And welcome to today's webcast how your
library can advance digital humanities
across campus brought to you by
Library Journal and sponsored by GAIL.
My name is Lisa Pete and
I will be your moderator.
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And now I'd like to introduce our panelists.
First off I'm Lisa Pete I am the
news editor at Library Journal,
where I cover public academic
and special library news.
In print and on line.
Wendy Perla Kurtz earned her
PhD in Hispanic languages and
literatures from the UCLA in 2017.
During your time there doctor.
Kurtz also received a graduate certificate
in the digital humanities and worked
at the Center for Digital Humanities.
There she designed managed and contributed
to digital research and pedagogy projects.
She is currently a lecturer at UCLA.
The digital humanities specialist at GAIL.
Doug to him as a software developer
in Yale University's digital
Humanities lab his doctoral thesis
studied the effect Copyright law had.
On the yearly book market.
Target on the GitHub as at Duquesne
GUA IMA and on the interwebs at
douglasdohand.com. Chelsea Juliet
role is a practitioner manager,
as head of digital scholarship for
Tisch Library at Tufts University.
Skinny Tufts University.
She leads a team of functional
specialists in Scholarly communication
data and media and design.
She and her colleagues in the
digital scholarship Department
work closely with Tufts University.
Faculty students and staff to
imagine carry out and sustain.
Digitally inflected research and teaching.
In June and July 2019,
Library Journal in conjunction with gala.
Cengage company conducted a study
involving nearly 200 academic
librarians from around the world.
Respondents consisted of libraries from
graduate and professional institutions
undergraduate 4 year colleges or
universities and community colleges.
The most common job titles of
those responding to the survey
were reference Librarian Library
Director and head librarian.
The study concluded that the
library is the main driver and
supporter of digital humanities
use on most college campuses.
Proving the libraries value in
strengthening its institutions mission.
So now we're going to go to our panel,
um my first question is
about the use of impact.
Use and impact of digital Humanities
in colleges and universities in terms
of technology adoption 5% of the
institutions surveyed described themselves.
Innovators 14% early adopters 29% early
majority 37% late majority and 16% laggards.
Of those that don't support
Digital Humanities.
Yet 3% are in the process
of supporting it 16%.
I'm making plans to support it and 50%
would like to support digital humanities,
but have no plans at this time.
So there are some promotional
informational roles here for scholarship.
Scholarly Communications Tech and vendors.
How can each of those avoid
silo ING their efforts?
And support a holistic
promotion of digital humanities,
I'd like to go to Chelsea 1st.
So I'm relatively new to
tops and since I arrived my
library has reorganized so considering
all of this organizational change much
of what I'll share today is about.
Our plans for the future rather
than our past successions.
That said, I believe one of the best
ways to avoid silo ING and promotional
efforts is to avoid silo ING.
At the point of developing programming
when I started a touch my new colleagues
had already build beautiful bridges.
Between fish library and the research
technology unit and touch central
it so that unit manages a public
service based called the data lab.
And together with the data lab,
we host an extensive series of open workshops
each semester on topics ranging from.
Data analysis and visualization GIS
research management and median design.
We have more work to do together to
figure out how to create learning
pathways from one workshop to another.
And how to reach new audiences
across Tufts Campus.
My Department managers another
dhe space in the library called
the digital design studio because
of our focus on media and design.
We've begun talking with the
Tufts University Art Gallery is
to learn about their exhibits.
I'm visiting artists in advance,
so that we can develop complementary
programming and cross promote through
each others communication channels.
We have less experience with building
bridges between the librarian
vendors in order to support holistic
promotion of Digital Humanities.
As we look ahead to building
those partnerships.
My principle would be to start
with the scholarly or pedagogical
purpose of the proposed project.
And who the needed partners
and expertise are in order to
achieve that scholarly purpose.
There's some resources and services
were touched as an institution or?
Experts within touch or the
library can provide.
But depending upon the project you
might look to an outside partner to
provide other resources and services.
For certain raw materials for analysis like
textual corpora we might look to GAIL.
For some software web development services,
we might consider looking to a
company like Archimedes Digital.
It would just depend on the aspirations
of the project and the expertise
and resources that we have on hand.
But anytime that we needed to bring
outside people in on a project team.
I would want to include those external
team members in the project design process.
As early as possible.
Great and
what do you what do you think?
So thanks Lisa I'll be wearing to have today.
So to speak because of that.
My answer to this question is 2 parts in
the first comes from my experience at UCLA.
Um silo ING I think could be
an issue at larger institutions
with established programs.
As much as institutions that are just
beginning to support project work,
where faculty or staff may be working.
In isolation, not really knowing
who else on campus is doing
complementary work to there's.
UCLA we have a wealth of research centers,
but these are housed in different
locations across a rather large campus.
I was one of my roles at the Center for
Digital Digital Humanities was as an
ambassador to help connect visiting scholars.
With the various research institutes and
specific faculty and scholars whose work
coincided with work happening around campus,
so this caller were visiting.
More visiting our campus and wanted to work
with super computers or large scale data.
I knew with whom to connect them.
