Digital Humanities Commons^™

Developing A Community Of Practice Among Undergraduate Digital Scholars, R.C. Miessler, Janelle Wertzberger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship (DSSF), a library-led, student-centered introduction to digital scholarship. For 10 weeks, a cohort of three undergraduate student fellows were introduced to digital tools, project management, research skills, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship, with the culmination the creation and presentation of a digital scholarship project. While the DSSF program is a library initiative, it drew support from partners from across campus, leveraging instructional support and the experience of digital scholarship practitioners from multiple departments to implement a broad curriculum in digital scholarship. The partners—who included …

Librarians Doing Dh: A Team And Project-Based Approach To Digital Humanities In The Library, Lydia Bello, Madelynn Dickerson, Margaret Hogarth, Ashley Sanders

Collaborative Librarianship

The Claremont Colleges Library embarked on a “learn by doing” Digital Humanities (DH) program and series of team-based projects in order to provide librarians experience working directly with DH methodologies and tools. Drawing from two divisions in the Library, a team of librarians designed an analysis project using DH tools to examine collection development trends on the topic of terrorism. In the process, the team addressed technical obstacles, communication issues and time management techniques that contributed to a productive collaboration. DH can be a catalyst for librarians’ own research beyond serving in a supportive role for the disciplines. With its …

How Libraries Are Meeting Researcher Needs In The Digital Humanities, Kelley F. Rowan

Digital Initiatives Symposium

This presentation will provide guidance for those considering the creation of a digital humanities (DH) lab, as well as for those with a current functional DH lab. The Digital Scholars Studio at Florida International University (FIU) was created in 2016 with the purpose of providing needed technology and collaborative space for researchers and students. We will explore the challenges experienced by restricted space and budget and discuss how we resolved these specific limitations before continuing with an in-depth look at programming and usage of DH software and tools. We will take a look at a few current projects our researchers …

Six Septembers: Mathematics For The Humanist, Patrick Juola, Stephen Ramsay

Zea E-Books Collection

Scholars of all stripes are turning their attention to materials that represent enormous opportunities for the future of humanistic inquiry. The purpose of this book is to impart the concepts that underlie the mathematics they are likely to encounter and to unfold the notation in a way that removes that particular barrier completely. This book is a primer for developing the skills to enable humanist scholars to address complicated technical material with confidence. This book, to put it plainly, is concerned with the things that the author of a technical article knows, but isn’t saying. Like any field, mathematics operates …

The Changing Landscape Of Peace Research: Geographic, Archival, And Digital Spaces, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the changing nature of the spaces, historical sources, and products of peace research. Specifically, the article explores the future of peace research after the transnational, digital, and biographical turns. It addresses the changing formats of sources generated by activists, as well as the challenges of digitizing and disseminating these sources. Finally, the article calls for increased attention to the use of digital humanities methods, particularly geographic information systems ( GIS) techniques, in peace research.

Tandem 2.0: Image And Text Data Generation Application, Christopher J. Vitale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

First created as part of the Digital Humanities Praxis course in the spring of 2012 at the CUNY Graduate Center, Tandem explores the generation of datasets comprised of text and image data by leveraging Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV). This project builds upon that earlier work in a new programming framework. While other developers and digital humanities scholars have created similar tools specifically geared toward NLP (e.g. Voyant-Tools), as well as algorithms for image processing and feature extraction on the CV side, Tandem explores the process of developing a more robust and user-friendly …

Dreaming Big: Library-Led Digital Scholarship For Undergraduates At A Small Institution, Janelle Wertzberger, R.C. Miessler

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted a student-focused, library-led initiative designed to promote creative undergraduate research: the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship. The fellowship is a ten-week, paid summer program for rising sophomores and juniors that introduces the student fellows to digital scholarship, exposes them to a range of digital tools, and provides space for them to converse with appropriate partners about research practices and possibilities. Unlike other research fellowship opportunities, the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship is programmatic, based on a curriculum designed to provide students a broad introduction to digital scholarship. Digital tools, project management, documentation, …

