Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Digital Scholarship And Data Science Intersect In Libraries: A Needs Assessment Report, Halie Kerns

Library Created Resources

The following report summarized the results of a needs assessment completed in the fall of 2023 at Binghamton University by the Libraries’ Digital Scholarship team. The aim was to understand how data science-focused programming, as part of the digital scholarship’s offerings, would be utilized on campus. The report evaluates existing literature, summarizes findings from twenty-eight interviews done across campus, and lays out an action plan for the Digital Scholarship team’s future planning.

Lbsci 717: Digital Humanities, S E. Hackney

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a graduate-level introductory course on the Digital Humanities, primarily aimed at LIS students.

Wikipedia’S Intentional Distortion Of The History Of The Holocaust, Jan Grabowski, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame …

Digital Archives As Socially And Civically Just Public Resources, Kent Gerber

Librarian Publications and Presentations

How can the digital humanities community ensure that its digital archives are public resources that live up to the best potential of digital humanities without repeating or perpetuating power imbalances, silences, or injustice? A framework for anti-racist action, the “ARC of racial justice,” developed by historian Jemar Tisby in his study of the complicity of the Christian church in perpetuating racism in the United States, is one way that this goal can be accomplished. The ARC is an acronym for three kinds of interrelated and interdependent kinds of actions one can take to fight racism and work for change: Awareness …

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 …

Layer Upon Layer: Starting Small, Thinking Big, And Building Sustainable Digital Projects, Rebecca Fitzsimmons

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

While many digital scholarship tools and computational methods can play an important role in digital humanities research at all stages, it’s usually the final output that is the most visible element of these projects. This talk will explore exhibits built using the Omeka platform with a particular focus on incorporating the Neatline plugin to create interactive maps. Continuing with maps, we will look at some possibilities for including these in projects built using the Scalar platform. We will also talk more generally about getting started with digital humanities projects and planning for sustainability.

Exploring 3d Data Reuse And Repurposing Through Procedural Modeling, Rachel Opitz, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Karin Dalziel, Jessica Dussault, Greg Tunink

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Most contemporary 3D data used in archaeological research and heritage management have been created through ‘reality capture,’ the recording of the physical features of extant archaeological objects, structures, and landscapes using technologies such as laser scanning and photogrammetry (Garstki 2020, ch.2; Magnani et al. 2020). A smaller quantity of data are generated by Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) projects, and even fewer data are generated through procedural modeling, the rapid prototyping of multi-component threedimensional (3D) models from a set of rules (Figure 8.1.). It is unsurprising therefore that in archaeology and heritage, efforts around digital 3D …

Nebraska Stories Of Humanity: Increasing Accessibility To Holocaust Education, Aila Ganic

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the question: How can the digital humanities provide a vehicle that elevates the human impact of survivor narrative and testimony? An analyzation of how the digital humanities could preserve survivor testimony is conducted through an examination of how Bea Karp’s narrative will be shared through the Nebraska Stories of Humanity portal project. Based on this analyzation, the Nebraska Stories of Humanity portal could be an effective method for teaching Holocaust education for three main reasons. First, this portal project avoids perpetrator-oriented narratives by highlighting survivors and soldiers who liberated camps. Further, it also offers a …

Exploring The Digital Humanities Research Agenda: A Text Mining Approach, Soohyung Joo, Jennifer Hootman, Marie Katsurai

Information Science Faculty Publications

Purpose

This study aims to explore knowledge structure and research trends in the domain of digital humanities (DH) in the recent decade. The study identified prevailing topics and then, analyzed trends of such topics over time in the DH field.

Design/methodology/approach

Research bibliographic data in the area of DH were collected from scholarly databases. Multiple text mining techniques were used to identify prevailing research topics and trends, such as keyword co-occurrences, bigram analysis, structural topic models and bi-term topic models.

Findings

Term-level analysis revealed that cultural heritage, geographic information, semantic web, linked data and digital media were among the most …

Listening, Care, And Collections As Data, Jacqueline Wernimont

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

This paper takes the sonification (the translation into sound) of data from sterilization recommendations made under eugenic laws in the United States as a case study in navigating the terrain between a commitment to caring for and with impacted communities and the potential affordances and perils of using sensitive collections as data. The author discusses ways that feminist care ethics and collections as data research intersect in a digital humanities project.

Gathering Online: Leveraging Tools For Instruction And Group Work In The Classroom And Beyond, Rebecca Fitzsimmons

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This talk focused on the librarian-led activities for the course Community Engagement Seminar, highlighting collaboration, teaching and learning, outcomes, and other uses of Scalar. This course focused on ways that K-12 school personnel create successful learning environments. Incorporating mapping, data visualization, and digital publishing, we taught students how to use several online tools and create a Scalar book that presented their research. Through a mixture of Zoom instructional sessions and personalized consultations, we helped students use Scalar to collaborate with their group members and build skills to successfully communicate goals, strategies, and outcomes to a broader community.