But this came with a lot of institutional
knowledge on my part since I had been
embedded in DH on campus for over 5 years.
Um land at various capacities right so
I was part of the certificate program
as well as a research and instructional
technology consultant at the center.
It is a difficult to try and overcome
some of these silo ING barriers
and it does take a lot of work in.
Break these apart.
Because of that I think UCLA has
evolved the way in which they deal with
silo ING and supporting DH on campus.
Now they have the Digital Research
Consortium.
And two of the spaces that make up this
consortium our house within the library.
These are the Lux lab,
which is basically a maker space.
And these scholarly innovation lab,
which supports projects on a
number of levels.
Internal set my other hat on and as I'm
working with a publisher to support
digital scholarship my eyes were really.
Open to the wealth of archival resources
available in the library and I'm
embarrassed somewhat embarrassed to say that.
Even coming from UCLA I had no idea of
the breath of resources that are that
are available through our library.
And faculty don't always know what
they have either so communicating
about available resources and hollows
align with specific research.
Areas whether that's more traditional
research or digital digital Humanities
project work is really important.
OK great insight and jug.
So Hi everybody, my name is Doug do him.
I'm a software developer in yells
digital Humanities Lab and.
You know, I thought I'd talk a
little bit about some of the ways
yells digital Humanities lab helps.
Break through some of these
institutional silos by something
that we call demonstrator projects
so demonstrator project is a project.
That the DH lab itself,
which is a very small just
four member team in the heart
of Yale University libraries.
The way the DH lab,
these are projects in which the DH lab.
Creates an idea,
he has some kind of hypothesis or
wants to execute on something that we
think is going to give us some kind of.
New technical insight or expertise
that will be able to bring to patrons.
And so the example project I
pulled out is from the robots,
reading Vogue Project,
which is a project in which.
The DH lab acquired all of the data from
the Vogue magazine from Conde Nast,
a digital publisher distributed.
Viper quest.
And the lab took that data set
and took just the cover images
of each issue of Vogue from.
The 1900s all the way to the 2000s.
And for each decade,
you can kind of see on your screen here.
We just took the covers for that decade.
And lay them on Top of one another
and simply in photo shop dead,
simple to do and then just took the.
Average of all of those images.
And what you get if you do that is,
you start to see some patterns in the
data so in the 1900s, we can see.
Both had a very regularised cover
there was a very sort of static
design and you can see that Vogue.
Banner at the Top and then some chaos
in the middle where some kind of
graphic was introduced for each issue.
There is additional chaos if we
move through subsequent decades.
But if we go to the 1980s,
something really kind of haunting
emerges there's this.
Ideal female face that folks starts
to fixate on and if we look at all of
the covers kind of in mass from that decade.
We can see that there's
very regular features.
It's always a woman's face always
kind of Cox just at that angle.
And you know,
we can see that Vogue is trying
to kind of regularize this notion
of ideal fundament beauty.
So with a very simple experiment.
We were able to uncover these insights,
but we execute on these demonstrator
projects because they involved so
many individuals they help expose.
A wide range of sort of shareholders
into DH research.
We have Copyright librarians
acquisition librarians.
We have vendor partners,
we have data librarians.
Internal designer software developers
all of whom are working on a
project like this so that we can
learn how to sort of.
Grease the wheels how to
get data into the house,
so that will be able to
give it to researchers
and help them execute on their
research tasks. Efficiently.
OK, that's great, so let's talk
a little bit about barriers now,
according to the survey infrastructure
an costs are the biggest barriers
to supporting Digital Humanities.
In the library followed
by a lack of IT support.
How can libraries help cut
costs and other barriers?
And what kind of open source or Oh,
ER digital humanities resources
are out there and how can
they be made discoverable?
When do you hear from you?
Sure, so there's an almost overwhelming
amount of resources freely available online
so I would say don't reinvent the wheel.
Really build off of what others have
done learn about how and why they
structure their projects or there.
Or their pedagogical information
that they make available why they
made it the way that they did.
Why did they choose specific
tools for a project?
How did they build it
with their team look like?
So if you want to get your feet wet or
sharpen your skills learn a new tool.
There are loads of opportunities
within the DH community.
The open source do-it-yourself
nature of DH that's created a helpful
community that's open to collaboration
in research resource sharing.
On line there is information and help
for you to learn about in training
different DH tools and methods.
I said freely available it does come at
a cost obviously that time you have to be.
You have to have this time available
to train yourself and really.
Dig into some of these resources,
but some of the ones that I've
highlighted on this slide are
the programming historian,
which I highly recommend.
Reviewed Open Access tutorials for
popular DH tools and Methodologies
and they are written in geared
towards Humanities folks.
Rather than somebody who might have
a programming background and this is
useful for someone who wants to learn.
About a new method and now multilingual,
which is fantastic,
so they're written in peer reviewed
in a variety of languages.
And then there's Humanities Commons
and this is an MLA hosted space for
material sharing and networking for
people working in the humanity.
And then there's the Terra,
which I'm sure you're familiar with
there's a plethora of groups that have
that share readings and have compiled.
