Tag Archives: DS team

Get to Know BC’s Digital Scholarship Team: Chelcie Rowell

Chelcie hikes in Pilot Mountain State Park, North Carolina

Trailside on North Carolina’s Pilot Mountain.

This tutorial was written by Chelcie Rowell.

In January I joined Boston College Libraries as Digital Scholarship Librarian and History Liaison. This hybrid positions draws upon both functional and subject expertise. As a functional specialist in digital tools and methods, I co-create with members of the Boston College community as they develop digital projects related to research and teaching. As a subject specialist for history, I build the library’s history collections, consult with history faculty and students on their research, and lead research sessions within history classes. At any moment you may find me acting as project manager, connector, translator, consultant, or coach. I perform many roles because collaborative (digital) research and teaching take many shapes depending upon the aspirations and expertise of team members.

Before coming to BC, I was the Digital Initiatives Librarian at Wake Forest’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library, where I oversaw the digitization of rare and unique materials, as well as working closely with faculty and students on digital projects. At Wake Forest my responsibilities spanned back-of-house and front-of-house. Coming to BC was an opportunity to turn my orientation fully outward, engaging deeply in digital scholarship and pedagogy within the context of a particular discipline.

Outside of work, I walk as often as I can, with or without a destination. For me, walking is an experience of embodied thinking. My most memorable walks have traced human & geological landmarks depicted by Tim Robinson’s deep map of Ireland’s Aran Islands.

Header image: Chelcie Rowell, aerial view of sea cliffs beside Dún Aonghasa, Inis Mór, County Galway. CC BY 4.0.

Get to Know BC’s Digital Scholarship Team: Sarah Melton

I’m the Head of Digital Scholarship at Boston College, but I’m new to the Boston area. I came to BC in September 2016 from Emory University’s Center for Digital Scholarship, where I was the digital projects coordinator. While at Emory, I had the opportunity to work on a number of publicly-engaged digital projects, and I’m thrilled to bring that experience here to BC. My academic background is in public history, and I’m especially interested in how we can make scholarship more accessible to wider audiences.

To that end, I’ve worked on a number of open access, open source, open data, and open educational resource advocacy initiatives. I’m a member of the Open Access Button team, an app to provide instant, legal access to research and data. I have a special interest in open scholarly publishing—if you’re at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute this year, I’ll be offering a free workshop on digital publishing in the humanities!

When I’m not at work, I’m exploring Boston’s cannoli and craft beer scene, herding my two cats away from said cannoli, watching professional wrestling. (Sometimes unsuccessfully, as pictured here.) I’ve also taken up knitting as a way to get through the New England winter and am seriously considering learning the sport of curling.

Header image: Eric Fischer, Locals and Tourists #14: Boston. CC-BY-SA.

Get to Know BC’s Digital Scholarship Team: Anna Kijas

My role at Boston College Libraries is as a Digital Scholarship Librarian, but I also have degrees in piano literature and performance and musicology. I focus on music criticism and reception of marginalized women musicians/composers during the 19th through early 20th centuries. I also explore, write, and present about how we can better understand or analyze musicians lives, repertoire, and reception through the use of digital tools.

Plainte! 1re. élégie, op. 17 | Teresa Carreño (National Library of Spain)

I am naturally curious and enjoy a hands-on approach to learning, which may be why I am drawn to digital humanities and digital scholarship work. This interest grew out of my own research interests in musicology. While researching the career of Teresa Carreño (1853-1917), Venezuelan pianist and composer, I became interested in discovering ways to document her career through the use of open access and open source tools in order to curate and visualize the impact of her musical career. This interest led me to experimenting with a variety of content management systems, GIS applications, text analysis and visualization tools, which you can read about on my blog.

My background in humanities and own work in musicology enables me to bring a practitioner’s perspective to my approach in working on digital scholarship projects or initiatives with faculty, students, and staff at Boston College. I believe that one of the core building blocks in digital scholarship projects is (meta)data and that process is just as important as the final product.

Header image: Map of Carreño’s early concerts between 1862-1865. CC-BY-NC.