Friday, December 07, 2018

Digital Library Perspectives: Volume 34 Issue 3 (Special Theme on Digital Humanities)

I'm excited to see our issue of Digital Library Perspectives published. The theme “digital humanities” (DH) – its history, major projects and practitioners, and, especially, its many definitions – has been the subject of frenzied scholarship and publications for more than 20 years.   This issue is unique in that it's one of the few LIS journals that has an entire issue devoted to the theme of DH.

This issue is a collection of papers by librarians, academic researchers, and scholars working in areas of DH, including non-Western contexts whose voices are so often left out of mainstream discussions. The papers collected in this issue present a vision of the Library as a central partner in DH scholarship; therefore, positioning the Library not just as a place to consume knowledge but as a place where new knowledge is actively co-created by researchers and librarians alike.   My colleague Megan Lobay and I hope you enjoy these pieces!

From humanities computing to the digital humanities: a literature review by Allan Cho, Megan Meredith-Lobay (pp. 154 - 161)
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Kindles, card catalogs, and the future of libraries: a collaborative digital humanities project by Anna L. Neatrour, Elizabeth Callaway, Rebekah Cummings (pp. 162 - 187)
Keywords: Future of libraries, Digital humanities, Topic modeling, Close reading, Distant readingInterdisciplinary collaboration
Type: Research paper
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Back to basics: Supporting digital humanities and community collaboration using the core strength of the academic library by Shannon Lucky, Craig Harkema (pp. 188 - 199)
Keywords: Collaboration, Community, Academic libraries, Cultural heritage, Digital humanities, Digitization
Type: Research paper
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Respecting the language: digitizing Native American language materials by Mary Wise, Sarah R. Kostelecky (pp. 200 - 214)
Keywords: Digitization, Collaboration, Digital humanities, Digital collection, Native American language, Zuni Pueblo
Type: Case study
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Finding a place for genealogy and family history in the digital humanities by Casey Daniel Hoeve (pp. 215 - 226)
Keywords: Libraries, Intersectionality, Cultural analysis humanities, Genetic ancestry, Historical societies,Humanities computing
Type: Conceptual Paper
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Digital Korean studies: recent advances and new frontiers by Javier Cha (pp. 227 - 244)

Saturday, December 01, 2018

Excellent Opportunity -- JSTOR Digital Humanities Fellow

An excellent opportunity for those with interest in the digital humanities. ITHAKA is looking for a digital humanities practitioner and educator to drive adoption and use of JSTOR’s suite of tools, APIs and content aimed at digital scholars. The Digital Humanities Fellow will create teaching materials and teach workshops and webinars related to digitization and metadata production, text and data mining, and linked open data. Funded in part by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this two-year-term position starting June 1, 2019 is ideal for the recent Digital Humanities Masters or PhD graduate seeking to apply their skills towards expanding the impact of digital scholarship. For the right candidate, this position can be held while still a student. The Digital Humanities Fellow will be a member of the innovative and collaborative JSTOR Labs team.

Responsibilities

The Digital Humanities Fellow will play a key role on the Plant Humanities Initiative, a partnership between JSTOR and Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute, museum and historic garden affiliated with Harvard University and located in Washington D.C. The Plant Humanities Initiative will pilot a new model for integrating digital humanities with scholarly programming to support the development of a new and emerging field. During the course of this project, the JSTOR Labs team will develop a new digital tool supporting plant humanities research and fellows at Dumbarton Oaks will employ this tool toward the creation of new scholarship. One of the aims of the digital tool will be connecting, contextualizing, and disseminating digitized primary sources. It will be the Digital Humanities Fellow’s responsibility to teach these fellows digital humanities skills and to support their use of the new tool. Upon completion of the tool, the Digital Humanities Fellow will assist in disseminating and gathering feedback on the digital tool through means such as presenting at appropriate conferences and contributing to a written report.