Syllabi that you can download
an modify as needed,
and then there's obviously social
media both Twitter and slack.
There are popular DH online
communities and there's on slack.
There's a set of GMT chat rooms,
where they are devoted to.
DH beginners or DH student job
seekers and the community is
there for asking all kinds of DH
questions about methods or tools.
OK great and um. Chelsea, what do you think?
Sorry. Everyone I had to unmute.
It seems to me that these perceived
barriers of cost and IT support.
They rest on an assumption that
doing digital humanities requires.
Really intense development or customization
or hosting on University web servers.
For some research assignments are
or research projects or of course,
assignments, maybe that's true.
But I think very often,
it's the case that for other
projects or assignments.
You can draw upon lots of existing.
Little barrier to entry tools.
And I want to take a moment
to quote at Bethany Novitsky.
This was an an interview
that Melissa Dentman.
Conducted with Bethany and the LA
review of books and in the course
of that interview Bethany said.
Honestly,
I see a lot of the most creative and
provocative and publicly engaged DH
scholarship in practice coming from smaller.
Unless wealthy institutions these days,
specifically from places that seem
to me less concerned about trying
to match the scale of projects in
the style of practices that you may
see in the larger labs and centers.
And more about building on the
things they know their rich red
sort of embracing their constraints
as part of the operating system.
And I really liked that ethos that
Bethany articulated so for entry level
course based digital Humanities assignment.
Some a big fan of the night lab storytelling
tools like timeline JS story map JS.
Storyline JS.
These are browser based tools for creating
interactive multimedia visualizations.
And I think that students can learn
a lot by working with these tools,
they're exposed to principles of.
Data structure presentation layer
versus data layer what makes an
effective argument or narrative
and a multimodal format.
Maybe even a little bit of HTML or CSS S
if they want to customize the look and feel.
And what people create with the Israeli
lightweight tools can be really effective,
but then I also find it really exciting when
they start pressing against the boundaries
of what the tool is capable of doing.
When learners get frustrated
and say why can't.
It do this, or this tool is
limiting the kind of questions.
I can ask or stories,
I can tell.
Because it's making XYZ assumptions,
which I disagree with an I'm like yeah,
it is.
So how would you design it differently to
afford yourselves other possibilities for
analysis or making an argument are there
other tools out there that you could use?
I also just wanted to give a brief shout out,
um if you are interested or if you are doing
a project or an assignment that requires.
Um so posting or or boosting an
independent hosting I guess as
opposed to using a third party hosted.
Web apps like the night night lab
storytelling tools reclaim hosting
is really fabulous service money.
Campuses offer web surfing
through reclaim but it's also
available in dependently to.
And scholars and students an using
reclaim hosting you can have your own.
WordPress instance or Oh Mecca or scaler.
Or wiki and stuff,
so I find that often to
be a great. Option. OK,
with great resources and
joke what do you think?
In terms of cutting costs in order to
conduct digital Humanities Research.
I think there are a number of.
Really simple things one can do in
particular when it comes to data acquisition.
I would suggest that individuals
on the call take a look at.
Awesome public datasets,
which is a list of open source datasets
on github.com and if you kind of.
Scroll through that list,
there each of those little you know
domain categories is clickable
and you'll be able to drill down
into a wide range of data sets.
Under each of these disciplines.
There's also kaggle.com which is
a website on which data scientists
conduct competitions to see who can.
You know solve some problem most
elegantly and most accurately.
Um and Cackle Com has a wide range
of data sets free datasets that
are already curated and ready to be
analyzed or visualized or what have you.
So you could point researchers to
either kaggle com or to the awesome
public datasets collections or
indeed to data.gov.
And I wanted to make a little shout
out to Scott Underlays team at U Penn,
which I think.
Is doing a really excellent job of
creating pioneering digital humanities
research on a shoestring budget?
Scott and delay has no software
developer staff he's a one man
band running you pens DH center.
And what he does in order to build awesome,
DH projects as he just partners
with undergrads in computer science.
Or in design and he'll have them
come into his lab and they work
on projects so that they can build
up their own CVS.
But while they're doing so,
they're helping solve extant research
problems that faculty members and
history or in the languages have?
So another great way to cut costs is
to partner with undergrads at your
local institution and have them.
It's sort of execute on some of the
technical details of the project.
OK great very nice um.
Now let's go back a little bit and
look at a larger view libraries
are split fairly evenly 46%. Yes.
5454% no over whether their strategic
plan or mission statement mentions
support of Digital Humanities.
What is an effective ways to boost that
signal to institutional administration?
How does having it in the
mission statement help?
That doesn't increase funding
does it help with staff awareness
or prioritization of digital
humanities fun programming.
Doug.
I had to confess that when
GAIL posed the question.
How does DH align with Yale University
Library's mission statement?
I frankly had no idea because I had
never read the mission statement.
But after I did read the mission
statement and you can see that
Top level sort of goals of.
Yeah, University libraries agenda listed
here after I read this mission statement,
I can say very comfortably DH aligns with.
Many of these goals,
so focus on library users.
We have open office hours where
researchers come in and can ask us.