Text Based Analysis In The Undergraduate Classroom, Katelyn Antolik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project compromises of both a written and technical portion. I have created an interactive web source for teaches in the undergraduate literature classroom to encourage a dynamic experience with literary text in order to promote active engagement in literature for students at any level of technological experience. Students or teachers are able to input outside texts that utilize graphs, charts, and interactive web tools in order to promote learning skills transferable to both academic and non-academic career paths. By utilizing “The Story of an Hour”, I explore the uses of this software in order to demonstrate the potential of …

Informal Learning Teams And The Digital Humanities: A Case Study Of Faculty/Librarian Collaboration, Lora Del Rio, Jessica Despain Phd

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Since the 2009 founding of the Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship Center (or IRIS), a digital humanities and social sciences center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, faculty, librarians, and undergraduates have been collaborating to reinvigorate humanities curriculum both within and beyond the classroom.1 The IRIS Center has become a site where faculty and librarians work together to find solutions to budget shortfalls and changing definitions of higher education. This chapter will discuss the theory, practice, and outcomes underlying one approach to undergraduate research at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). This case study will include a discussion of the intersection of …

The Social Network Of Early English Drama: A Digital Humanities Lesson Plan, Adam Rzepka, Pierce Williams, Jennifer Royston

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

The Folger Shakespeare Library's recently launched Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama (EMED) provides searchable, TEI-encoded, digital editions of 403 English plays first staged in London between1576 and 1642. A central task for participants at the Folger's 2016 summer workshop "Beyond Access: Early Modern Digital Texts in the Classroom" was to devise pedagogical uses for the Digital Anthology. Our team focused on the metadata that the editors of the anthology attached to each play—its chronology, author, printer, publisher, and the theater company that initially staged it—in order to foreground an aspect of these dramas that is crucial yet very …

When Technology Is Too Hot, Too Cold Or Just Right, Jonathan Howell

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

Many instructors acknowledge the importance of quantitative literacy in non-STEM fields and may themselves use advanced tools for data analysis, statistics and visualization. But how, if at all, does an instructor introduce quantitative methods into the classroom without overwhelming and disengaging students who may have been drawn to the field precisely because it has not traditionally required any skill or interest in science, technology, engineering or math? I present a model of iterative assignment design illustrated by the evolution of a phonetic exercise in which students are asked to measure vowels from their own speech and to plot their measurements …

Digital Surrealism: Visualizing Walt Disney Animation Studios, Kevin L. Ferguson

Publications and Research

There are a number of fruitful digital humanities approaches to cinema and media studies, but most of them only pursue traditional forms of scholarship by extracting a single variable from the audiovisual text that is already legible to scholars. As an alternative, cinema and media studies should pursue a mostly-ignored "digital surrealism" that uses computer-based methods to transform film texts in radical ways not previously possible. This article describes one such method using the z-projection function of the scientific image analysis software ImageJ to sum film frames in order to create new composite images. Working with the fifty-five feature-length films …

Critical Collection Analysis: Using Dh Tools To Contextualize Historical Collecting Patterns Within A Political Framework, Lydia Bello, Nina Clements, Madelynn Dickerson, Margaret Hogarth

Library Staff Publications and Research

With the growth of digital humanities and a wide range of free and open source analysis tools at our fingertips, librarians have a unique opportunity to use these new tools to critically analyze library collections. Moving beyond usage and budgets, strategies such as text analysis, temporal pattern finding and data visualization offer insights into the structure and content of our collections, which in turn supports evidenced-based decision-making for future acquisitions. At the Claremont Colleges Library, librarians across divisions have been encouraged to learn tools and approaches to Digital Humanities, and apply these principles to our own work and relationships with …

Bringing Special Collections To Life: Open-Source Tools For Digital Exhibit Creation, Andrew Welp

Scholarship and Professional Work

In 2014, Butler University Libraries received an institutional "Innovation Fund" grant to implement a large-scale digitization project to facilitate access and discovery of unique institutional holdings. Today, the Butler Digital History Initiative [digitalhistory.butlerlibraryservices.org] is comprised of several digital collections and interactive "digital exhibits" providing additional context and accessibility to archival materials to external and internal stakeholders. This program will highlight the open-source tools, procedures, and partnerships that enabled Butler University Libraries to bring their special collections to life.

