Just a brief follow-up to the bibliography idea we kicked off this past weekend:

The point of the project is to start to build some institutional memory around THATCamp as a whole. As sessions are proposed and conversations and discussions evolve, it could benefit us all to have a central repository of documentation about what has been said, discussed and proposed at other Camps. I consistently refer back to the GDoc Collection that was shared after THATCamp Prime last year, and capturing that documentation, centralizing it, organizing it (there are some librarians involved here right?!) and making it accessible seems to be a cause we all could support.

meta meta

How can you help?

1) Choose a previous THATCamp from this list.

2) Pick through the site and pull out any linked GDocs of notes from the sessions (be sure to check the comments on the session proposals).

3) Create a record for the document in the THATCamp Biblio Zotero Group. Do your due diligence as an ad-hoc cataloger and make sure you aren’t making repeat records.

Suggested Controlled Vocab/Fields:

• Item Type: [Document] for a GDoc. [Forum Post] for a Session Proposal. [Blog Post] for a blog post reflection after the Camp.
• Title: [Session Name] – THATCamp [Name][Year]
• Author: If you can see who owns the GDoc, make them the Author of Record. If not, use whomever proposed the panel in which the notes were produced.
• Abstract: Use your judgement. Pull a paragraph from the session proposal or write 1-2 quick sentences.
• Publisher: [THATCamp] or [THATCamp Press] if you’re feeling frisky.
• Date: Date document was created.
• URL: Include the link to the GDoc.
• Extra: Add any notes that might give the record context. See an example here.
• Tags: Use at least the [THATCamp Name] and [Year]. Any other tags you can come up with to contextualize and link it will be most helpful.

4) If you prefer, download the GDocs that you make records for as PDFs and hold onto them. We are going to find a way to make the documents live somewhere since you can’t attach them to the records in a Zotero Group.

5) If you have time, dig a little deeper and see if you can find related blog posts before or after the specific Camp you are cataloging. These only help to contextualize the work done over the weekend in the real life practices of the Campers. Make records for them too!

6) Share your work! Let other THATCampers, DHers, Librarian/catalogers, and students interested in digital humanities know about the THATCampiography. More hands make light work.

The hope is that with a collection like this, Camps of the future can build on the work that has already been done. For example, its been pretty standard that there is typically a session dedicated to sharing resources (for whatever purpose). Wouldn’t it be great if you could go directly to the THATCampiography, click the “Resources” tag and quickly dig through the past 4 years of resources that have been collated by Campers as most beneficial for this type of work?

I didn’t see a place for the shared tools, and I know that even people who didn’t participate in the session want to share some tools . . . so I thought I would post this so that we can share in the comments.

I demonstrated a way to build a virtual Linux server on your Mac or PC. This virtual space would give people a safe place to learn by playing with the system. If you completely screw up the virtual machine, deleted it and rebuild it.

Links for the following are at mas.clayton.edu/bootcamp/.

1. Download Ubuntu Linux. You can get 10.04 LTS or 11.10 from Ubuntu.com. Or, wait a couple of weeks, and you can get 12.04 LTS (right now it’s in beta). 10.04 LTS has a more familiar GUI. 11.04 and 11.10 (especially) introduce the Unity interface, which is not universally loved. This file is large and may take thirty to sixty minutes to download.

2. Download and install Oracle VirtualBox software for Macs or PCs with an Intel CPU. You should have at least 2GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk space. In both cases, it’s a standard install. You’ll also want to download the extensions.

3. Create a new, blank VBox.

4. Install Ubuntu. Note: This could easily take an hour or two, depending on how long it takes to apply patches to bring the install up to date, plus the speed of your machine.

Finally, the approach I take is to install the desktop version and make it a server, rather than the other way around. I find it easier to install the server components to a GUI desktop than adding the GUI to a CLI LAMP server. (Just one of my quirks.)

Installing Archon will take you through the steps necessary to convert the desktop install to a LAMP server. Plus, you’ll have Archon installed so you can play with it.

Questions welcome.