Any questions about any programming
language or any digital project and we help
them with their very specific project.
Enhanced teaching and learning
we appoint Digital Humanities.
Students representatives diplomats
to go into classrooms and introduce
a technical topic like.
Story Maps JS for instance,
and they'll help history class
make story Maps exhibits.
Advanced Research and inquiry.
We support something called a rapid
prototyping grant that I'll talk
about later that helps researchers.
Execute on digital projects.
I could go on, but in short,
if you have a tight well run DH
institution little center at your University.
I think you'd be hard,
pressed not to align well with
your libraries core agenda.
OK great and Chelsea what
can you tell us about Tufts?
Chelsea there. Hi I apologize
an so to answer your question.
I am a new mid level manager
and I in that role and really,
really conscious of being.
Telling stories and telling stories.
In a language that's
intelligible to my audience.
I served as a member of the Tisch Library
Strategic Planning Steering Committee,
partially that was in recognition of visual.
Dollar ship is an area of growth
and investment for our library.
But we don't actually have the words
digital scholarship or digital humanities
anywhere in the strategic plan.
And.
You know that was a considered choice
is it a separate thing or is it diffused
through all of these high level goals.
So I can really see the work
of our Department in each and
every of these high level goals.
Want to enable deeper learning
#2 to facilitate scholarships
#3 to invest in people and #4.
So create inspiring inspiring spaces.
So.
In deeper learning we lost be purposeful
about our course collaborations where
we're investing a lot of time where we are.
Growing our courts or grad
students because for them,
becoming fluent in digital
scholarship has a role in there.
Professionalization.
Make an facilitating scholarship,
we have roles in digital publishing
open scholarship Open Access.
And investing in people,
which is really sort of inward
focus from library staff.
We want to create learning environment.
Or our colleagues,
so that for example,
use on librarians can offer.
An consultations in core support
for intro level DH.
And then when it comes to inspiring spaces.
We have long-term dreams of Co locating
our data lab in our digital design.
Studio and all of the deeply expert people
who are affiliated with each of those.
OK, I'll also to speak really briefly
that communicating to upper management.
We had a really great opportunity to
host a workshop for Board of advisors for
the tough school of Arts and Sciences.
And so I won't describe that in
detail but I'll just say that.
It was an opportunity to model for
the the kind of learning experiences
that we create for students and.
And I think it really helps them
to understand the power of DH
as a learning experience.
Alright that's wonderful,
um Wendy. How about you?
So I just wanted to share a
couple examples of initiatives
that I've been a part of that.
I feel really did help boost the signal.
Each work being done and I just guess
with stress that boosting these signals
needs to happen through various channels.
And probably does need to be
accomplished through more than one
method is I think Chelsea and Doug have.
And explained very well.
So a few examples would be hosting
showcase of the research or course work
that's been accomplished on campus.
And then organizing donor events
which helped to highlight activity
to alumni and administration.
And then finally organizing DH
focused workshops and this type of
programming has a twofold purpose.
But first it shows what can be
accomplished with digital projects.
And 2nd it demonstrates the research
underway on campus by incorporating a
wide variety of campus stakeholders
from students and.
Doctor faculty administrators and alumni.
These type of events help foster new
collaborations while at the same time,
drawing attention.
Of funding sources in administration,
so for schools without dedicated
infrastructure like of each program
or deep center building a network
of knowledge is imperative.
Right these networks can grow
through these sorts of outreach
efforts like workshops.
Um.
And this type of outreach that helps to
foster connections between the librarian,
faculty, making libraries that point
person for help with digital initiatives.
You don't have to be an expert in
every type of DH practice or tool,
but showcase your strings.
And this can be accomplished through
common outreach at the project
that I've been involved with but
involved into kind of speak to
more of a mission statement.
Tend to have a an element of diversity
to them right so using digital
technology to tell alternate histories.
Really ties in directly with the
mission of the University as I'm sure
it is also the case on other campuses.
And so highlighting projects and
work being done that further.
The universities mission will really
draw attention from administrative body.
OK great um.
So now let's talk a little bit about
the library's role about half 51%
of respondents say that supporting
Digital Humanities has resulted in
bringing new students into use library.
Which is great and 71% say that
digital humanities has increased
students excitement about doing
research which is even better?
And 80% say digital humanities practices
have increased usage of archives
databases an other resources, but 31%.
Almost 1/3 say that their focus on digital
Humanities has increased the difficulty
for students to settle on research topics.
So my question for you is how do
we enable the former all the good
things they're bringing students?
Library into digital humanities use.
But I hope that the latter how can libraries
help explain uses and applications of
digital humanities and fire students
curiosity up without giving them?
Too much info at 2 fast,
especially for students say who are first
generation students or less tech proficient.
So let me ask you Chelsea.
So, in my experience a lot of times
faculty are interested in trying out
assignments with the DH inflection
because they're curious themselves about
a particular DH tool or methodology.
Because they don't have that,
like deep familiarity with using that
tool to pose research questions.
Anne it can be hard for them to
recognize how much. Is too much?
So we were working with faculty we
start by asking them to really give
some thought into articulate what they
think students are going to learn.