The Digital Humanities Fellow will also drive adoption and use of JSTOR’s other digital humanities tools, APIs, services and content. These services include Data For Research, a text- and data-mining service which JSTOR is currently exploring expanding in partnership with other non-profit collections-holders. JSTOR Labs has a suite of APIs to support digital humanists, including those related to Text Analyzer, its award-winning document analysis and search tool, and Understanding Great Works, a new tool for studying primary literary and historical texts. To encourage adoption and use of these tools and services, the Digital Humanities Fellow will speak at conferences, give webinars, and create instructional materials like assignments and sample datasets. He or she will inform the development of these services by being the voice of the user to the developers. Last, the Digital Humanities Fellow will co-author with other Labs members articles for scholarly and popular journals about their work.
Experience and Skills 
  • A Masters or PhD in a scientific discipline (computer science / engineering / mathematics) with deep experience in digital humanities, or a Masters or PhD in humanities with a proven expertise in digital technologies.
  • Experience with and ability to teach digital humanities methods and technologies, including:
            - Natural language processing, including topic modeling (ideally using Mallet);
            - Text and Data Mining;
            - Linked Open Data, including Wikidata and knowledge graphs
            - Data visualization
  • Commonly used text-processing and analytics languages (for example, Python and R) 
  • Content markup including XML, ePub, PDF & TEI preferred 
  • Stellar communication, collaboration and organizational skills, and the ability to learn new techniques and technologies on the job. 
  • Experience working with archival/primary source materials for research and/or teaching preferred. 
  • Experience with web application development preferred. 
  • Committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust.
For more details and to apply, follow this link: https://recruiting.ultipro.com/ITH1000ITHAK/JobBoard/5fe90ad4-9e26-490b-9c45-6c9669d4dcd0/OpportunityDetail?opportunityId=672ff2c1-90c7-4dd6-b4f6-ab317c31640d

Friday, October 19, 2018

Digital Humanities Librarian Search at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Digital Humanities Librarian
Assistant or Associate Professor, University Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


Position Available:
Position available immediately. This is a 100%, twelve-month, tenure-system appointment.

The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For more information, visit http://go.illinois.edu/EEO. To learn more about the University’s commitment to diversity, please visit http://www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu.

Position Summary:
The University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is seeking a creative, innovative, collaborative, and intellectually curious individual to lead digital humanities services in the Library. The successful candidate will contribute to engaged, inclusive digital scholarship across campus. We encourage applicants who are committed to the principle that a diverse community enhances our institution and who will help the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign achieve new levels of excellence by fostering and sustaining our diverse and inclusive academic environment.

Reporting to the Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, the Digital Humanities Librarian leads outreach and services for research and instruction in the humanities and arts that employs digital technologies and data. Working with colleagues in the library’s Scholarly Commons, Research Data Service, and Scholarly Communication and Publishing units, Library Information Technology, Media Commons, special collections curators and archivists, and subject liaisons, the Digital Humanities Librarian is part of a team of functional and subject experts that works with researchers on digital scholarship broadly.

The Digital Humanities Librarian typically serves as the initial point of referral for humanities and affiliated researchers as they begin digital research and teaching projects, referring to and collaborating with these other experts as necessary. Building on a history of increasing library support for digital humanities on campus, the librarian plays a key role in furthering digital humanities library services, collaborating with others to fulfil needs identified in the library’s recent Digital Humanities Needs Assessment Report and providing ongoing assessment for new and existing activities. This role includes working to further the development of the library’s Scholarly Commons as a hub for digital humanities collaboration and discussion. The librarian also collaborates with other areas of campus that provide complementary services for digital research (including the NCSA Culture and Society Initiative, an emerging design center network, and others) to provide referrals and maximize impact.

Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Provide both reference services and in-depth research consultations for faculty and students on digital humanities-related research, in collaboration with colleagues;
  • Design and deliver instruction to classes, research groups, and other audiences to further information literacy and digital literacy outcomes;
  • Acquire and manage humanities research data (e.g., text and media corpora from commercial publishers) in consultation with others;
  • Work with librarians, library IT, and researchers to evaluate digital scholarship tools and select and implement the most appropriate tools to meet specific needs;
  • Serve as the primary point of consultation for researchers with questions about text and data mining tools and approaches;
  • Work with colleagues on digital humanities-related publishing activities and scholarly communications outreach related to digital humanities research;
  • Collaborate with colleagues in the Scholarly Commons and other units on outreach activities related to digital scholarship, and on fostering the Scholarly Commons as a collaborative space for digital humanities work;
  • Assess evolving campus needs and represent the Library in campus initiatives and activities involving digital humanities related research and data science, including serving as a liaison to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and other relevant initiatives;
  • Facilitate professional development opportunities for library faculty and staff, including subject specialists, in digital humanities areas relevant to their interests and responsibilities;
  • Contribute to the national and international reputation of the University Library through professional research, service, and collaboration with national colleagues, organizations, and consortia.

Qualifications:

Required:
ALA-accredited MS-LIS or equivalent, or a PhD in the humanities or humanistic social sciences (completed by start date) with two years of relevant experience with digital projects;
Understanding of traditional and emerging digital approaches to research and publication in humanities work, and of how new digital approaches can reshape research and teaching in the humanities;
Experience with research software or programming languages used within some area of digital humanities, such as text and data mining, network analysis, or multimodal publishing;
Experience teaching in workshop or classroom settings;
Excellent oral and written communications skills;
Demonstrated ability to work both independently and collaboratively with a diverse community, and manage multiple tasks effectively in a team environment;
Evidence of the ability to do research, publication, and service consonant with University standards for tenure and promotion.

Preferred:
Experience teaching technology and digital literacy concepts;
Experience authoring or collaborating on digital humanities projects in research or instruction;
Coursework or experience using a programming language, especially one commonly used in digital humanities projects such as Python or R;
Demonstrated understanding of metadata standards and data curation practices relevant to digital humanities work;
Familiarity with copyright and licensing issues related to digital projects.

Monday, October 08, 2018

Digital Humanities: Implications for Librarians, Libraries, and Librarianship in Journal of College & Undergraduate Libraries #DH

Although it's been out for almost a year now, I'm excited to have read the DH-themed issue in College & Undergraduate Libraries.  Volume 24's Digital Humanities: Implications for Librarians, Libraries, and Librarianship is a special issue that reflects some of the current challenges that occupy librarians who are engaging the academic community in the digital humanities.  Some of the authors are familiar names and that's not surprising as many are at the top of their fields in DH.

In College & Undergraduate Libraries, this special issue has thirty articles on various topics that have been organized around six main themes: theoretical and critical issues, transforming traditional collections, models of collaboration, planning and project management, the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, and embedded librarian instruction.   I enjoyed all of these pieces and it is a reflection of the work that is emerging at the intersection of academic libraries and digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.   It's good timing as Megan Meredity-Lobay and my DH-themed issue in Digital Library Perspectives is coming out soon, too.  Stay tuned for more on that.  In the meantime, take a look at the following articles!

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Open Access, APC's, and the Pop-Up Restaurant

Recently, a Canadian economics professor ventured into the dark world of predatory publishing and got punished by his university and is now banned and suspended without pay. What's an academic to do when all he's doing is exposing the "deceptive scholarship" of fellow academics (that happens to be from his own university) seeking to advance their careers whose articles have been published for a fee in suspicious and fraudulent journals?

Predatory journals claim to be refereed but in reality, they publish articles in exchange for the payment of fees by authors.  Even Jeffrey Beall, the librarian who first coined the term and highlighted the negative aspects of predatory journals with his now eponymous Beall's List taken down due to pressure from his own university.

To be clear, scholarly publishing is a high stakes business, with tenure and promotion, skyrocketing journal subscriptions, and shrinking college budgets solidly inter-woven. The solution (and problem) proposed by librarians and academics (and publishing companies albeit begrudgingly) is to "open" up research outputs distributed online for free of cost or other barriers now popularly known as open access in order to counter the inequitable and unsustainable practice of charging institutions for ever-increasing subscription prices on scholarship that should be for the public good.   Open access is important; but we must face the problems of its outgrowth.

