Category Archives: Programs

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ARL Digital Scholarship Institute: Part 2

It’s hard to believe that two months have passed since the inaugural Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) Digital Scholarship Institute hosted at Boston College. In the previous post, you can read Sarah Melton’s overview of the goals of the Institute, and takeaways from the keynote by Jennifer Vinopal, Associate Director for Information Technology at The Ohio State University Libraries, and an opening workshop with Alex Gil, Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Columbia University Libraries. The ARL Digital Scholarship Institute was developed by a group of individuals from five institutions brought together by ARL in October 2016 to support one of the primary goals of the ARL Academy  to “foster the development of an agile, diverse and highly-motivated workforce as well as the inspiring leadership necessary to meet present and future challenges.”

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Keyboard Cat by Cassandra Leigh Gotto. CC-BY-NC.

ARL Digital Scholarship Institute

Boston College Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group recently helped organize and facilitate the Association of Research Libraries’ inaugural Digital Scholarship Institute, held from June 5–9 at Boston College’s Connors Center. Over the next few weeks on the blog, we’ll be reflecting on our experiences at the Institute and what we learned about digital scholarship pedagogy.

The Institute’s 28 participants were selected by application and came from libraries across Canada and the US. The program began with a keynote by Jennifer Vinopal and an introduction to digital scholarship workshop with Alex Gil. Over the course of the week, participants learned about major methodologies and topics in digital scholarship, including data visualization, textual analysis, and multimodal publishing.

BC's Chelcie Rowell and Sarah Melton are passionate about collaboration...and lobster.

At the DSI clambake, BC’s Chelcie Rowell and Sarah Melton are passionate about collaboration…and lobster.

The goal of the Institute was not to settle on a definition of digital scholarship. (In fact, we resisted any easy conceptualizations—I’m partial to Gil’s exercise that asked participants to decide which projects “counted” as digital scholarship, demonstrating that the term can be multivalent.) Nor was the intention to run through an exhaustive list of tools that one might use in a project. Rather, we were interested in building a cohort of digital scholarship library practitioners who could evaluate digital methodologies and tools, draw on their existing skillsets, and identify partners for future collaboration. In other words, we wanted to model a culture of digital scholarship, not just host a week of tech-for-tech’s-sake.

Here at Boston College Libraries, our Digital Scholarship Group has taken the precepts to heart. Our upcoming Digital Scholarship Incubator is modeled on principles of community building. We’re excited to incorporate the lessons we learned at the Institute into our programming and plans for this upcoming academic year. We’ll be updating our events page soon with our fall programming—we hope to see you there!

You can learn more about the Institute and see our course materials on the Institute’s GitHub repo.

Cover image: Cassandra Leigh Gotto, Keyboard Cat. CC-BY-NC.

Vincent Perrone, Robin Eggs. Used under a CC-BY-NC license.

Digital Scholarship Incubator

Call for Applications

In the fall of 2017, the Boston College Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group will host a Digital Scholarship Incubator, a seven-week series that aims to introduce major tools, methodologies, and questions in digital scholarship, while also empowering participants to develop a digital scholarship or pedagogy project. We’ll focus on participants’ needs and desired areas of growth in digital scholarship.

  • What is an incubator? An opportunity to develop a digital research or pedagogy project within a cohort of digital scholarship practitioners. Each week we will focus on a different topic. The curriculum includes sessions on text analysis, digital archives and critical editions, data cleanup, and pattern finding.
    • You’ll refine project ideas through planning & peer review.
    • You’ll provide the idea(s), and we’ll provide resources to help develop your idea in a safe space.
  • What’s the time frame? We’ll begin meeting the week of August 28 and wrap up in October.
  • What are the expectations for participants? We ask that participants commit to weekly two-hour meetings for seven weeks, plus some additional work outside of the meeting sessions.

Applications are now closed.

 

Header image: Vincent Perrone, Robin Eggs. Used under a CC-BY-NC license.