History Commons^™

Mapping Renewal: How An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Collaboration Transformed A Digital Humanities Project, Elise Tanner, Geoffrey Joseph

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Funded by a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s “Mapping Renewal” pilot project focused on creating access to and providing spatial context to archival materials related to racial segregation and urban renewal in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1954-1989. An unplanned interdisciplinary collaboration with the UA Little Rock Arkansas Economic Development Institute (AEDI) has proven to be an invaluable partnership. One team member from each department will demonstrate the Mapping Renewal website and discuss how the collaborative process has changed and shaped …

Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Building And Using A Linked Open Data Environment For Medieval And Renaissance Manuscript Studies, Lynn Ransom, Toby Burrows

Digital Initiatives Symposium

“Mapping Manuscript Migrations” is a digital humanities project that brings together three distinct data sets about the histories of more than 215,000 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts for browsing, searching, and visualization. Four leading institutions from Great Britain, France, Finland, and the United States collaborated on this project, pooling their expertise in Semantic Web technologies and medieval manuscript curation and research, as well as contributing their own data from the three contrasting datasets. The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, the Medieval Manuscripts Catalogue at the University of Oxford, and the Bibale database from the Institut de recherche …

Kicking & Streaming! Enhancing Digitally-Born Oral History Collections In Digital Commons, Autumn Johnson

Digital Commons Southeastern User Group 2020

Oral history collections pose unique challenges for archival institutions. Making these important histories available to researchers is often impeded by complex issues of access, privacy rights, and media obsolescence. These challenges are magnified when histories are digitally-born. Not only do they face the same issues as their analog counterparts, but digital materials have their own unique preservation and access issues with which archivists are still struggling to identify best practices. Digital Commons offers archivists a platform for sharing digitally-born oral histories that mitigate many of these complex issues. Not only does the platform allow for the consolidation of files from …

Has American Exceptionalism Made The United States An Outlier On The Global Academic Stage?, Michèle V. Cloonan

Charleston Library Conference

This paper considers whether American exceptionalism has reduced the standing of the United States in the world—and whether it has impacted our ability to remain innovative. The paper is based on my presentation on a panel on this theme at the Charleston Conference 2018. The panel considered key international social issues in which Americans have become outliers, such as climate change, health care, and gun control. It also focused on research in the cultural heritage sector. Here I expand on my remarks about the origins of exceptionalism and its possible impact on libraries, archives, and museums. This issue is not …

Embedded Instruction Collaboration: The Case Of The Ball State Digital History Portal, Douglas Seefeldt, Randi Beem, James Bradley

Digital Initiatives Symposium

This interdisciplinary panel will discuss a long-term project, “The Ball State Digital History Portal,” as a case study in digital initiatives in instruction and undergraduate research that features a collaboration between disciplinary faculty, an archivist, and a digital librarian. In this course, “History in the Digital Age,” undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of majors research, create, and build digital thematic research collection projects on topics in university history that aim to answer scholarly inquiries by conducting primary source research, selecting and digitizing archival materials, and creating metadata to accompany their curated items. An important part of the collaboration …

Lightning Talk: Re/Mapping The Archives: Repository Content For The Digital Humanities And Cartographer, Michael R. Howser

Digital Initiatives Symposium

The print map, once seen as a unique and preservation worthy collection treated uniquely as a collection housed within a separate library or library space, has seen a precipitous decline in usage since Google Maps and other online tools emerged on the scene starting in 2005. With many print map collections experiencing declines in researcher requests per year, this inevitable decline of print map usage underscores the difficulty in discovering maps via the library catalog, search engines, and/or via finding aids. As collection space is pinned against demands for student space, print map collections are targets for capturing additional space …

The Digital Monograph And Primary Source Databases: Agenda Toward A Unified Conversation, James Kessenides

Charleston Library Conference

In the realm of scholarly research and publishing in the humanities, much interest and activity has focused on the impact of digital technology on the academic monograph, and on the application of this technology to archival collections. In terms of the former, this paper addresses the discourse of the “future of the monograph,” focusing on statements made about the digital monograph assuming new online forms. In terms of the latter, this paper comments on primary source databases. Whereas the “future of the monograph” has been approached mainly as a question of form, the matter of primary source databases has been …

