Category: higher ed

works in progress at the Scholars’ Lab

Posted on by Bethany Nowviskie

Just a quick post to announce a new look, a revitalized blog, and lots of angle brackets at http://scholarslab.org, a site where we’ll trace works in progress at the Scholars’ Lab in the University of Virginia Library. The Scholars’ Lab is the colloquial name of the library department I direct, “Digital Research and Scholarship,” and also the name of the open lab, classroom, common room, and collaborative workspaces we manage. We’ll keep up our real home page, but scholarslab.org will be home to musings and project reports by faculty, staff, visiting scholars, and Grad Fellows affiliated with the SLab. It’s also a place where we’ll launch test versions of the software and websites we’re working on — so be sure to subscribe to our feed. And many thanks to Wayne Graham, head of Digital Research and Scholarship R&D, and Joe Gilbert, Head of the SLab (not “on the SLab”), for their leadership in this new venture!

Check out the site to see what’s going on with Omeka plugins (including Fedora and Solr), EAD, poetic prosody, web services for maps and GIS, text mining for metaphor, TEI on Rails, Xforms, Colonial-era social networks, and more. There’s also a section for “alumni projects,” that have graduated from incubation at the Scholar’s Lab, including one recently featured in the Chronicle.

collaborative work: links & kinks

Posted on by Bethany Nowviskie

This winter, I’ll join an MLA conference panel sponsored by the discussion group on Computer Studies in Language and Literature.  I’m among friends! and am looking forward to talking with Laura Mandell, Jason B. Jones, Timothy Powell, Jason Rhody, and our moderator, Tanya Clement.  Our panel is called “Links and Kinks in the Chain: Collaboration in the Digital Humanities.”  Here’s what I’ve offered for my bit:

New modes of interdisciplinary, tech-enabled research and production drive us to collaborate across an array of boundaries in the digital humanities.  It is no longer unusual for a scholar to lead a tight-knit, interdepartmental research group or function as part of an ad-hoc team that may include faculty colleagues, graduate students, designers, programmers, systems administrators, and librarians or other instructional technology and information specialists.  This is a good thing, and (in my experience) the most productive and interesting collaborations are grounded in a kind of professional and intellectual egalitarianism, or openness to the contributions of all team members.  But not all of the social boundaries inherent in digital humanities project-work can or should be ignored.  Continue reading “collaborative work: links & kinks”

open call: NEH/Scholars’ Lab GIS institute

Posted on by Bethany Nowviskie

This is a follow-up to my previous post, to say that the Scholars’ Lab has now issued an open call for applicants to its NEH-funded Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship. We’ll run three tracks of the Institute, with the first two (Stewardship and Software) happening concurrently this year, from November 15th to 18th (which happens to be GIS Day). The third track (Scholarship) will be held May 25th-28th, 2010. NEH will generously cover travel, lodging, and working meals for ten attendees in each of the first two tracks and twenty attendees in the third track. We’ve even built in a special funding for graduate student participants in track 3.

Because one goal of the Institute is to build the capacity of participating institutions (from the policy-and-collections-building side to the infrastructure-and-interfaces side to some serious scholars-bootstrapping-each-other goodness!), we encourage you to collaborate with your colleagues in IT, the library, your local (digital?) humanities center, and interested academic departments. We’ll be giving careful attention to applications from institutional “teams” who can be represented in each track — but individual applicants are encouraged, too.

The deadline for consideration for tracks 1 and 2 is September 1st. Track 3’s deadline is the 1st of December. Read all about the Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship, check out our amazing faculty, and apply at our website.

graceful degradation

Posted on by Bethany Nowviskie

Graceful Degradation: Managing Digital Humanities Projects in Times of Transition and Decline

First announced at the Digital Humanities 2009 conference, the “Graceful Degradation” survey is now open at:

http://graceful-degradation.questionpro.com/

This is a survey of the digital humanities community — broadly conceived — on project management in times of transition and decline, and what we see as the causes and outcomes of those times. We invite participation by anyone who has worked on a digital project in or related to the humanities.

Continue reading “graceful degradation”

teaching carnival 3.6

Posted on by Bethany Nowviskie

Teaching Carnival 3.6: End of Term

The roustabouts are hoisting the tents. There’s a whiff of funnel cake in the air. Step right up! as the latest issue of the Teaching Carnival rolls into town. But first: a definition and a common-sense reminder or two. Finally, a nod to our most recent hosts, Chuck Tryon and David Parry, and also to fellow 3.6 carny Jeremy Boggs of Clioweb.

Now, new and notable posts in higher ed:

Continue reading “teaching carnival 3.6”