We also focused …

Creating Transformative Learning Opportunities: Expanding Assessment And Centering Student Voices Through Digital Infrastructures, Jennifer Hootman, Trey Conatser

Library Presentations

The shift to remote and hybrid learning due to COVID-19 has underscored the urgency for instructors to explore alternative assessments and center student voices. This session focuses on advancing libraries’ work promoting digital literacies with pedagogical collaboration around project-based assessments. We explore the case study of CreateUK, a web hosting initiative at the University of Kentucky Libraries designed to provide accessible online space for faculty, staff, and students to develop websites and other digital publications. Using this as a blueprint, participants will consider ways of fostering similar initiatives at their institutions that create transformative learning opportunities for students.

Curators And Active Participants: Archives, Exhibits, Engagement, And Outreach Through Teaching, Rebecca Fitzsimmons

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This presentation focuses on how a set of digital humanities workshops offered to university faculty helped them incorporate new resources and methods into their teaching. The first workshop was an overview of digital tools that focused on getting started without feeling overwhelmed, ways to incorporate art and archival resources into projects, and approaches to facilitating meaningful experiences in the classroom. The second workshop refined this material by focusing on how the same idea and content could be used to create three different digital humanities projects—a collection database and map, an online exhibit, and a digital publication. The exhibitions and digital …

Zombies In The Library Stacks, Laura Braunstein, Michelle R. Warren

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

This chapter examines "the stacks" as a "zombie category" that retains the power to shape understanding despite being outmoded. We analyze three ways of thinking about "the stacks" that sustain digital humanities: first, the physical library stacks that are part of the information architecture that arranges scholarship; second, the technology stack of globalized computing that distributes scholarship; and finally, the social stack of human relationships that make everything possible. Each stack reveals something different about the digital humanities and the patterns of labor embedded within it. Drawing on the sociological lessons of the zombie category, we aim to disaggregate the …

China’S Rural Statistics: The Contemporary Chinese Village Gazetteer Data Project, Yuanziyi Zhang

Journal of East Asian Libraries

In July 2018, the East Asian Library (EAL) of the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) initiated the Contemporary Chinese Village Gazetteer Data (CCVG Data) project to create a series of open-access online datasets of China’s rural statistics selected from the library’s collection of Chinese village gazetteers. The current datasets contain data from 1,000 village gazetteers in 18 categories. As an ongoing project, the goal is to reach 2,500 to 3,000 villages. A database that allows effective and efficient ingesting, querying, manipulating, and displaying CCVG data will be available for use by the end of 2020. This article serves as …

Designing Digital Projects For Your Courses, R.C. Miessler, John Dettinger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

R.C. Miessler (Systems Librarian) and John Dettinger (Assistant Director of User Services) deliver a 30-minute workshop on how to design digital projects for your courses. They provide a model for digital project assignment design, including planning, instruction, and assessment strategies, as well as address how to successfully negotiate copyright concerns.

Digital Liberal Arts Fellows, Tiffini Eckenrod

Library Presentations

This poster describes recent activities of the Digital Liberal Arts (DLA) Fellows at Ursinus College, including workshops and supported technologies.

"#Does This Count As Poetry?": A Genre Analysis Of Tumblr Poetry, Selena Cotte

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This thesis canonizes “Tumblr poetry” as a distinct and separate genre of poetry, closely related to other digital poetry movements but ultimately its own phenomenon. Through historical analysis, the criticism against Tumblr poetry and digital poetry as a whole become familiar in a cycle of negative reactions to changing poets and changing audiences. Through textual analysis of poems found on Tumblr, common attributes and style changes are identified and contrasted with more traditional contemporary poetry, signifying a distinct formal shift. Finally, through a platform analysis, poetry communities on Reddit and Instagram are similarly analyzed and contrasted with Tumblr poetry to …

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 …

Documentary Provenance And Digitized Collections: Concepts And Problems, Mats Dahlström, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Provenance research in digitized memory institution collections is mainly devoted to documenting and mapping the trajectories of the physical source documents across time, place and contexts, primarily by developing metadata standards and data models. The provenance of the digital reproduction and its relation to one or several physical source documents is however not being subjected to much inquiry. A possible explanation for this is the face-value approach with which we tend to regard digital reproductions. Looking more closely at such reproductions and their complex digitization process suggests a far from straightforward and linear provenance relation, and begs the question of …

A Journey Through The Development Of A Dh Program For Undergraduates, R.C. Miessler, Clinton K. Baugess, John Dettinger, Kevin Moore

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In institutions that do not actively integrate DH into the curriculum, introducing undergraduates to DH tools and methods can be difficult. However, Gettysburg College has facilitated a summer research experience for undergraduates. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship program and provide a high-level overview of its development and implementation. Workshop leaders will provide guidance on developing a summer program tailored to participants' institution's needs and aspirations. Participants will come away with strategies for identifying stakeholders and partners, developing program goals, selecting digital tools, designing workshops, and methods to incorporate aspects of assessment and sustainability.

