Martha S. Grafton Library is excited to offer a workshop series this year on incorporating Digital Scholarship into your research and your curriculum. The responses we received on the 2017 Grafton Library Faculty & Staff Survey related to Digital Humanities and Digital Scholarship told us that faculty are interested in learning more about this field. The term Digital Scholarship encompasses Digital Humanities, the use of computers and technology to gather and analyze research and data, and Scholarly Communications, issues related to preserving and providing access to scholarly research.
Grafton Library and the Instructional Technology Committee are sponsoring a workshop series for the 2017-2018 AY, funded in part by a DH grant from VFIC. This series will focus on Digital Collections and Exhibits, Open Education Resources, Text Mining, and Network Analysis. Each workshop will include an overview of the topic, examples of class assignments that use the method, and hands-on experience using an open source tool. All workshops are open to users of all technology comfort levels, and will be held on Friday afternoons.
November 10, 2017 1 – 3: Digital Collections and Exhibits (Omeka)
The first workshop will cover creating digital collections and exhibits using Omeka. Omeka is a popular open-source content management system created by George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. This platform allows users to add items (photographs, PDFs, audio and video files, etc), include their own metadata for each item, organize the items into collections, and create online exhibits around the items and collections. By the end of the workshop, users will be familiar with using digital collections and exhibits as an alternative final project and have experience creating items, collections, and exhibits in Omeka. This workshop is scheduled for November 10, 2017 from 1 – 3 pm in Grafton 105 and will be facilitated by Paula S. Kiser, Instruction and E-Resources Librarian. Paula holds a Graduate Certification in Digital Public Humanities from George Mason University and is eager to share her knowledge and experience about DH and digital scholarship to the Mary Baldwin community.
Attendance is capped at 15 people. Register for the workshop by November 6th.
February 2, 2018 TBA: Open Textbook Network (VIVA)
This workshop will provide an overview to the Open Textbook Network, an Open Education Resource opportunity provided by VIVA, a consortium of academic libraries in Virginia. Attendees will learn about the quality of the textbooks offered by the OTN, benefits of lowering materials costs to students, and the opportunity to earn a $200 stipend by reviewing an OTN textbook. Carol Creager, University Library and VIVA-OTN Campus Leader, will facilitate this workshop. It will be offered on February 2, 2018, time TBA, in Grafton 302.
February 23, 2018, 1-3 pm: Text Mining and Open Text Sources (Voyant)
This workshop will cover text mining and using open text sources such as HathiTrust, EEBO-TCP, Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg. Text mining allows researchers to inspect and analyze large collections of texts in with a “distant reading” method. Attendees will learn what types of research questions match well with this method and which don’t, get an overview of some research projects and classroom activities that use text mining, and get hands on experience using Voyant, an open-source text analysis and reading tool created by researchers at McGill University and the University of Alberta. This workshop will be offered on February 23, 2018, 1-3 pm in Grafton 105 and will be facilitated by Paula S. Kiser.
March 30, 2018, TBA: Network/Relationship Analysis using Data Visualizations (Palladio)
The fourth workshop will focus on network analysis, a method that allows researchers to examine relationships and potential influences within a dataset using data visualizations. Attendees will explore digital projects that use network analysis, learn how to organize data for this method, and use the open tool Palladio, created by Standford University’s Humanities + Design research lab. This workshop will be offered on March 30, 2018 in Grafton 105 and will be facilitated by Paula S. Kiser.