By mastering that method or
by practicing that method,
we advocate for scaffolding.
To empower students to really
kind of diploid the methods.
We counsel faculty to be really
deliberate in designing the pacing.
We offer a feedback on assignment
and syllabus design.
We emphasize that the faculty member
should in fact do the assignment.
They are creating themselves
so that they understand what
they're asking of their students.
And we encourage opportunities for
students to be able to present their
work in progress and receive critique
from their peers and from there.
Faculty member we encourage opportunities
for revision and also for reflection.
I don't have time to go into a lot of
detail but in response to this question.
I wanted to give.
A shout out to one of my my favorite.
Scholarly books,
which is called brace rhetoric and
technology searching for higher ground,
it's by Adam Banks and it comes from the
discipline of rhetoric and composition.
Banks breaks access and took 5
types of access so material access
you have access to computers.
Show software to the Internet
functional access do you know how to?
Use the tools experiential access to you.
Are you connected enough with the
technologies to use them critical access.
Understanding benefits and
problems of those technologies,
but most importantly, transformative access.
So when the individuals are
community members are.
Able to tell their stories
in their own terms,
and actually intervene and
those technological systems,
so in thinking about scaffolding.
I like to think about how we
can design learning experiences,
so that students gain access along the all.
Force. Specific ones of those, 5 dimensions.
What a great resource?
On Monday.
Sure, so rather than a student quote
Unquote settling on a research topic.
I think it's imperative to
keep that research question.
At the forefront an use technology as a
secondary tool to support that question
so that technology should support and
complements that pedagogical objectives
rather than being the objective itself.
As you can see from this slide.
There are a lot of tools available,
but understanding the scope of.
Any given project and the pedagogical
or research questions that they are
attempting to address our teacher,
introducing and advising on the
right tool and method.
To a student or even a DH
curious faculty member.
It takes a lot of work to home in on the
right set of tools for any given project.
And for those knew to using digital methods
to support or present their arguments.
This array of available tools
can be overwhelming.
The users really do need to focus on
their core research questions and allow
those questions to dictate the methods
that would best support their work.
And maybe you also are newer to
digital Humanities in DH work.
If that's the case.
I highly recommend checking out,
Miriam Posner's.
How how did they make that blog post
from 2013 in her coat she breaks
down different types of DH projects?
To show you what the project is,
is what skills you need to know to
accomplish something similar yourself.
And finally she get some tips
on how you could get started.
So if you're newer I would
recommend checking that out.
OK,
more good stuff and uh?
What do you have for us?
So yells digital Humanities lab
gets a number of undergraduate
students who have heard about digital
humanities and are interested.
And graduate students who have no
prior exposure to digital humanities,
but who are keen to quote
ride the wave of DH.
Some of them put it people
recognize that DH is very in
Vogue right now and so a lot of.
Beginners their
finger in your lab.
And so when these newcomers to
digital Humanities research come
into the lab we share with them.
This project road map that
you're looking at here.
And what this is,
is an infographic that covers all
of the steps from the initial ID
Asia NAND conception of a project.
Through the data acquisition step
through the data preparation and
cleaning on to the analysis statistical
or computational and then on to the.
Display layer some kind of
visualization or you know web exhibit.
Um.
And so we share this with researchers
to help them get a sense of the sort of
Macro Scopic picture of a DH project.
And so they have a road map that
they can follow as they're going
through each step along the way.
OK, that's fantastic, Uhm Alright, great,
so let's also talk about um assessment.
And and Different keys to success now
on a scale from 1 to 1019% of the
respondents rated the effectiveness of
the library's digital Humanities Program,
or services on the extremely affective side.
189 or 10 a quarter of them rated their
libraries efforts as a one two or 3,
which is not very effective at all,
so clearly.
There's I'm really large middle
ground here where digital Humanities
is supported an adopted but the
end results aren't being seen.
Or or not being a successful.
Do you think that's a lot of actual
effectiveness or is that a gap in
assessment and how can we bridge that gap
so I'd like to go to Doug for that one?
So one of the ways yells digital
Humanities lab has been trying to make
projects more successful is by changing.
And by reducing the timeline of projects.
Originally the lab supported two
one year long postdoc members
who would come into the lab,
they would conceive of some digital project.
They wanted to build.
And over the course of their one
year long tenure in the lab we
would build that project for them.
These were massive big baggy projects
that took a long time to execute
had very complicated interfaces.
I mean?
What we started to realize was that
Despite that amount of effort involved
in the production of these projects.
The success or failure of any given
project was kind of a function
of how interesting the original
research question was.
And or how voluminous the data that that
we were using to answer that question was.
So we have since moved on
to a much nimbler timeline,
we now execute not on one year long projects.
Put on one week long projects so if
a faculty member or graduate student
or undergrad wants support from.
DH lab,
they fill out what's called a lean
canvas and Dellin canvas is basically
a high level overview of their project.
There there chief goals.
We work with them to help winnow
those goals down to something
that's executable within one week,
so this has to be.
Very narrowly defined scope and then
we execute on that project and we you
know send the results onto the researcher.