Undergraduate Digital Scholarship At Gettysburg College, R.C. Miessler, Kevin Moore, Emma K. Lewis

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Musselman Library’s Digital Scholarship Committee supports high-impact student projects that use digital tools and methods to interpret, analyze, and present humanistic research. In addition to facilitating an eight-week summer research fellowship, the Committee partners with faculty members to design and oversee digital projects introduced as course assignments. This poster provides an overview of the Committee’s activities from fall 2015 through spring 2019.

Thinking Digitally, Together: Models For Digital Scholarship At Gettysburg College, Amy E. Lucadamo, R.C. Miessler, Lauren E. White

R.C. Miessler

Systems Librarian R.C. Miessler, College Archivist Amy Lucadamo, and senior Lauren White, discuss how Musselman Library has been involved in digital scholarship conversations and activities at Gettysburg, and invite discussion on how a campus-wide model for digital scholarship could emerge.

From The Trenches: Cross-Campus Digital History Collaboration, Amy E. Lucadamo, Ian A. Isherwood, R.C. Miessler, Jenna Fleming, Meghan E. O'Donnell

R.C. Miessler

In September 2015, our team launched The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs (www.jackpeirs.org), a digital history initiative built on collaboration between faculty, students, and library staff. The project is founded on amazing primary source material, but with limited financial support and little dedicated staff time. We leveraged the creativity and hard work of our team members to build a website that is maintained by students and enhanced whenever possible with features and commentary from faculty and staff. Members of #TeamPeirs discussed the evolution of the project, the nature of our collaboration, and the intersection of audiences …

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

R.C. Miessler

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, …

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

R.C. Miessler

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 …

The Digital Public Humanities: Giving New Arguments And New Ways To Argue, Jordana Cox, Lauren Tilton

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In response to the latest “crisis” in the humanities, advocates have marched, rallied, fundraised, and—especially—argued. This essay contends that communication scholars can support the growing “case for the humanities” by analyzing argumentative strategies, and more specifically, by offering ethical argumentative strategies that avoid replicating structures of domination. In particular, we look to Mari Lee Mifsud's theorization of rhetoric as gift, which follows Henry W. Johnstone in conceptualizing argument as something other than winning over an adversary. We place Mifsud's theorization of the gift in conversation with the methods of the digital public humanities (DPH), which acknowledge and offer abundant resources …

Student As Expert: Peer Learning To Support Digital Scholarship In The Classroom, Clinton K. Baugess

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Libraries and librarians have adopted a variety of approaches to support digital humanities (DH). Rooted in a small college environment, this poster will detail a peer-learning model adopted by one library to support classroom digital projects with trained students, who have completed an 8-week summer digital scholarship fellowship. Similar to other peer learning models in libraries to expand instruction and reference services, trained students can expand a library’s support for DH by teaching in the classroom and providing consultations, enhance their own digital and presentation skills, and support student learning as both expert and peer.

This is a modified PowerPoint …

Remix The Medieval Manuscript: Experiments With Digital Infrastructure, Laura Braunstein, Michelle R. Warren, Baylauris Byrnesim

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of Digital Experiments is a collaborative research project that takes up this challenge. It brings together academics, librarians, technologists, conservators, and students to study the many permutations of a single manuscript—a fifteenth-century Middle English prose chronicle of Great Britain, commonly referred to as the “Prose Brut.” Our project raises fundamental questions about the digital research environment. How is today’s code configuring tomorrow’s historical knowledge? How do digital technologies affect our access to and understanding of material culture? By investigating these broad questions through the example of one manuscript, we define a limited yet infinitely …

The Consequences Of Framing Digital Humanities Tools As Easy To Use, Paige C. Morgan

Library Articles, Papers, and Presentations

This article examines the recurring ways in which some of the most popular DH tools are presented as easy to use. It argues that attempts to couch powerful tools in what is often false familiarity, directly undermines the goal of encouraging scholarly innovation and risk taking. The consequences of framing digital tools as either easy or more difficult shapes the relationship between librarians and the students and faculty whose research they support, and, more broadly, the role and viability of libraries as spaces devoted to skill acquisition.