#s3c

Mackenzie Brooks, Brandon Walsh, and Abdurrafey Khan (Washington and Lee University)

Whether it is a blog post, a journal article, a Hypothes.is comment, or a README.md file, writing is a fundamental digital humanities and digital scholarship activity. We encourage undergraduates to pursue DH to improve their technology and research skills, but often neglect to include writing in the list of transferable skills. Encouraging students to write in public asks them to think about themselves as contributors to ongoing conversations about the critical use of technology. Far from presenting public writing as a utopian ideal, by discussing copyright and licensing, professional identities, and more with our students, we can help them better understand the risks and affordances of the work we ask them to do. In this presentation, we will share several methods used in our DH program to help students build the skills necessary to publish writing on the Web.

Mackenzie Brooks is Assistant Professor and Digital Humanities Librarian at Washington and Lee University. Prior to her current position, she worked as Metadata Librarian at W&L and at the Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Library. As a member of the Digital Humanities Action Team, she advises faculty and students on best practices for metadata standards in digital humanities projects. Additionally, she teaches undergraduate courses on scholarly text encoding and digital humanities.

Brandon Walsh is Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in English at the Washington and Lee University Library. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia.

Abdurrafey Khan is a student at Washington and Lee University.

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Anne Ricculli (Drew University)

In the spring of 2016, Drew University convened a Graduate Student Digital Advisory Committee tasked with identifying digital skills required by modern graduate students to support humanities research, writing, and presentations. Faced with uncertain job markets, Drew takes seriously the imperative to prepare graduate students for careers both within the academy and beyond these institutional boundaries. With the dual mission of “putting the humanities to work,” and addressing “the urgent challenges of our time with rigorous, independent, and imaginative thought,” the Committee embarked on a Podcasting project.

Podcasting is a key communication method and a critical tool for today’s historians and public intellectuals. This project seeks to cultivate in graduate students an attitude towards scholarship that incorporates the public value of what we do.

This presentation will discuss this work in-progress, from inception to current status, with the challenges, pitfalls, and triumphs inherent in this digital collaboration. Consistent with the conference theme of “Negotiating Borders,” we argue that the process of identifying digital initiatives that minimize the boundary between theory and practice enhances graduate student education, providing opportunities to implement and assess effective public engagement.

Anne Ricculli is a Ph.D. candidate at Drew University with an MA in Museum Studies (NYU). Her dissertation digitally searches Victorian-era periodicals, tracing portrayals of natural history. Currently student archivist at Drew’s Special Collections and University Archives, Anne processing collections and contributes to digitization projects. Previously, she trained users in database software and designed non-profit and for-profit websites. Anne is a weekly contributor to @DrewUSpecColl, and blogged for Morristown National Historical Park Museum and Library.

Joseph Koivisto (University of Maryland)

Project-based learning, tool-oriented workshops, and graduate assistantships are frequently upheld as a practical approach to integrating LIS graduate students in digital humanities research, but to what degree do these practices prepare students for critical DH engagement? Reflecting on the recent completion of graduate coursework at the Catholic University of America’s MSLIS program, this presentation will provide a personal narrative of library professional education specifically tailored to address areas relevant to the digital humanities: cultural heritage preservation and digital libraries systems and management. By additionally addressing participation in early-stage digital humanities initiatives, the presentation will critically evaluate the relevance of digitally-oriented coursework to actual readiness to support interdisciplinary research in team-based settings. Lastly, the presentation will provide a critical assessment of labor inherent in student participation in project-based learning, crowdsourcing, and research models that integrate graduate labor – paid or otherwise – into the production of digital scholarly work.

Joseph Koivisto is a systems librarian at the University of Maryland, servicing the USMAI consortium institutions. He received his B.A. in English in 2009 (U. of Scranton) and an MSLIS in 2014 (CUA). His research focuses on the application of library science practices in DH settings, controlled vocabulary & authority development, and cultural heritage management. He was worked with the DC Public Libraries, the Catholic University of America, and the Library of Congress.