But what we found is that by drastically
dilating the timeline of these
projects were able to execute on many,
many more projects.
In the year,
ideally 50 some odd over the course of
the year and you know because of this.
Rise and supply we have greater odds
of having more successful projects.
So my advice would be to try and.
Drastically reduced the scope of
any given project to its absolute
minimal core and start there and
if that project get successful.
Add one other week of iteration
on later but to start with an
initial core concept and deliver
as quickly as possible.
OK, terrific wanting what do you think?
So I don't think it's necessarily
a lack of Affectedness.
For many of these projects.
I think that it.
Is a gap in assessment that's the main
issue because DH projects and classroom work?
Is interdisciplinary at its heart?
More traditional Department or administrative
bodies can have a difficult time,
assessing their implementation
an even successful projects.
It may not look at.
Taxi in some of the more polished multiyear
well funded collaborative project.
And here is where I think it's
important to call out the difference
between big DH and little DH.
I was fortunate to be given a sneak
peek into a forthcoming publication,
where the Co authors discuss
their small scale project work.
And make this differentiation
between big DH and little DH.
And this quote from mark sample that's on
the screen opens their article and still
rings true 10 years after publication.
And this idea of big DH versus little
DH has been addressed in conference
proceedings as well at the 20.
17 DH conference rhythm and Edwards gave
a talk titled Micro DH Digital humanity,
but scale on the efforts at Salem State.
So how do you overcome this gap in
assessment I would recommend again these
projects showcases that allow for?
Uh for participants to express
their goals for their projects and
overcome hardly express' the goals
and the outcomes of these projects.
And that will help less versed
folks in evaluating digital projects
understand the scope and the work and
scholarship that's being accomplished.
And these projects,
but I would also take a step back
and say that DH projects and people
working in the digital humanities.
Need to be given the space to fail.
Not all projects will be successful,
but being able to assess.
Learning outcomes from unsuccessful projects.
Are important even if a project?
Doesn't get off the ground?
You often learn as much if not
more from your failures as you
do from project successes.
So these failures inform the
projects that you attempt next and
help you succeed because of the
skills and the knowledge that you
gain from less fruitful pursuits.
A good advice and trusting
what do you have for us?
So I would say that typically the
library assessment mechanisms.
We have in place,
the artist signed to assess.
Breaths so things like wrestling
services and information literacy,
literacy, instruction,
we're good at saying,
You know our efforts reached.
45% of 1st year students,
but Some forms of TH engagement,
they're not about Brett there about depth and
so I think the really good example of this,
I'm going to quote Micah.
Vandergrift.
Who wrote to the digital library
Federation digital scholarship email?
List about digital scholarship and
digital humanities assessment?
Michael Rd I could say that we did 63
consultations on scholarly communication
topics in one semester true.
But I'd rather talk about how
we recruited to undergraduate
research assistance to work on
a yearlong project researching.
Open educational resource readiness
at Florida State.
So I think we have work to do
to figure out how to assess the
success of deep engagement.
With a smaller subset of all
our library users.
Whether that deep engagement is
supervising students workers doing DH
work participating in research projects.
Offering programming like workshops or
symposiums or embedding and courses.
Great. So let's let's talk a
little bit about collaboration.
There's still fairly low levels of
collaboration within Digital Humanities.
Only 1/3 of people maybe we're talking
about uhm having extremely collaborative
efforts and 40% of librarians were.
Unaware whether there was
interdepartmental collaboration
using digital humanities at all,
so how can we help boost the signals.
Communicate through partners with the
library is a valuable collaborator happen.
We put forward ideas for those collaborations
an what are some common barriers?
And how do we help to lower them?
Wendy.
So, just as I was talking about
big DH versus little DH I think
the support and collaboration from
the library can be thought of.
In Micro and macro terms.
So librarians skills that complement
and enhance digital projects.
At schools where DH programs and
projects are beginning to bug.
You know when its faculty are
embracing the methods that have no
formal support structure to rely on.
They can lean on library staff
to help with discrete topics.
The digital literacy skills librarians
can impart are fundamental to the success.
Digital scholarship for research
and teaching.
And this discussion this could be
a discussion on metadata standard
beta set development data wrangling
presentation of projects.
I think digital exhibits for example.
It was long term project sustainability.
At schools are building capacity
for DH at an institutional level,
though a different framework should
be considered I recommend the.
White paper that you see on
screen here for building capacity
for digital humanities,
where they discussed that campus.
Infrastructure should look to the
library that partner that contribute
skills rather than a service provider.
OK great. And let's. Moving.
So, in terms of collaboration at Yale.
You know, I was kind of curious to see what
our distribution of patrons looks like and.
You have a little snapshot here.
These are the kinds of researchers who
come into the DH lab seeking support.
Of one kind or another,
this is over the last 3 years,
but I'd say more generally
what we've learned.
Cross departmentally collaboration
can be very, very productive and,
if there's any way that you can facilitate
that kind of cross departmental.
Collaboration at your research institutions
at highly encourage it in particular,
we have other units on campus that act.
Like the DH lab, they provide
consultation services for researchers.