If you find this useful, please consider taking ARST 5100 Archives and Technology, a part of Clayton State’s Master of Archival Studies Program. You’ll cover these topics — and more — in greater depth.

As someone called me, I’m “the guy in the green shirt” that talked about the online video segmentation tool at Dork Shorts. If anyone is interested in more discussion, demos, etc. about working with video segmentation and annotations, working with Omeka, general talk about video, etc., I would like to give another session in MLC 250 from 9:30 – 10:45. Just drop by for a general discussion if interested.

Hi all — if you did a lightning talk at Dork Shorts, please put a link to your project in the comments.

I want to talk about what can constitute interinstitutional collaboration and how it can work.

What are the possibilities for interinstitutional collaboration? What kinds of gaps can it be used to fill and what new possibilities does it invite?

What do the different scopes/foci of this collaboration look like?

What are some models of interstitutional collaboration that work well/don’t work well?

Experiential learning submerges a class in applied activities that dissolve the boundary between the academy and whatever’s beyond it. Whether as focused simulations, individual ethnographic projects, or semester-long endeavors that involve an whole class, experiential learning forces us to consider how our discipline does its best work in the world.

I can offer one detailed example. This semester I am teaching ENGL 3120: Electronic Writing and Publishing, but we’ve rebranded it Occupy Class. My students work collaboratively every work to compose and publish stories to www.occupyclass.org, our online investigation of the Occupy movement in its local, national, and international manifestations. We spent the first three weeks of the semester studying journalistic methods and online platforms — just long enough to make decisions about what and how we wanted to publish. We currently publish 6-10 articles weekly to the site.

Critical questions: How can digital tools and practices help us design experiences that are just as (or more) pedagogically useful as “reading texts”? What similar classroom activities have you used or observed that can give the group a rounder understanding of experiential learning? What problems or anxieties does the concept of experiential learning present to your discipline or your own teaching? How or why must we throw traditional ideas of assessment out the window when we move towards experience?

How do we better demonstrate the connection between institutions that support the efforts of digital humanities/digital libraries/digital archives (DH/DL/DA) projects, and the value of creating, contextualizing and preserving cultural and historic materials that become the source of easily-accessible digital content that these people use daily (e.g. Wikipedia, flickr, Pinterest) or form the backbone of TV and film documentaries, and popular TV genealogy shows like Faces of America and Who Do You Think You Are?

This was prompted by a news article published by a writer for Atlanta’s city’s arts and entertainment news weekly a few months ago, available here. It was shocking because the author was so ill-informed, and dead-set against funding an institution providing a service that would most likely benefit him in his line of work (as well as his personal interests).

Of course, advocacy and promotion are not new topics. What I am looking for are some guidelines with fresh ideas. Or just the ideas. I would love to hear about what others have to say.

(Am I allowed to propose more than once?)

Two ideas I had real quick while mainlining THATCampery prior to leaving:

1) One of the things I’ve really begun to value about digital humanities is how I see its potential and overlap in and across contemporary culture. How about a DH CultureJam session – thinking about, sharing and nerding out over cool ways that DH is happening outside of the academy, in the popular culture, journalism, music, art? We don’t have to get all Matrixy here (leave that for THATCamp Theory), but it’d be fun to think outside the echo chamber and indulge and engage our interests as socio-cultural participants.

A few places to start:

SXSW, Gizmodo, BrainPickings, Bjork, Rhizome, Tumblr/Pinterest, #dhmusic

2) Don’t know if this has even been done either; what if we picked up on a conversation that happened at a previous THATCamp and continued it in a session here? Or, what if we traced a theme through multiple Camps, harvested (copy/paste) their GDocs, and began to create a THATCamp historiography/bibliography? Could we DO something in a session that would be of value to the larger community?

Technology is great.

My first real job out of college was at the Miami Herald in 1999, where I was the new Digital Pre-Press Paginator for the Classifieds. I watched an entire department of veteran cut-and-pasters, who had served the publisher for decades, get replaced by two 20-somethings and their computers.

Technology makes things easier, faster, and–over time–cheaper. Most of all, technology means we don’t have to interact with other humans. Over time, I have watched scanners replace toll-booth operators, self-service stations replace cashiers, and websites replace bookstores. Increasingly, we have online video recordings replacing teachers and teaching.