The unintended consequence is that that other than self-archiving them in institutional repositories, open access journals often require article processing charges paid by authors or research sponsors -- the "Gold OA path".  This has a prevalent byproduct: the predatory publisher that takes advantage of the desperate researcher whose job prospects depend on how many articles get accepted and published in journals.  As more journals have jumped on board to go open access, even wealthy publishers have gotten into the game by offering open access.  By clinging their hopes in this broken scholarly ecosystem, the situation reminds me of the "pop-up" dinner phenomenon.  This happened at the turn of the century when dining out became so exorbitantly expensive that consumers wanted to find an alternative, more sustainable ecology of gourmet.    

Pop-up restaurants have been popular since the 2000's and such diners typically make use of social media to communicate to its audiences.   No doubt the hospitality business is lucrative as such pop-up restaurants has become effective methods for young professionals to gain exposure, seeking investors, and experimenting with new culinary concepts.  It has gotten so successful that Restaurant Day takes place worldwide with even traditional restaurants participating.  The problem is that there is high turnover, with the most successful pop-up operations burning brightly, then quietly and quickly disappearing to make room for something new.   Does this sound familiar?   

This is not to say that the pop-up is a failure, nor is it a perfect analogy of scholarly publishing, but there is a similarity with how much disruption is happening in a traditional business with a mad scramble by entrepreneurs (and both traditional and predatory publishers are certainly that) to take advantage of those hungry to eat and get published.   Though some academics ignore OA altogether as tenure requires publication in a "global brand" of an exclusive journal or press and go where the money is, those who choose to publish in OA tend to do so out of altruism or academic disciplines who aren't tied to a prestigious publication.    To be sure the big luxury brands will not disappear anytime soon, and there will always be those who prefer to the Michelin-star experience over the home-cooked potluck.  

So let's return to the economist Derek Pyne's current ethical dilemma of his research: reveal the complicity of institutions and be punished or stay silent and conform to the dubious cycle.  Of course, he chose the former, and though we don't know the full context of the case, what we do know now is that one researcher's findings has provoked enough impact for it to be designated as dangerous.


Sunday, May 13, 2018

The Learning Gardens at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

During my sabbatical, Patrick Lo, Dickson Chiu, and I were fortunate to interview Louise Jones, the University Librarian of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for an upcoming book project.  The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library is one of the leading research libraries in East Asia, and has a significant Special Collections ranging from Shang dynasty oracle bones to modern Chinese literary archives.  With ongoing digitization initiatives, the Library makes available over 5 million digital images/objects and making content openly accessible to the local and global research community.

While CUHK Library comprises seven libraries, I had the most fun with the tour of the Learning Garden, which is an inspirational space that has won awards.  The Learning Garden is combined effort of librarians, architects, and the university community.   As far back as 2014, when the Learning Garden first opened, it introduced 3D Printing and 3D Scanning services with the idea of bringing design concepts to life.  In inspiring students to explore new interests in design and helping them to bring their creations and design concepts to life, the library provides two desktop level of 3D printers, including the Structure Sensor and Next Engine 3D scanners.

Clearly, with the trend in academic libraries is the shifting relationship between space and collections, physical collections increasingly across academia are being moved to storage or lesser used facilities, freeing up of space for collaborative learning and study spaces.   With specific spaces opened for 24 hours a day during term time, how does the Learning Garden provides flexible seating and facilities to support teaching and learning activities.  In addition to face-to-face teaching, collaborative learning through discussion among peers to generate ideas is increasingly important; in addition, with the needs of group projects for coursework, a 24-hour library space is necessary for the needs of students, particularly those who live on campus.   On average, the Learning Garden has up to 300 patrons just after the library closes at 10.00pm.