Introduction To Focus Issue: Collections In A Digital Age, Lauren Tilton, Brent M. Rogers

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In Spring 2015, a working group engaged in questions at the intersection of digital and public history at the annual National Council on Public History (NCPH) meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee. The vibrant discussion focused on the exciting and important ways by which public historians make digital, public history. Because a significant amount of work has centered on digitizing and augmenting historical archives, this special issue explores digital approaches to physical collections. Inflected by the contributors’ positioning in public history, the issue highlights how digital approaches are shaped by questions of access, audience, collaboration, interpretation, and materiality. From that discussion …

Teaching Digital Humanities Through A Community-Centered, Team-Based Pedagogy, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Andrew Jewell

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

Through a focus on the Digital Humanities Practicum course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), this paper explores two areas of current--and recurrent--interest in digital humanities teaching and learning: DH pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom and DH and "skills training." While the presentation emphasizes particulars of the course, including its design, what has worked well, and what we are still learning, we also want to think beyond the single course and prompt further discussion around several themes, including team-based problem-solving and connecting digital humanities with community-engaged learning. Ultimately, we argue that a team-based, community-engaged approach can be an effective strategy …

Excavating Eportfolios: What Student-Driven Data Reveals About Multimodal Composition And Instruction, Amanda M. Licastro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The pedagogical practice of asking students to compose in open, online spaces has grown rapidly in recent years along with an increase in institutional and financial support. In fact, in July 2013, the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) announced the “coming of age” of ePortfolios as the percentage of higher education students using ePortfolios rose above the 50% mark in the U.S. (“About”). There are a host of constituent assertions that support the use of open online writing platforms in college-level courses. These claims include that writing publically cultivates digital literacy through broader audience awareness, facilitates interactivity …

Mediated Technologies: Locating Non-Authorial Agency In Printed And Digital Texts, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

Early modern printers, publishers and booksellers not only influenced readers to purchase particular books but continue to shape our reception of printed books today. Through title-page advertisements, prefaces and indexes, these ‘print agents’ forged unique relationships with new and returning readers. Paying attention to paratextual structures can uncover strategies for marketing new books, corralling readers and outlining new genres. A consideration of framing devices can also further our understanding of digital resources: much as print agents mediated printed books, digital humanists help reinforce the value of new technologies for the study of early modern texts, guiding users to apply new …

Building A Static Website With Jekyll And Github Pages, Amanda Visconti

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This lesson is for you if you’d like an entirely free, easy-to-maintain, preservation-friendly, secure website over which you have full control, such as a scholarly blog, project website, or online portfolio. At the end of this lesson, you’ll have learned to use technology including Jekyll static site generation and GitHub Pages hosting to create a basic live website where you can publish content that other people can visit.

Getting Involved With The Digital Humanities In Theology, Biblical Studies, And Religious Studies, Kent Gerber

Librarian Publications and Presentations

Digital humanities are growing and thriving in higher education, and, in the spirit of the pioneering work of Father Busa, it is important for theological and religious studies libraries and librarians to consider our roles and involvement in the current milieu of challenge and opportunity. The library and digital humanities communities possess many shared values and goals, including providing wide access to cultural information, enhancing teaching and learning, making a public impact, and benefiting from the invigorating, though not salvific, effect of technology to their efforts.