The rise in online education has me–and many others–questioning the values and practices of education on campus. I’d like to think that meeting in a physical space has value. But unless we begin to think of human interaction as a technology in itself that aids learning, I can see why publicly funded institutions would want to go the way of Khan.

In this session, I propose that we formulate a technology of human interaction. What does this technology consist of? What are its advantages and specs? How does it impact learning and growth? Along these lines, I’m also thinking of the technology of human resources. Why are our institutions investing so much money in technology rather than in humans? Why aren’t humans as effective as machines?

Technology is great. So let’s make human interaction an irresistible technology.

I’m hoping we can discuss ways we are, will, and want to collaborate with Title VI programs. DH is marked by many exciting features including altac careers, integration of areas that are too often separated (research, teaching, service), opportunities for collaboration, opportunities to engage with other fields to due truly innovative and cross/trans-disciplinary work, connection to public scholarship, and cross-discipline and cross-department placement.  Title VI National Resource Centers offer all of these and have been doing so for decades. Also, Title VI Centers contain long-term institutional knowledge and best practices for this sort of work, which can inform concerns about institutional placement, alignment, and integration.

DH has many incredible opportunities for collaboration, but I’d specifically like to discuss how we do, can, and are interested in collaborating with Title VI Centers given both how much we have to offer and how much we could learn.  Additionally, in a recent article in InsideHigherEd, Lee Bissette wrote about DH seeming to be English-centric and stated: “I think, more generally, DH could do more to bridge linguistic divides” (article).  Title VI Centers are just one of the many places that DH could pursue for more collaboration, but each is a one that is many and thus where collaboration is especially bountiful with so many fields, areas, and perspectives represented.

How are today’s artists navigating the social networks as un-gendered creative beings?  Does this un-gendered cyberspace approach serve as an opening to new artists being given exhibitions without the stigma of a gallery trying to fill its shows by weighting male and female work in the space?  Are artists experiencing more freedom in their work by not being tied to a gendered viewing (there was a time, for a simple example, when male artists made very large paintings and women were deemed less of an artist if they did not compete in the same scale)?

Not only do the social networks create an un-gendered persona but it also allows information to be shared more freely then it has in the past.  And this freedom is unconcerned with gender – if you can watch the how-to video, then you can probably complete the task – there is no “you can only accomplish this task if you are a female” kind of limitation imposed.  Hence, artists today are learning on a much more broad scale, and the work is becoming less discernible in terms of gender (both in terms of the work itself as well as the hand that created it).

What does this mean for the future of the practicing artist?  What will the qualifications be to determine worthiness of show exhibition?  In the scheme of all things art historical, there has always been a gendered viewing of art work,  the artist’s hand from which the work was created, and the spectator of the work.  Without this historical starting point, the contemporary art world will have to find a new stance from which to approach works of art, perhaps even a new vocabulary from which the next generation of artists and society might re-fashion the history of art and the artist.

One of the challenges that libraries is starting to grapple with is that of preservation for all this digital stuff that’s being constantly created and converted. It’s not enough to burn some files to a CD or DVD or put them on a server–backup is part of the story but not nearly all of it. Software formats and hardware setups change, server space diminishes, priorities and goals shift, and accidents happen.

Preservation for digital humanities applications is particularly challenging, in part because digital humanities take advantage of the latest software and technology. They are full of dynamic, multimedia content. We can’t know, for example, if the software running applications will be supported even five years down the road, much less ten or twenty. To boil down the point even further, what is the point of developing (some) digital humanities projects if they can’t be supported and sustained over time?

The library world is coming up with solutions to the challenge of digital preservation all the time. We have developed best practices on preservation-quality formats, founded consortia to share the duties of preservation, and come up with metadata standards to ensure long-term preservation of digital library resources. And like preservation, digital humanities computing is increasingly in the purview of libraries.

Let’s have a conversation about what happens after the launch of the coolest new digital humanities application. What are some general principles we can apply if we want to keep those programs around? Can we adapt emerging digital preservation principles to fit the unique challenges of digital humanities data?

