This session looks at how we make transitions work for us rather than becoming moments of failure in archival and digital history work. Donors and communities rarely share the same expectations of a relationship with an institutional partner as an archivist, a scholar or project designer. After the project starts, we start to see that the words we use actually mean different things. “Preserve” can equate to a sense that an artifact will be permanently displayed. “Create access” can suggest that physical objects should be loaned out for community events. Donors may interpret deviation from their own perspectives to be a betrayal of the promise to “tell the story” of a community.

These mismatches are teaching moments, even opportunities for reconciliation between social groups in a community, as well as between community people and those of heritage institutions. Professionals and scholars engaged in documentary projects with non-academics who help us to preserve, create access to and tell the stories of a community’s past need to be resilient enough for handling difficult discussions with our partners. Only through those conversations can we find agreement about our common vocabulary and how to put it into practice.

Bring your stories of how your projects have earned trust or missed opportunities because critical connections were not made, as well as what you have learned about deciding when to sunset or dramatically revise a community project. What conversations and skills can make that an honorable process?

Proposed by Haven Hawley, who has experience working in a community museum and with ethnic archives, and who is currently chair of Special and Area Studies Collections at UF.

I propose a session to share ideas about engaging students in course themes through digital means (hey, that rhymes!).

Currently I teach a course on analytical thinking and writing that explores the child as Other. Through the Challenge Project, a participatory out-of-class engagement project, we ask students to explore course concepts, essays, and materials in a way that is meaningful to them. Some of my students have used social media outlets like instagram and Twitter or collage/archiving programs like Storify and Pinterest to explore ideas and characters. Originally this assignment was developed by Jamie Marks (anthropology graduate student) to address participation for those students who were apprehensive about participating during classtime but who still had questions and ideas to explore.

And this project is the catalyst for this session. I would like a roundtable discussion about how we can encourage and guide students through engagement activities that make use of the digital ways they communicate.

I imagine participants sharing their stories about learning the platforms and developing course assignments.

I imagine participants sharing challenges they face and questions they have.

I imagine participants offering suggestions, critiques, and expertise.

I imagine participants leaving this session with practical ideas to engage their students outside of class.

This is an open discussion about what makes the contents of a digital archive (letters, papers, diaries, etc.), either easy to use or frustrating to use. I thought we might look at the Bexar Archives (UT-Austin), Free People of Color in Louisiana (LSU), the Papers of Andrew Jackson (UTenn-Knoxville), and UFDC’s own Pioneer Days in Florida.

Bexar Archives: www.cah.utexas.edu/projects/bexar/index.php

Free People of Color: cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p16313coll51

Jackson: thepapersofandrewjackson.utk.edu/

Pioneer Days: ufdc.ufl.edu/pioneerdays

James Cusick
Curator, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, UF

The TRACE innovation initiative is a research endeavor developed and maintained by the University of Florida’s Department of English. TRACE works at the intersection of ecology, posthumanism, and writing studies. Invoking the mission of TRACE, Sequentials recognizes the unique capability of images to relay knowledge by soliciting and publishing interpretations of various academic subjects or themes drawn and explained through the comics medium. This session will be of particular interest to anyone interested in visual rhetoric, graphic storytelling, and comics.

By “comics,” we loosely mean illustrated, sequential images that may or may not incorporate words and may or may not be bounded within panels or other boundary markers. Because the term “comics” is still a contested one and has thus far evaded definition, this TRACE project asks contributors to (re)imagine the meanings of both the subject they are drawing about and the form that their interpretation takes. By encouraging contributors to conceptualize their work in a distinctly visual way, this project highlights the unique creative capabilities of the comics medium and reflects TRACE’s overall focus on innovative research and production.

A large focus of the Sequentials project is on developments of form. Given that chosen submissions will be published online, the framing of the page and screen will inevitably provide boundaries to what can be presented or created. We recognize the limitations of this two-dimensional space, but believe in the enormous creative potential of the comics form. Therefore, we ask contributors to consider how the form of their illustrations and panel structures might influence how viewers receive creative interpretations. The Sequentials team will circulate a CFC (call for comics) bi-monthly and will publish submissions accordingly. Subjects will range from theoretical terms like “deconstructivism” to fields of study such as “ecocriticism” or “animal studies.” In seeking visual submissions, we hope to destabilize the notion that words alone are the most effective way of conveying knowledge; we encourage contributors utilize the comics medium to its fullest, exploring how meaning can be displayed in creative ways. Contributors from all academic disciplines, regardless of their level of experience or illustration “skill” are welcome to submit. Further, submissions are encouraged from non-academics as well, and the editorial team will consider all submissions equally.