Final Progress Report California Open Educational Resources Council, Katherine Harris

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Submitted to the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates December 1, 2015 (rev 4/15/16) Permalink: http://tinyurl.com/FPRCAOERC41516 Printable PDF Version: http://tinyurl.com/FPRCAOERC41516pdf See also CA-OERC White Paper: OER Adoption in College Classrooms

Introduction To Textual Analysis, Gabrielle Kirilloff, Mikal Eckstrom

Digital Humanities Student Association: Materials and Presentations

This workshop provided an overview of the growing field of text analysis. We discussed the purpose of this type of research, explored example projects, and examined easy to use tools for beginners.

Evotext: A New Tool For Analyzing The Biological Sciences, Grant Ramsey, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how to use it.

White Paper: Oer Adoption Study: Using Open Educational Resources In The College Classroom, Katherine Harris, Committee Members California Oer Council

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Permalink for online version: http://tinyurl.com/WPOERAdoption040116Printable PDF version with Appendices: http://tinyurl.com/WPOERPrintVersion2Video Synopsis: https://youtu.be/vwVIrv0iSgE Signed into law in September 2012, SB 1052 (Steinberg, 2012) specified that the California Open Education Resources Council (“CA-OERC”) be established under the administration of the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (“ICAS”) of the University of California (“UC”), the California State University (“CSU”), and the California Community Colleges (“CCC”). CA-OERC was duly assembled and held its first meeting in January 2014. Representing 145 campuses across the three public systems of higher education, the CA-OERC initially set out to survey 10,000 UC, 24,000 CSU, 59,000 CCC full-time, …

Laying The Foundation: Digital Humanities In Academic Libraries, John W. White, Heather Gilbert

Purdue University Press Books

Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library’s role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education.

Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls …

Metadata Services In The Context Of Digital Humanities, Sai Deng

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Part II of the University of Central Florida Libraries hosted research lifecycle session at THATCamp Florida 2016. The Research Lifecycle at UCF presents a unified model of campus-wide support and services available to UCF researchers. This model was designed by the UCF Libraries’ Research Lifecycle Committee with inspiration from OpenWetWare’s Research Cycle. This presentation aims to explore the services and resources that UCF Libraries currently provides to researchers, while exploring how digital humanities research, specifically, can utilize such tools.

Interactive Visualization Of Bibliographic Information From Library Databases: A Digital Humanities Project, Dr. Xue-Ming Bao

Visualization of Bibliographic Information from Library Databases

Outline

Project Objective and Questions

Literature Review

Visualization Tools

Visualization Examples

Rupture Of The Virtual, John W. Kim

Books

Rupture of the Virtual is an examination of a concept of the material and the invaluable resources it offers for critical thinking today. In a multifaceted analysis, the book considers the theoretical reasons for the material’s exclusion from media theory and details the military origins of computing interface technologies, such as the Head-up Display and Augmented Reality, that enhance knowledge over the material. Rupture of the Virtual insists that a renewal of the material can be central to a critique of the virtual as a cultural condition.

Materiality In Site Responsive Media Art, Daniel Dean, John W. Kim

Art & Design Faculty Research

Daniel Dean and Ben Moren are both longtime contributors to MAW. Sharing an interest in experimental filmmaking, they formed Mobile Experiential Cinema (MEC) in 2011 for a Northern Spark commission to explore site-specific projection. They have subsequently collaborated on several works that explore comparable themes and ideologies. MEC makes use of the Mobile Broadcasting Unit developed by MAW as a platform for their own work, but Dean and Moren make significant changes to the outfit to facilitate their divergent approach to site-specific, responsive projection.

The last section highlighted how site was not a central concern in MAW’s public projections. It …

Of Shining Sea And Rising Sun: Cultural Storytelling In The Genre Of Horror In Video Games, Anna C. Webster

Undergraduate Research Posters

In the modern era, video games are hardly the simple, mindless medium that they used to be. Rather, they are now being used as a vehicle for artistic expression and storytelling worldwide, creating a colorful and comprehensive new approach to the storytelling experience that was previously reserved for books or movies. The immersive nature of the medium provides for a richer and more stimulating experience, from which the genre of horror greatly benefits. Rather than the more passive experience the viewer gets from watching a movie or reading a book, video games allow for the player to be completely immersed, …