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New developments in digital humanities allow for more successful dissemination of information. Today’s library patrons make use of the cumulative innovations to optimize their research. Many valuable tools can be synchronized by creative minds to aid in that endeavor. Innovations such as SobekCM facilitate the spread of information in organized and easily accessible forms. Open Access is the general socio-cultural push for the democratization of information. Advanced scanning technology, as well as word processing and image processing programs, allow for the integration of information in a comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing manner.
As the collection manager intern for the IR, over the last six months, I have been in charge of creating and organizing Dr. T.J. Walker’s collection, found at ufdc.ufl.edu/tjwalker. Given my academic background in the humanities, organizing a STEM professor’s 58 years of research material seemed a daunting task. Challenges, such as adopting a new scientific vocabulary, tracking down lost materials from decades ago, making sense of the material enough to make an organized and intuitive collection, researching rights statements and copyright permissions and heading a pilot program in this effort, were overcome by creatively using the technologies at hand. In my presentation, I would like to demonstrate the work so far, discuss these challenges and how they were overcome, generally gauge the interest people may have in viewing or creating such collections of an individual researcher’s materials, and gather any other feedback. If anyone is working on similar projects or would want any questions answered, they would be welcome to bring those up.

This session addresses the opportunities and challenges posed by digital projects as final, collaborative assignments by examining “The Swinging Bridge, Ramabai Espinet,” a digital reference and teaching guide to Ramabai Espinet’s novel The Swinging Bridge produced by Kayli Smendec, Berta Gonzalez, and Christine Csencsitz. This project was begun by four groups of students as part of LIT 4192 “Migration, Money, and the Making of Modern Caribbean Literature” (Spring 2014) and then completed by Smendec, Csenscitz, and Gonzalez as an undergraduate research project the following semester. They combined the original collaborative projects, revising and adding to their colleagues’ work to produce a website that functions as a reference guide to The Swinging Bridge. The project contains a map of key locations, a glossary of historical and cultural references, short essays on key themes, a list of key passages organized thematically, and an annotated bibliography. Their digital project constitutes a unique resource for the novel as there now exist only biographical information and specialized scholarly articles. The project has particular value because it addresses the work of an Indo-Caribbean woman author, who represents a new and often overlooked literary tradition that needs a scholarly infrastructure, in order to retain and increase the presence of that tradition in scholarship and curricula. In other words, this body of work is at risk of going out of print and disappearing from circulation unless a significant body of criticism remains available — open access. The goal is to make the project available through the open access Digital Library of the Caribbean (www.dloc.com) and thus to help students and instructors and at the same time help to build the infrastructure necessary to assure the presence of the novel in future scholarship and curricula. Berta Gonzalez, Kayli Smendec, and Leah Rosenberg will discuss the objectives and challenges of creating such digital projects as class assignments from students’ perspectives from that of the instructor.

Leah Rosenberg, Kayli Smendec, and Berta Gonzalez
Contact:

You’d expect that Gainesville’s history would be on Wikipedia, but not much is. In case you didn’t know, Gainesville was fundamental to the national women’s movement, anti-war, and anti-racist movements in the 1970s and has a rich history of other Civil Rights activism.

I think it’s important to share this history and to make it available to everyone on Wikipedia. I propose that we hold an informal, yet structured, Edit-A-Thon to add information to Wikipedia articles about the history of Gainesville. Edit-A-Thons are events designed for people to work together to make changes to a specific genre or region. Attending these events are a great way to learn more about Wikipedia and how to write articles with others on the largest and most popular encyclopedia available.

Have you edited Wikipedia? Great! Never edited before? Don’t worry about it! We’ll work through the kinks together and make some helpful contributions about our history. We can use primary source materials from Florida Memory, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, the Florida NOW Archive, and UF Digital Collections. If all goes well, this session will result in the creation of great articles that will continue to be edited and watched after the session.

For this panel, I will discuss and promote a service learning project with a company called iFixit that I was involved with as an instructor of technical writing at the University of South Florida. iFixit advocates self-repair of electronic devices to help reduce the global spread of e-waste (pollution caused by the dumping of used electronic devices into third-world countries). To assist the self-repair movement, iFixit publishes repair guides on their website, and we at USF had engineering students work with the company to create some of these guides. To do this, students researched a device they were given to find common problems, and then write a troubleshooting guide, device page, and sets of instructions to remove specific components of the device for repair. Students also had to take their own photographs and write accompanying text to walk users through the replacement of components. The assignment relates to DH not only in that it requires students to perform web design using a wiki-based program, but also in that it requires them to think about the lives of their electronic devices and what happens to these devices after they’re discarded.

Because history museums tend to attract older audiences, it can be challenging to find new ways to engage the younger generations. Moreover, many museums and universities feel proprietary about their collections and might be reluctant to put elements of their collections online for the masses.

However, using Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media to attract new audiences and educate them about the past is a highly promising and interactive form of community outreach with no borders. This un-panel will explore different groups’ experiences using social media as a tool to connect to new audiences and bring the past to life. Examples of different Florida and national digital collections that are interactive and educational will be explored.

For too long humanities researchers (and all researchers) have had too limited resources, which has resulted in servers in homes and personally supported servers by researchers for research. There are certainly times when having a server of one’s own is wanted and appropriate. However, this should not be the default. At UF, researchers have fabulous resources readily available through UF Research Computing.

This talk session will be about the options with Research Computing for server supports, contact people with Research Computing, and options for collaboration with the Libraries, which have just started our investment in Research Computing to have a small incubator space for graduate students and faculty researchers who are undertaking collaborative research and projects with the Libraries. There are better options than having a server in your home.

Come and hear about the options!

Come and learn about how utilizing and leveraging amazing resources like Research Computing can make your research more sustainable and fundable, with examples like MassMine!

This “talk” session is envisioned as an opportunity to share experiences in using TEI in the classroom or working with students in the creation of electronic editions. Participants will be invited to briefly describe past, current, or future projects, and to consider questions such as the following:

• What should be the goals of using TEI with students? Should our objectives be different when working with undergraduates and graduates?
• How do we create projects that are manageable, in terms of size, difficulty, etc., in such a context?
• How can we best communicate to colleagues and administrators the importance of this type of work?
• What are some recommended approaches to building relationships between faculty in the Humanities/Social Sciences and in Computer and Information Science, in support of such projects?
• How can we design and teach Digital Humanities courses in which both Humanities/Social Sciences and Computer and Information Science students will enroll and in which they can successfully collaborate?
• What role can university libraries play?
• How should ongoing editorial projects involving students best be managed, in terms of faculty oversight and resources?

For a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon related to the UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) and/or other UF Digital Collections, possibly including the Florida NOW!