The TRACE innovation initiative is a research endeavor developed and maintained by the University of Florida’s Department of English. TRACE works at the intersection of ecology, posthumanism, and writing studies. Augmented reality criticism (ARCs),or  the use of augmented reality (AR) applications as a medium in critical public discourse, is one of several distinct projects supported by TRACE. This session will provide a forum for discussion of novel applications of AR and how these can be used in academia and beyond.

Novel applications of augmented reality (AR) continue to emerge alongside the unprecedented rise in mobile computing technologies. Museums and historical sites are beginning to integrate AR content into their displays, companies are promoting AR apps in lieu of print or even web-based catalogs, and engineering firms are creating AR applications that reveal their often invisible work. Although such uses of AR are certainly interesting in their capacity to redefine the role of technical and professional writing for many disciplines, they do not utilize AR’s potential as a medium for social and cultural change.

Digital artists and activists continue to lead the pack when it comes to shaping AR’s future as a medium for critical public discourse. For instance, artists working as part of the Manifest.AR collective have been pursuing AR “interventionist public art” since at least 2010. During the Occupy movement, artist/activist Will Pappenheimer created an AR application that uses text from Occupy protester’s signs to generate digital skywriting. According to Pappenheimer’s website, the project, titled Skywrite AR, seeks to give everyday citizens an opportunity to “occupy” a space of public writing “normally out of [their] financial reach.”

In its unique rhetorical capacity to promote compelling interactions between physical and digital content, AR is the perfect platform for creating critical, digital texts whose salience is more clearly discerned when placed within specific physical locations. Indeed, as mobile/ubiquitous computing continues its ascendance and eventual merger with predicted advances in wearable augmented/virtual reality technologies, this type of “writing” will only continue to proliferate. Trace ARCs seek to build upon the AR work of digital artists by more explicitly situating AR within writing studies scholarship as an emerging medium for creating and disseminating critical public texts.

Have you wondered about how successful DH grant-seeking is achieved? It begins with conversations about what we have in terms of resources, what we have done in the past, and what we want to do in the future. “Sharing experiences through stories is emerging ….as a powerful way to exchange and consolidate knowledge.” (Storytelling in organizations, Deborah Sole, 2002) Join us for a Talk session to explore the birthing of collaborative grant-seeking projects awarded to the Smathers Libraries and its partners. We also will brainstorm possible projects that might be hidden among session participants, and talk about the first steps to turn these project ideas into competitive proposals.

According to French literary theorist, Gérard Genette, paratexts are the aspects of a published work that surround the main text of a narrative (i.e. introductions, prefaces, marginalia, inscriptions, illustrations, etc.). However, finding these specific and sometimes ancillary parts of a literary work is difficult in the digital environment. As an increasingly important field of study in the humanities and digital humanities, paratextual scholarship can define readers’ engagement with books and other printed material, their degree of agency in reading a text, and the reading experience.

Important questions such as: how do we describe these materials when they lack a controlled vocabulary, how does one search for paratexts in the digital world, and how do paratexts inform culture and the reading experience will be explored during a facilitated discussion that could inform future projects with digital collections.

As librarians who work with digital scholarship, particularly undergraduate and graduate Theses and Dissertations and other items that find their home in Institutional Repositories, we understand that the landscape of the content is changing. Our “Talk” session is envisioned as a conversation between scholars and those who help make projects, research, and supporting materials available in a digital world. What kinds of materials, and in what formats, should we seek to support?

While our initial conversation topic was sparked by the needs of undergraduate and graduate students as they work on their theses, dissertations and other requirements for graduation, we recognize this conversation has broader impact in the digital humanities community. What technologies and solutions should we be looking at – what are the problems (current and upcoming) faced by scholars that we could help address?

-Submitted by Christy Shorey and Sarah Norris

Omeka continues to be a popular content management platform for scholars, libraries, and museums interested in displaying digital objects or content. Its flexibility and search features make it attractive to a range of users with various interests.

This session aims to discuss Omeka as a tool and the types of plug-ins, for example, it contains.  It also aims to examine a few applied cases, such as  Digital Archiving Resources, Florida Memory, and Samsula Historical Archive, where it has been used successfully in and outside the classroom, and to better understand its limitations and possibilities.