How does the Learning Garden differ from the Research Commons in the University Library though?  Both the Learning Garden and Research Commons are open spaces for students, undergraduate graduate students.  While the same number of group study rooms are also available for bookings at Research Commons on the first floor of the University Library complex, the services arranged by the Research Commons librarian are specifically focused for graduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers; such services include research consultation services, research café events, thesis writing skills, authoring workshop, and citation management.  However, the services for Postgraduates are not restricted to the Research Commons area; for example, the Research Cafe (presentations by Ph.D. candidates) are held in a small open space on the ground floor of the library. Activities conducted in open spaces aim to cultivate a learning ambiance and scholarly exchange and dialogue between students and scholars.

What's interesting about the Learning Garden is the emphasis of short-term flexibility with such things as movable furniture and temporary wall partitions.  The Learning Garden is an open plan design, uniquely with no temporary wall partitions; thus, its events are conducted in an entirely open setting. As its name conveys as a "garden," patrons can find their own favourite spot for individual study, for chatting, for relaxation in the refreshment zone, having group discussions or joining a talk in the Open Forum. Except for the bubble group study room, all of these activities co-exist in the Learning Garden in a harmonious, collaborative manner. The Learning Path is designed as two 50 meters long desks and S-shape curve creates natural bays for groups to study together or individual. For flexibility, the designer architect selected more light-weighted and robust furniture for students to freely move and group various tables together to fit their purpose of learning.  Smart whiteboards are movable as well.

The library is an important selling point for the university, and the Learning Garden has fast become the major attraction to University guests, students and visiting scholars.  As a building, it has won several awards.  The large whiteboard are full of students’ comments, drawing, traces of idea exchange and even poems, the students have indeed made the place their home and welcoming in their own way.  Here's the past UL Colin Storey's recap of how it all started in 2012.  


Friday, March 16, 2018

Data Analysis Using Gephi, a Digital Humanities Case Study

Chinese Canadian Stories – Uncommon Histories from a Common Past was a collaborative project that I was a part of during an earlier part of my career as a librarian, and one I'm re-visiting again in the context of digital humanities.   Interestingly, when we began, we had no idea of the term DH.  I was more involved in the community engagement aspect of the project (which is also an important ingredient in DH projects).  Between 2006-2008, a team of student researchers at UBC working with Prof. Peter Ward and Prof. Henry Yu who spent two years painstakingly recording the data for every one of the over 97,000 Chinese in the Chinese Head Tax Register.  For each of the Chinese who entered Canada, the data included names, age, height, villages and counties of origin and through a digital database, the project enabled us a powerful research tool for understanding who these migrants were, where they left, and where they were going in Canada.  The irony is that the practice of restricting immigration actually left researchers a rich data collection of those early Canadian migrants.

While the project collaborated with the local Chinese Canadian community to preserve their culture and history through outreach and actively collecting materials for its web portal, an unintended yet innovative result was the emergence of digital tools and techniques normally used in the sciences enabled us to examine the records of the migrants. Through the project, the researchers published a few peer-reviewed research papers documenting their use of Gephi, a visualization network analysis tool, which plotted locations in Saskatchewan based on longitude, latitude, and a tool called Ego Network, which it allows us to select any node in the network and filter the network to only see its connections.



In Gephi, to have a high betweenness centrality score would mean that you are integral in connecting elements within the network. In the Saskatchewan network produced by Gephi, three major destinations emerge: Saskatoon, Regina, and Moose Jaw. Swift Current, while a major destination, does not have as many links to highly-connected places as Saskatoon, Regina, and Moose Jaw (which predictably are very connected to each other). Some of the major families in this network also start to emerge: there was a strong Ma clan association that had through chain migration spread across Saskatchewan.  Combined with oral histories and analog research, this method of DH inquiry is a supremely powerful way to enhance discover and to visually tell the story of our findings. 


The Ma family appears to be much more important in the Regina network than in the Moose Jaw network. In order to produce these networks using Gephi, the researchers combed through all the immigrants that listed Saskatchewan as their destination but had to deduce the Romanized form of their surnames. There are quite a few Romanizations that have multiple possible Chinese surnames associated with Ma.  For instance, in anayzing the Regina network, it becomes clear that the Luo and Liu who are from Yuemingcun in Sen Ning are probably the same family--either Luo or Liu, not both.   My colleagues at Asian Library, including the now retired Eleanor Yuen, have pioneered the way for future research by mapping the villages and towns recorded in the Register of Chinese Immigration to Canada from 1885 to 1949 in their original Chinese character names. 
The project was furthered with the great help at the Spatial History Project, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis [CESTA] at Stanford University.

