Thursday’s THATCamp Schedule

Hello campers!

Below is an outline of tomorrow’s (Thursday, 11/7) THATCamp schedule (bit.ly/1dOkuSz), which will be completed as part of our proposal voting process:

  • 8:15-9:15:     Registration, Breakfast & Voting, Salon A/B, Level 3
  • 9:15-9:30:    Welcome & Introductions, Salon A/B, Level 3
  • 9:30-10:00: Review and Finalize the Schedule
  • 10:00-11:00: Concurrent Session 1
  • 11:00-12:00: Concurrent Session 2
  • 12:00-1:00: Lunch, Tejas, Level 2 (ad-hoc sessions up to attendees)
  • 1:00-2:00: Concurrent Session 3
  • 2:00-2:30: Break
  • 2:30-3:30: Concurrent Session 4
  • 3:30-4:00: Break
  • 4:00-5:00: Wrap-Up, Salon A/B, Level 3

Registration, Breakfast & Voting

Registration should be a quick and painless process.  Make sure to grab your sticky notes when you register since they will be a crucial part of the voting process.  Take your sticky notes and breakfast into Salon A/B, which is where eating, voting, and the beginning sessions will happen.

It is important that you cast your vote by 9:15 am sharp.  To vote, place as many sticky notes as you’d like, up to the maximum given, on the proposal or proposals of interest, which will be taped on to the walls of Salon A/B.  The organizers will promptly tally the votes, and prepare an initial draft of the schedule, populated with sessions, for group review at 9:30 am.

Sessions

We have designated 4, one-hour slots with up to as many as 4 concurrent concurrent sessions.  The number of concurrent sessions will not be known until the schedule is finalized, but we have 4 venues identified for gathering.  On level 3, we can split Salon A/B into two distinct spaces: Salon A and Salon B, and on level 2, informal groupings can set up in the two open spaces in the Courtyard (Courtyard A & B).  The Courtyard spaces are informal so it’s up to the session leader to find and claim a spot.

Google docs have been setup for collaborative note-taking.  While everyone can take notes, it would be helpful to designate an official note taker at the start of the session.

Lunch

Lunch is provided in the Tejas dining space located on level 2 of the conference center from 1:00-2:00 pm.  Campers could use this time to form ad-hoc lunch sessions.  Ad-hoc lunch sessions should be posted to the schedule, blogged and/or tweeted (#thatcamp #dhlib2013) by the session leader.  Campers can also holler or hold up signs.  No matter how it’s done, individual campers are responsible for organizing shop talk or show & tells during lunch.

Wrap Up

At 4:00 pm we will all not leave early, but instead come back to Salon A/B for a super fun wrap up session.  We will use this time to report back on themes that emerge, and help foster ongoing connections and collaboration.  We might also tell some jokes.

 

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Links to Notes

Please post your notes or add them to the following community documents:

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The Co-evolution of Libraries and DH

The emergence of digital humanities from a relatively marginal space in the academy to its recent celebrity has clearly had an impact on libraries. Positions have been created, resources have been reallocated and staff have been re-skilled.

However, it is also true that libraries have shaped the evolution of DH. Some of the best known and longest running projects have been created in partnership with libraries and those projects bear the marks of the librarians who worked on them. While we are always searching for better ways to do it, librarians have insisted that accessibility and sustainability be part of the DH conversation. Librarians have also worked with faculty partners to advocate for Open Access as well as ethical use of materials. This is not to mention the digitized collections, server space and technical expertise that the library often provides.

In this session, I would like to start putting together the history of libraries and DH and remember the projects, people, users and relationships that got us to this point. I would also like to assess what these partnerships have meant; what values have emerged, what traditions have been established and what problems reoccur? Also, what can a look back tell us about the way forward?

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Digital Preservation to overlay a file structure

I am with St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio.  The law library has been using Omeka to build a digital collection.  A critical missing piece of this as a repository platform is that Omeka does not have a preservation layer.

I have the idea that a universal preservation layer can be made to overlay any content management system, by making a program to run check sums on a static file structure.

For any CMS it is possible to find a plug in to modify file structure into a static meaningful file structure.  Daniel Berthereau’s Archive Repertory plug-in modifies the file structure in Omeka, so that files can be stored in meaningful directories and assigned meaningful names (the default is to rename files with a random alpha numeric string and put all in the same directory).  So, technological barriers are low for getting a good file structure, no matter what repository platform or CMS you are using, no matter what repository platform or CMS you are using.

Rather than make a plug in to do digital preservation, it would be possible to code something that lies on top of a static file structure. It looks at the file structure, makes a list of files, runs a check sum for each file and stores that check sum along with the file location, then at a later date reruns the check sums and gives a report of which files have a different check sum (ie. gives a report of which files have changed from bit rot).  This would not be like a plug in, which installs on a specific CMS and only works with that CMS, but instead is something that overlays files on any web server.

By overlaying any set of files on a web server, such a program could do digital preservation independent of repository platform or CMS. This would greatly lower technological barriers to smaller institutions performing digital preservation.

I am interested in talking with anyone who has worked with digital preservation, and would like to meet anyone who knows about coding automated check sum reports.  I understand conceptually how to do this, but want to connect with more experienced coders who are interested in similar software.

Ultimately, I would like to code this alone or, better, with others.

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Talk: Accessibility and our DH Projects

Inspired by Char Booth’s closing keynote presentation, I would like to discuss how we ensure our DH projects are accessible to the widest possible audiences.  Where does the accessibility review happen in your project workflow?  Are your institutions crafting accessibility policies?  If so, how are you educating your staff about the policy? Who are our campus partners when thinking about accessibility issues?  As you can tell, I have more questions than answers, but would love to have a conversation.

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DH and Linked Data

I’d like to explore how digital humanities can incorporate linked data into their projects, using identifiers from ORCID;, as well as projects like DBpedia, GeoNames, and FOAF. We should also discuss library-centric projects like VIAF and FAST. Is anyone in DH using linked data? Is there an ontology of DH projects? Discuss!

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Talk: Race in DH: Librarians’ Responsibilities

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Digital Humanities (Winter 2011) published Moya Z. Bailey’s article “All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave.” Her title draws on a vital text of feminist history, the collection All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith and published by the Feminist Press in 1982. Recently, Moya Z. Bailey put together a Storify of the tweets around the 2013 Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference (CESA 2013) panel “Representing Race: Silence in the Digital Humanities.” These moments track an ongoing conversation about race in Digital Humanities.

 

The discussion around race and the Digital Humanities addresses multiple facets of the issue from what kinds of work gets called digital humanities work to how accessible the tools of the work are and who’s involved in creating them.

 

I’m interested in talking together about the role of librarians (in conversation with faculty and students) in collaboration with/as creators of projects by digital humanists of color and digital humanities projects considering racial justice. Librarians’ responsibilities here seem to stem both from our involvement in shaping the futures of digital humanities and how our resource pages, classes, and orientation sessions say something about what we think counts as the humanities and whose work belongs there.

 

Within librarianship we rarely talk about how our own identities affect our perspectives, our practice, and our outreach. I’m interested in how we can enact such accountability and engagement in our digital humanities practice. I’m a queer feminist and white antiracist ally in librarianship, teaching, and other collaborations.

 

It would be exciting to imagine together an ethics for our practice, to share tools and resources we know about, to take a look at ongoing projects (like those highlighted by Moya Z. Bailey or by Anne Cong-Huyen in her post of the talk she gave at CESA 2013 “Race in DH: Transformative Asian/American Digital Humanities,” and more), and how librarians’ ethnic identities and sociopolitical locations are important to these futures.

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