One Root, Many Trees: Reviving Collections Practices, Kevin Farley, Emily Davis Winthrop, Ibironke Lawal, Patricia Sobczak

Charleston Library Conference

Collections are undergoing intense change and pressure from technology, budgetary uncertainties, and emerging perspectives on future approaches. Our case study—drawn from our experiences as collections librarians—examines these complex issues facing academic collections, large or small, across the profession. Through the development of “collections of distinction” within the local collection, collaborations and scholarly partnerships with colleagues and faculty, and advocacy for the importance of dedicated oversight to ensure that collections investments fulfill the academic mission, we explore possible solutions to the complicated issues defining contemporary collections practices.

Shining A Light On The Past: History In Your Ir, Jennifer Deal

DC+MED

See how one health care system digitized and uploaded historical photographs and printed materials for their IR.

Fostering Change: Evaluating Digital Scholarship For Professional Credit, Seth Denbo

Open Access Week

As the field of digital humanities becomes an ever more important facet of both research and teaching, we need to find means for ensuring that the work is properly evaluated and that credit is given to the scholars who engage in it. The problems associated with developing this are complex, and new modes of research and publication have proven difficult to incorporate into disciplines that have traditionally put high value on print. Scholarly societies have an important role to play in encouraging creative thought and action about how best to accommodate these new modes within our disciplines.

Clickbait Science: A Review Of Rhetorical Patterns Within The Royal Society, Bryan T. Le

Young Historians Conference

King Charles II of England gave birth to the Royal Society and the right for it to publish without interference in the seventeenth century. Out of this society came forth Philosophical Transactions, the first ever science journal. The journal, however, was not strictly bound to science. Articles within the journal exhibit a variety of unusual bits of information ranging from making water colors to constructing a bee-house. This paper shows that the Royal Society included articles that weren’t science but human interest to gather a following for themselves.

Typology And Analysis Of Ceramic Vessels And Pottery Shards Found At The Long Swamp Site: Lamar And Mary Folwer Holcomb Collection, Maxwell Mackenzie

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Digitization In The Classroom : Teaching Undergraduates The Art Of Digitizing History, Sophie Rondeau

Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management

In the fall 2015 semester, a new course was offered at Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) that involved a unique project collaboration between Professor Richard E. Bond and librarians, Patty Clark and Sophie Rondeau. The course, entitled Digital History 250, provided students with an introduction to how history is made and used in digital environments. Bond presented students with topics related to history and social media, spatial mapping, digital literacy, and the implications of crowd sourcing historical narratives, among others. The students were given a final project that involved creating digital exhibits using curated content from VWC yearbooks housed in the …

The Rescuing Texas History Mini-Grant Program: Collaboration, Digital Collection Development And Preservation., Marcia Mcintosh, Jake Mangum

Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management

The University of North Texas Libraries (UNT Libraries) have for, almost a decade, directed a digitization service called Rescuing Texas History Mini-Grant Program (RTH) with the goal of helping local and state-level cultural heritage institutions and private owners digitize and preserve their holdings. The RTH has allows UNT Libraries to work toward the goals of developing mutually-beneficial relationships with regional organizations while preserving and providing access to a large variety of historical items in The Portal to Texas History digital repository. Its overall structure can serve as a model for sustainable, large-scale digitization initiatives. The model described in this presentation …

Eyes On The Prize: Delivering Archival Content With Synchronized Transcripts In Hydra, Irene Taylor, Shannon Davis

Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management

Regarded as the definitive work on the Civil Rights Movement, the documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, has been seen by millions since its PBS debut in 1987. However, what remains unseen is the nearly 85 hours of interview outtakes that provide further insight into the series’ original stories of struggle, resistance, and perseverance. Through the Eyes on the Prize Digitization and Reassembly project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington University Libraries has made the complete, never-before-seen interviews and TEI XML encoded, synchronized transcripts freely accessible through its newly developed Hydra digital repository.

