. Prior to these disclosures Canadians knew very little about metadata and about how the CSEC used information technology to collect electronic intelligence. Media outlets such as newspapers are important sources through which Canadians learn about issues such as warrantless surveillance of citizens. However, to date no research analyzes how Canada’s warrantless domestic collection of metadata has been represented in the Canadian new media. This thesis addresses this gap by analyzing the representation …

Show Us Your Omaha: Combating Lgbtq+ Archival Silences, Angela J. Kroeger, Yumi Ohira, Amy Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries offers a variety of unique and specialized collections in the Archives & Special Collections (ASC) for UNO and Omaha community members. In 2015, ASC began planning for preserving and providing access to Omaha’s LGBTQ+ history through the Queer Omaha Archives. Archival silences were defined by archivist Rodney Carter as the manifestation of the actions of the powerful in denying the marginalized access to archives with further definition by archivists and researchers expanding this definition. The UNO Libraries has invested in developing digital engagement as a strategic priority through building infrastructure and expanding …

Early American Cookbooks: Creating And Analyzing A Digital Collection Using The Hathitrust Research Center Portal, Gioia Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Early American Cookbooks project is a carefully curated online collection of 1450 cookbooks published in the United States between 1800 and 1920. The purposes of the project are to create a freely available, searchable online collection of early American cookbooks, to offer an overview of the scope and contents of the collection, and to use digital humanities tools to explore trends and patterns in the metadata and the full text of the collection. The project has two basic components: a collection of 1450 full-text titles on HathiTrust and a website site to present a guide to the collection and …

Blown To Bits Project, David Schmidt

Informatics Open Educational Resources

The book, Blown to Bits, uncovers the many ways that the new digital world has changed and is changing our whole environment. Some changes are incremental but others are more revolutionary. Some of the changes that we welcome are slowly eroding our privacy and are changing the rules of ownership. This book illuminates the complexities of these changes. I have attempted to capture the central points in selected chapters, and in some cases I have added new material or new examples to replace dated material. I picked chapters to summarize that address the following topics (and more). There are many …

Painless Portal Partnerships: Collaboration And Its Challenges For Small Organizations, Christine Mcevilly

Publications and Research

This article addresses challenges inherent in collaborative archival projects involving both large institutions and small historical societies. It identifies these unique problems and outlines potential solutions to overcome these issues. Examples are drawn from the Portal to American Jewish History project and contextualized within the professional literature on ethnic or community archives and archival collaboration. This project collected metadata from a wide range of Jewish history archives and aggregated the records in a single searchable website.