But while the DH lab focuses on the
humanities, we have another Institute
that focuses on the social Sciences.
In still another for the hard Sciences
and the high performance computing.
But in some cases,
those other units will refer.
Non humanities,
researchers to the DH lab because
they think that we can learn something
in the patron can learn something.
So, in particular,
we had a particle physicist who
wanted to use machine learning
to generate new dance sequences.
She falls in the physics Department,
she was doing high performance computing.
But there was this artistic component
to her research and so ultimately,
she was referred to the DH lab.
And over the course of several months,
we internally got to learn quite a bit
about building custom neural networks.
And solving really advanced statistical
problems generative statistical
problems by pursuing this research
with this with this graduate student.
And ultimately,
we gotta publication out of this work.
It's an archive now and you know
using variational autoencoders
to generate dance sequences.
Which is just a really cool application
of statistical computational
digital Humanities research outside
of the core disciplines that DH
is usually concerned with.
So I would say when available promote
cross Department in collaboration.
OK, that's really neat and. Traffic.
So, in response to this question,
I wanted to talk about like.
That we, we show people, our expertise
by week by modeling our expertise.
So one manipulative, but I was
involved in at my previous institution,
Boston College was to host a
digital scholarship. Incubator.
And touch were interested in
pursuing this idea as well.
And the idea is to create cohort
days learning opportunities.
Participants would be grad students or
faculty with an interest in developing
additional scholarship project.
Or perhaps incorporating a digital
scholarship project into their course.
The incubator would have numerous
seminars style discussions
over the course of a semester.
The sessions with both introduced
digital humanities methods and.
Genres of digital humanities projects.
As well as provide scaffolding for
developing a project plan so for us,
the outcomes are that participants
would be able to.
Create a fully realized project plan,
you know, maybe using like.
In some materials and fired
by yells lean canvas.
But also the outcomes for them
would be that they would be standing
at the front of the line when
it comes to seeking support.
From the library's Digital
Scholarship Department.
And then I think the outcomes for us
would include making our expertise more
visible for new audiences and really.
Producing collaboration ready full
fledged as it were Digital Humanists.
OK, great, so last question.
Let's talk vendors only twenty one
percent of libraries have used
a commercial vendor to support.
Digital nation projects
related to digital humanities?
How can vendors provide
institutions with deeper support
of digital humanities initiatives?
And enable stronger stronger collaborative
efforts between stakeholders. Doug.
So I don't know that the onus is
on vendors to create relationships
between vendors and institutions.
I'm actually going to.
Take the position that I think institutions
academic institutions could do a lot
to create relationships with vendors.
Some in particular,
I think that there are some really
exciting projects out there that
are creating really new innovative
ways to partner with vendors.
So Laura Mendell's group at Texas
A&M has created what they called
the early modern OCR project.
E map he MLP and that project what
they're doing is they're building
custom interfaces and building
machine learning workflows behind.
Are the scenes in order to take
18th century collections on line a
really rich data set vented by GAIL?
And to improve the OCR quality
for that data set.
This is an 18th century data set so
typical optical character recognition.
Is a little difficult on the old typefaces
the long asss obscur characters etc?
So what they're doing?
They're partnering with GAIL there
cleaning up the data they're sending it.
Back to Galen that's producing a
better product for end consumers,
like ourselves.
So I think there's
opportunity to get creative,
and to propose new kinds of relationships
with vendors coming out of universities.
At the same time I think we can continue to.
Push the boundaries of what's being done
methodologically in the digital humanities,
so I hope I won't appear to be Tooting.
My own horn,
too much.
But this is an example for my dissertation.
Which used 18th century collections
online data in order to study the
again the ways that Copyright
law influenced the bookmark it.
So what I was looking at was the
rise of Fair use law in the 18th
century and I wanted to know does.
The enactment of Fair use law
sort of incentivize artists to
start plagiarizing and creating
derivative works from other artists.
And by using some image matching
algorithms that I put together.
I was able to find this you know repeated
imagery of this particular kangaroo.
For example,
there are many,
many thousands of examples of this,
but you can see this instant
this image of the kangaroo.
Reappear sort of circulates
throughout 18th century literature
in part by virtue of the fact that
these practices were now legalized.
That's all to say image processing.
As such as not a core component
of vendor driven DH products yet.
But I think by continuing to push
the boundaries of the methodological
investigations were pursuing we
can continue to help.
Vendors anticipate new ways that
they can leverage their data and
create affordances for end users.
OK, wonderful what do you what would you
like to say from your publisher perspective?
So I think my position is pretty
unique for a publisher GAIL has 2
digital humanity specialists on stack
as well as a DH pedagogy specialist.
And we're fortunate to
work directly with users.
I was brought on to team about 2,
1/2 years ago to help develop and
support Gales text mining platform.
Called the Digital Scholar Lab.
And the DH specialist myself in
my my colleagues there attached.
Lee we act as a conduit between the
team at GAIL including our developers.
And our end users so we work closely
with libraries to promote and facilitate
lab used by staff faculty and students.
And these relationships that were
building are yielding from really
rich collaboration with digital
project work and digital digital
scholarship support on campus across.