This session …

Sharing [True] Stories: Supporting And Sustaining Collaborative Digital Oral History Archives And Research, Rachel Walton, Charlotte Nunes

Oberlin Digital Scholarship Conference

The grant-funded [True] Stories project aims to provide instructors from a variety of disciplines and on multiple campuses the critical resources and expertise needed to make student-driven oral history work possible, impactful, accessible, and a permanent part of collections. As such, the project PIs are committed to building and vetting a practical model for oral history classroom collaborations between smaller, moderately-funded college archives or libraries. In addition to the expected challenges of technological and interdisciplinary collaboration, the [True] Stories face critical digital preservation decisions and roadblocks: shared and sustainable digital storage solutions; a standard set of acquisition, processing, and curatorial …

A Foray Into Library Digital Publishing: The British Virginia Project At Virginia Commonwealth University, Kevin Farley

Charleston Library Conference

The British Virginia project involves a collaboration between Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries and faculty members in the departments of English and History at VCU, with the project led by Dr. Joshua Eckhardt (English). As of April 25, 2013, the project has published its first title: an online edition of a sermon preached to the Virginia Company by William Symonds. To ensure the success of this project, a number of details required careful planning, including library outreach, IT involvement, and digital publishing protocols. Our example has deepened a move toward a dynamic and creative digital environment for researchers across campus. …

Crowdsourcing Transcriptions Of Archival Materials, Aaron G. Noll

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

Crowdsourcing is a method that has been effectively used to pool the knowledge and skills of large numbers of online volunteers for the creation of information resources utilized by historians, genealogists, and scientists. In recent years, archivists have begun to crowdsource the transcription of their handwritten records. Transcription of such records has traditionally been completed by professional transcribers who are skilled in reading multiple handwriting styles, knowledgeable about the creators and historical context of the records, and can interpret varying record formats and genres. However, increasingly limited resources of time and money have made traditional transcription more difficult to accomplish. …

Born Digital: Event-Driven Archives, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The growth of the internet has brought numerous tools and opportunities for archivists to both enhance their collections and reach out to potential patrons. Archives across the globe have begun immense digitization efforts to bring collections into the digital age and make them accessible to a broader audience. But what challenges face new archives whose collections are born-digital? How do these archives prove that they are indeed an archival facility and not simply a memory institution? These questions have risen around numerous digital archives born in the past decade to document and commemorate social events and tragic disasters, including the …

The Vermont Broadside Collection: No Longer Hidden, Prudence J. Doherty, Sharon Thayer

UVM Libraries Conference Day

The Wilbur Collection of Vermontiana contains hundreds of unique broadsides that document community activities and concerns from the 1770s through the 20th century. Until recently, only a very small percentage of the rich broadside collection was catalogued. Two years ago, Special Collections and the Resource Description and Analysis departments joined forces to make all of the Vermont broadsides accessible to researchers. This poster session will describe the collaborative effort and share some newly accessible examples from the collection.

Seeking Knowledge: The Role Of Social Networks In The Adoption Of Ebooksby Historians, Kim Martin, Anabel Quan-Haase

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

The research objectives are:

1. To investigate how history faculty are adopting Ebooks.
2. To understand the role of social networks in the adoption process.
3. To examine the perceived barriers by historians to Ebook adoption and use.

Documenting Community History, Linda Reynolds

Bright Ideas Conference

Historically archives and museums have sought out collections to keep in their institution. Many members of the community are not ready to donate their cherished family heirlooms to a museum or archive. The East Texas Research Center (ETRC) at Ralph W. Steen Library views collecting material in a different light. They are helping to preserve and disseminate Texas cultural heritage through the promotion of preservation of Community Collections. ETRC temporarily borrows material from the community or members of the community bring their historic material to be digitized and added to the TIDES database.

Native American Forum On Nuclear Issues Presenter Biography, Mary Palevsky

Native American Forum on Nuclear Issues

Biography

Abstract:

Discuss the work of the project and the importance of documenting, preserving and

making public the diverse and dissenting stories of Cold War nuclear testing in Nevada. It is the goal of the project that people directly involved with the issues on the ground as well as those who know little about the test site, its impacts and importance, will benefit from using the project materials. This presentation will provide information about the archive contents and how to access them.