Using the variables of family name, village origin, and destination in Saskatchewan, Stanford researcher Stephanie Chan used Gephi to produce network patterns for four Chinese family lineages that visualize the weighted correspondence of family name and village origin in creating family chains and connection between destinations. Of course, this preliminary visualization is limited to only describing the Ma family in Saskatchewan.   There's still much data to be analyzed.   The work has just begun. 
Historical Chinese Language Materials in British Columbia (HCLMBC) was a collaboration between UBC and SFU to digitize historical records and images related to Chinese settlement and life in British Columbia.

Sources for more reading:

Yu, Henry, and Stephanie Chan. " The Cantonese Pacific: Migration Networks and Mobility Across Space and Time." Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese and Canada (2017): 25. [Link]

Hermansen, S. and H. Yu. “The Irony of Discrimination: Mapping Historical Migration Using Chinese Head Tax Data.” In Historical GIS Research in Canada, J. Bonnel and M. Fortin (Eds.), University of Calgary Press, 2014. [Link]

 Murphy, Nathan. "Review of a Digital History Tool: Gephi–Networking through History."

Calma, Angelito, and Martin Davies. 2017. Geographies of influence: A citation network analysis of higher education 1972–2014. Scientometrics 110 (3): 1579-99. [Link]

More Networks in the Humanities or Did books have DNA? [Link]
Stanford Gephi Workshop materials. [Link]

Monday, January 08, 2018

DH Projects in East Asian Studies


The ‘Digital Humanities’ is still a young and highly contested area.  Furthermore, as Tom Mullaney has argued, within Digital Humanities is an “Asia deficit”which is no small part the outcome of more entrenched divides within the platforms and digital tools that form the foundation of DH itself.   This divide between East and West runs very deep, and is not primarily a question of scholarly interest or orientation.  I was pleasantly impressed at the progress made in DH learning more about these projects.

A couple of projects that I had come across recently came from a presentation by Michael Hunter of Yale University.  He introduced the The Life of the Buddha (LOTB) project which addresses this challenge by presenting and analyzing for the first time monumental Tibetan murals depicting the Buddha’s life, their related literature, and their architectural and historical settings. LOTB also offers scholarly and learning communities the first tool to research and engage image, text, architecture, and history as an integrated and meaning-rich whole. The project’s impact for the humanities and the study of Buddhism are thus twofold: the largest study to date on visual and textual Buddha narratives in Tibet, and a new digital tool for synthetic teaching and research of Buddhist images and texts in context.  These murals date from the first decades of the 17th century and are among only a handful of fully preserved narrative paintings in Central Tibet. They are also among the few murals in Tibet explicitly linked to an extant collection of narrative, poetic, ritual, and technical painting literature about the Buddha. Practically nothing has been written about the Jonang murals, and no complete visual documentation has ever been attempted.

The Ten Thousand Rooms Project (廣廈千萬間項目) is a project led by Michael Hunter, and is a collaborative workspace (but not a database) for pre-modern textual studies.  Building on the Mirador Viewer developed by Stanford University, the platform allows users to upload images of manuscript, print, inscriptional, and other sources and then organize projects around their transcription, translation, and/or annotation. Both as a workspace for crowd-sourcing core textual research and as a publishing venue for scholarly contributions that are less well suited to conventional book formats, the Ten Thousand Rooms Project is really one of the early DH projects at Yale that establishes an international online community committed to making the East Asian textual heritage more accessible to a wider audience. All users are free to view projects on the site, and registered users can create their own projects and also to others as well. 

In all, the future of DH in Asian Studies is coming along now, certainly at a pace that suggest much is happening, either at conferences, digital podcasts, and the network of scholars and practitioners coming together in a vibrant community of practice in an area of scholarship that's long overlooked.