Research & Projects (Page 86)

The July 2012 issue of College & Research Libraries includes “A Study of Faculty Data Curation Behaviors and Attitudes at a Teaching-Centered University” by Jeanine Marie Scaramozzino, Marisa L. Ramírez, and Karen J. McGaughey. The article focuses on the current status, needs, and concerns of science faculty, but the methodology in terms of the concerns addressed and the results are applicable for all fields to varying degrees. It’s a very useful article for any concerned with their own data management and those concerned with supporting institutional and disciplinary concerns in regards to data management.Read More →

Transitioning to a Digital World: Art History, Its Research Centers, and Digital Scholarship by Diane Zorich provides an excellent overview of digital art history in relation to overall art history research, and especially the excellence and expertise of art history research centers and how to best support digital art history within art history research centers. The report notes throughout that collaboration is key (especially with Digital Humanities Centers, and with libraries and others), and that leveraging existing digital library style systems with existing infrastructure also holds great promise. This publication is an excellent source for those working in art history, digital art history, humanities centers, digitalRead More →

Cameron Blevins has a very interesting posting about a way of “middle reading.” He’s collaboratively developed programming to support developing ImageGrid which is a grid overlay on historical documents (like newspapers) where the regions of interest can be identified to aid in creating context for the text from those sections. The program tries to tackle one of the fundamental problem facing many digital humanists who analyze text: the gap between manual “close reading” and computational “distant reading.” In my case, I was trying to study the geography within a large corpus of nineteenth-century Texas newspapers. First I wrote Python scripts to extract place-names from the papers and calculateRead More →

I received the message below in an email and am sharing as the text requests because having more information on humanities graduate programs would benefit all interested in both traditional and non-traditional career paths. Please share widely! Dear Colleague, Many thanks for contributing to the database of individuals on alternative academic career paths! As you know, the database is part of a suite a of activities related to graduate education reform that the the Scholarly Communication Institute is running this year with support from the Mellon Foundation: http://uvasci.org/current-work/ The two surveys described below are meant to help us move from anecdote to data in conversations about humanitiesRead More →

Exciting news from Penn State (copied below for ease, original here): The Humanities in a Digital Age at Penn State The Humanities in a Digital Age (HDA) initiative is a collaborative endeavor between the College of the Liberal Arts and the University Libraries at the Pennsylvania State University to enrich and promote rigorous cross-disciplinary humanities scholarship and research at a time when writing, reading, teaching, and research are being transformed by digital technologies. The HDA initiative will enhance the research and public profiles of humanities faculty in the College and the University Libraries, open new opportunities for high caliber graduate placements in the humanities, andRead More →

The text below is from the email list for “OCLC Research Library Partnership Weekly Updates: 6 July 2012.” OCLC Research to Host “Wikipedia and Libraries: What’s the Connection?” Webinar on 31 July at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET (UTC 18:00) All are welcome to attend this free webinar with OCLC Research Wikipedian in Residence Max Klein to learn what’s happened between Wikipedia and libraries in the past and what it means for the future. In addition, Max Klein will explain the connection between Wikipedia and libraries, discuss the variety of Wikipedia in Residence positions and the opportunities for libraries working with Wikipedia, as well asRead More →

The CFP for the second issue of Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology is for an issue on Feminist Game Studies. The Ada journal is hosted on the Fembot Collective site, with Fembot: …a scholarly collaboration promoting research on gender, media, and technology. We envision a new model for open access, multimodal publishing that will provide a prototype for collaborative research, publication, and pedagogy in the humanities and social sciences. The site is extremely rich with the Ada journal and many other resources, including a section for tenure and promotion policies, which currently links to two resources: University of Oregon Arts & Administration, Research and/or Creative WorkRead More →

The DH Curation Guide is “a community resource guide to data curation in the digital humanities.” The DH Curation Guide: offers concise, expert introductions to key topics, including annotated links to important standards, articles, projects, and other resources. […] Data curation is an emerging problem for the humanities as both data and analytical practices become increasingly digital. Research groups working with cultural content as well as libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions are all in need of new expertise. This Guide is a first step to understanding the essentials of data curation for the humanities. The expert-written introductions to key topics include links to important standards,Read More →

The Wikipedian in Residence concept seems like a great idea given these core characteristics (text below from here): Serves as a liaison between the organization and the Wikimedia community to promote a mutually beneficial cooperation. Promotes understanding of Wikimedia among staff at the organization through workshops and events. Works with organizational staff to digitize, compile, and organize resources that can be shared with the Wikipedia community. Facilitates the improvement of content by the Wikipedia community, rather than directly editing articles as a core goal. Coordinates events, such as Hack-a-Thons, Edit-a-Thons, or Backstage Passes, that bring Wikipedians on-site to work with staff on content creation and improvement. Avoids Conflict of Interest by not editing articlesRead More →

The Dryad Business Plan and Sustainability document (announcement and business plan) is very well done and impressively succinct while clearly explaining: Mission alignment and value proposition Supports a clear need through a shared resource Mutual benefit, so all have reason to contribute content and funding/support Diversified funding strategy with three main funding sources Deposit fees Membership fees (expected to be $1,000 per member, which is very modest) Funding from grants and donors (for research, development, and new initiatives) and for an endowment campaign  Read More →