North America and globally.
OK, Super trusted you do you
have anything you want to add?
I'll weigh in super super quickly and
say that I appreciate the framing of
the question which centers libraries.
And I think one way of centering
libraries is centering the content
and making the content easily
accessible for computational use.
And I just wanted to give a shout
out to the M LS and melon funded
collections as data project,
which I think has some really great really.
Pacific suggestions for next steps for.
Add collections as data,
an I think their primary audience
was libraries as institutions,
but I think that vendors would do well to.
Really take a close look at
those recommendations as well,
and just one quick example.
From the collections as data 50 things
you can do to get started resource.
They recommend create an inventory of full
text collections managed by your institution.
Document write status license status
discover ability and download ability.
And ask the question are we
offering optimal access for
computational use of the full text.
Cal can we make it better.
So those are some suggested
next steps for vendors and
supporting collaborative DH work.
OK,
wonderful well.
Thank you all
we have very little bit of
time left for questions.
I just also wanted to
note that people should.
Take a look in the group chat and
see if some of your questions are
answered in terms of links to resources.
That you had asked about because
people are adding those in an we
will also try to answer some of
your questions via email or chat.
Get them I did want to look at one
question from Hillary Richardson,
who asked for libraries or
courses the showcase projects.
Is there a positive way that we
could discuss or express' failure?
I think that's a great question?
Um so who would like to take that first.
This is Chelsea I'll way and briefly.
I also loved this question.
I think for me one of my touch tones
would be to look to rhetoric and
composition as a discipline and writing
pedagogy as a practice which we can.
Ann. Use as a touchdown in our.
Digital Humanities Pedagogy
practice or research practice.
And. Bread crumbs would say
that it's all about the process.
It's more about the process
than about the product.
So I think if you can make
visible the process that.
Underpins your final product
and how that process was.
You know valuable I think that's also
something that's like very much being
discussed in the Sciences right.
But it's not just about the positive result,
we should also value.
The negative result,
so those I think are 2 possible
touchstones for talking about that
question of discussing failure.
You know with different with
different audiences.
OK,
Super talk what do you think about that?
Well, I have 2 thoughts the 1st is that
the things that look like failure to us.
I don't think. Indeed, our failure,
you know, Thomas Edison when he was
trying to invent the light bulb.
Famously tried apparently
10,000 different prototypes.
None of which worked and when asked you
know are you frustrated with the outcomes.
He said no in fact, I haven't failed at all,
I've really found 10,000
prototypes that don't work.
I think that is something similar
can be said for DH projects.
It's difficult to say what
constitutes a failure because.
You know each given project will
help motivate the next one.
But also I'd say,
I don't know that we know what
success is you know in the Sciences
and increasingly in the humanities.
What was once received wisdom?
What was once taken to be a truth and a
successful you know discovery made by?
Research is are increasingly being
challenged by ongoing research so you
know the Humanities research in the
humanities are now starting to test.
Earlier hypothesis that were
received as dogma as received wisdom
and we're discovering that a lot
of the things we've been taught.
About literary history for instance,
were wrong,
So what seemed to be a success
was indeed a failure.
So I don't think we should be.
Quick to label a given DH project
as either a failure or a success.
I think you know as Walt Whitman
says all goes on words and outwards.
Nothing collapses.
OK, great. Thank you,
it would just not at a time,
but I'd like to talk about 1 question.
That was asked in the group chat
and let me just find it uhm.
Somebody asked about um trends do you see
trends between big digital Humanities,
an little digital humanities
through various departments?
Do you think certain department's are using
digital humanities more so than others?
I think it went from? For Wendy.
Sure, thanks for the question Tim
I don't think that this division is
necessarily departmentally I think it does.
Have something to do with available
support and resources on campus,
so institutions that are just
beginning to support digital Humanities
project don't necessarily have.
The infrastructure in place to support
maybe some of these larger projects and
so you shouldn't feel discouraged from.
Delving into digital Humanities
Pedagogy practices,
or research just set expectations.
I think is is the takeaway,
but In addition to that.
Even uh campuses that have.
Infrastructure and plays a well
established digital humanities programs.
Some of these big DH projects are
huge undertaking it's multi year.
It's multi departmental it,
it takes a lot of time.
You could put a project like this together,
so that's not necessarily the the type of
project that everybody wants to undertake.
And you shouldn't be discouraged from
from from creating small DH if it's
in reference to a class for example,
it might just be a one off.
So I don't think it's
necessarily departmentally,
but has to do with your goals your
research goals in your project goals.
OK, wonderful. Thank you so much.
We are out of time now,
I would like to thank everyone who attended
today I'd like to think I panelists.
This webcast will be archived and will
send you an email to let you know
when it's available, which is usually.
In about 24 hours,
you can also find this webcast.
Another archived an upcoming web casts
in the events and PND section at.
Libraryjournal.com and so that's it.
We will try to get to whatever questions.
We were not able to answer which I see,
there were a bunch of AM.
Thank you all so much for being so,
so inquisitive and interested in the
subject and thank you for being here.
I appreciate it a lot.