On May 8th, students in the graduate Digital Humanities Capstone course will present their semester projects. Their work covers a range of topics and employs numerous methodologies, including text analysis, mapping, data visualization, text encoding, and digital exhibits. Please join us on Zoom to learn more about what they have been up to and some of the many different forms Digital Humanities projects can take.

When: May 8 at 3:00 pm / Where: On Zoom

A great group of BC humanities students have begun working on the Catholic Almanacs project. Ashlyn Stewart is leading them through the process of extracting data through transcription and encoding for what will become a searchable database.

Ashlyn and humanities students meet to collaborate on the Catholic Almanacs project.

Antonio LoPiono and Ashlyn presented at the Greater Boston Digital Research and Pedagogy Symposium on April 12. They spoke about their geospatial mapping instruction for BC undergraduates in the Humanities. The Symposium is an annual city-wide gathering of students, scholars, and practitioners working at the intersection of technology and the humanities.

This semester, the DSG has been busy providing instruction for a range of disciplines, including Classics, English, History, African and African Diaspora Studies, Environmental Studies, and International Studies. One highlight is Lester Carver and Ashlyn Stewart’s instruction for Professor Shannon Jacob’s Music & Social Justice course (AADS 2204). Together, Lester and Ashlyn helped Professor Jacob redesign her midterm and final to be digital projects instead of traditional papers. For the midterm, students worked in groups to “close-read” and annotate songs using the VideoAnt tool. For the final assignment, students will create story maps using KnightLab StoryMaps to explore the music created in conflict zones.

Another highlight is the Graduate DH Capstone course (ENGL8275/HIST8275), which the entire DSG has contributed to teaching. For the first five weeks, students completed a series of exercises to learn new DS concepts and prepare to create their projects. We have enjoyed watching their ideas take shape and look forward to their presentations, where they get to show their work and talk about their process.

This semester, we have continued to work on major research projects, including the Triennial Catalogs database, which we are working on in collaboration with Christiano Casalini and Alessandro Corsi of the Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies. As part of the project, Dave Thomas is helping the IAJS build an advanced web app to facilitate a global network of collaborators entering complex data and visualizing the results immediately. Eventually, users will be able to explore the many diverse communities of Jesuit priests over time.

Julia Garcia, a biology student in her junior year, uses an IR scanner to create a 3D model of a bird.

We are also working with Professor Jeff DaCosta (Biology) to produce a collection of 3D models of birds native to Massachusetts for use in an online repository that will enable students to study them outside of lab contexts. For the project's current phase, undergraduate research assistant Julia Garcia scans specimens using an IR scanner and uploads the resulting models to Sketchfab. 

Finally, our Catholic Almanacs project has begun its pilot phase. For the pilot, we are extracting data from an 1870 Catholic almanac. After we complete these 250 pages, we will extract data from several other almanacs and create a database to search and visualize the data year over year. 

Learn more about digital scholarship and what we are up to from our blog posts. Topics range from birds to our passion for data.

This newly acquired handheld scanner uses infrared light and sensors to map an object’s surface geometry in real time while simultaneously capturing texture data using an RGB sensor. The scanner's handheld nature and fast processing times make it user-friendly and efficient. Beginners can get up to speed quickly and produce complete models within a couple of hours.

While media production isn't Digital Scholarship, we understandably get questions about it. So, we’d like to highlight the O’Neill Library's recent acquisition of cameras (including two Canon DSLRs) and other recording equipment. It’s also helpful to know that O’Neill has a Zoom H4n Pro hand recorder, ideal for oral histories and audio interviews. You can check out the equipment at the 3rd-floor Access Services desk. (See what other technologies are available for loan on the Libraries' website.)

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