In Lee Bessette’s article on the digital humanities, Lee states: I guess the first things that I am trying to build are bridges. Bridges between different humanities disciplines (translation, comparative literature) and bring them into digital humanities, at least in a more visible way. Looking at Mark Sample’s list of DH sessions at MLA 12, I was struck at how those working in a language other than English were off on their own panels, and probably largely attended not by those in DH but those who also worked in that language area. I think, more generally, DH could do more to bridge linguistic divides. AtRead More →

University of Florida Event on October 4, 2011, 6pm: Jane McGonigal: Author and world-renowned gaming expert Jane McGonigal, PhD, is an expert on alternate reality games and a renowned game developer. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. She has appeared at TED, the New Yorker, and the Web 2.0 summit, among others. Business Week has named her “one of the top 10 innovators to watch.” Watch Jane McGonigal on the Colbert Report. Text above from the Bob Graham Center for Public Service and available directly from theRead More →

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) has a lesson plan competition to develop lesson plans and educational resources that connect the wonderful primary resources in dLOC directly to classrooms. Submissions for the lesson plan competition are due April 20, so there’s still time to get submissions in! Full details are on the dLOC website, but some additional information is below for convenience. Teaching US and World History with Caribbean Primary Resources: A Lesson Plan Competition Spring, 2009 Join us in our mission to promote Caribbean studies in K-12 education. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is working with diverse partners to provide free,Read More →

The First Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance has been appointed and CIDE (Data Intensive Cyber Environments group) has joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. These are two recent news releases that show the expanding happenings and possibilities for digital libraries, collections, and collaboration! *** Maura Marx Named First Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance The Internet Archive and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today the appointment of Maura Marx as the first Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance (OCA). A search committee representing OCA member institutions made the appointment after anRead More →

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a posting on Bolivia’s plans to open three universities teaching indigenous languages, including Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani. MJ Hardman from the University of Florida has been researching Aymara, Jaqaru, and Kawki for decades. Her extensive research and teaching materials will help support this and other efforts to protect endangered languages, and many of her earlier materials are even in the process of being digitized for the Jaqi Collection within the University of Florida Digital Collections. It’s always wonderful to hear about how newly digitized materials have been or will be used!Read More →

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has created an online preservation class, “Preservation 101: Preservation Basics for Paper and Media Collections”. “Preservation 101” covers the basics of preservation for small and moderately-sized collections, for the preservation of paper collections and related formats (which includes film and electronic media and glass slides). The course homepage explains “Learn how to identify deteriorated materials, how to properly care for collections, and how to set priorities for preservation.” This is a wonderful service for all libraries, museums, archives, and personal collectors because it advocates for the value of learning about and supporting preservation, while also supporting others in preservation.Read More →

Yahoo recently improved their web search to by adding related terms and other possible searches in a directory-esque structure for general searches. The change means that general searches bring up the other concepts. This is an interesting and useful change because it will likely help people improve their searches and their search abilities by teaching people how the search works (at least in terms of the words-concepts and general hierarchy) and how to think of their terms/topics in order to get the best results. I’m hoping this will be a great way for people to learn how to better search by searching. Because the learningRead More →