If you’d like to do some background reading on digital preservation as it pertains to libraries, here are some cool links:

Library of Congress on digital preservation

Preservation-quality file formats

Critical elements of preserving digital collections

Digital Preservation Europe

Digital Preservation: A Time Bomb for Digital Libraries

This is a session that might go well with Richard Urban’s session on the Digital Public Library. I’m becoming more and more interested in the challenges and opportunities surrounding linked open data. For those of you who don’t know, LOD is a feature of the semantic web that allows different datasets to share resources. On a larger scale, LOD is a movement designed to revolutionize scholarship by producing big data that could lead to conclusions that are impossible with single datasets alone. I talk a little about the implications of LOD in my post “DH, Archival Silence, and Linked Open Data.” Tim Berners-Lee also discusses LOD as the future of the web, John Voss has a wonderful lecture on the use of LOD in museums and archives, and Eric Rochester has a great talk about LOD at Scholar’s Lab. Voss explains LOD’s power as allowing users to engage in advanced queries across institutions.

Besides projects like DBpedia, LOD is used in HistoryPin, Conflict History, Geonames, and Taxonconcept. The LOD-LAM group (linked open data for libraries and museums) mentions 4 benefits of LOD.

1. Driving users to your online content (e.g., by improved search engine optimization).
2. Enabling new scholarship that can only be done with open data.
3. Allowing for the creation of new services for discovery.
4. Stimulating collaboration in the library, archives, and museums world and beyond.

Of course, most of this is still very abstract and people working with LOD really don’t know how it could benefit us in the future. I am fascinated by the idea that LOD rethinks the web as not a collection of texts, but as a collection of data – and the way this can change scholarship, teaching, and archiving. But I’m also just throwing the idea of LOD out there to see what my fellow THATCampers can come up with.

My institution has a newly-established Digital Scholarship Lab that falls under the umbrella of Digital Scholarship and Special Collections. Since this is such a new endeavor (three months old), the concept and “brand” of digital scholarship (and specifically digital humanities) is still forming in the minds of library faculty and staff as well as teaching faculty and graduate students at our university. My colleague, Donna Lanclos, and I are interested in exploring a few questions:
-How can we, as digital humanists, gain buy-in from colleagues and faculty who may not see the value in digital scholarship (or who may be hostile to the whole idea)?
-What are some methods, talking points, elevator talks, etc. we can use as digital humanists and digital scholars?
-How can we gently introduce technophobic folks to the world of digital scholarship and digital humanities?
These are just a few starting points — I would love to hear how you have engaged new and varied constituencies in digital humanities and discuss new ideas and possibilites.

In a talk delivered at the NINES Summer Institute last year, Bethany Nowviskie asserts that, within a discipline where collaborative work is the norm, “healthier scholarship will result from generous and full acknowledgment of the contributions of collaborators.” Even more recently, in her response to Miriam Posner’s “Some Things to Think About Before You Exhort Everyone to Code,” Nowviskie makes a case for giving more attention to “the professional and intellectual development of the people already steeped in humanities computing technology and for whom this work is a primary focus and responsibility,” in order to facilitate “correlat[ion] of their local work with the bigger trends, technical and intellectual, in humanities scholarship.” Given that, as Nowviskie notes, “a gap exists, in critical vocabulary and in the norms of discourse between these groups (even including developers with deep backgrounds in humanistic research),” how do we ensure that all participants in a project enjoy an opportunity to derive professional benefits from the collaboration, including rights to access, publish about, and build upon the resulting code and artifacts? In this session, I propose we use the “Collaborators’ Bill of Rights” as a starting point for discussion. How might we instantiate these recommendations in our own projects? What other practices or policies might we add to the list? Given the ad hoc process through which digital humanities working groups and projects are sometimes formed, how do we integrate a conversation about giving credit where it is due and rights of ownership (including, but in no way limited to copyright) as an essential first stage? Can we begin drafting sensible, user-friendly model policy for which we can advocate within our disciplines and institutions to help ensure adequate recognition of collaborators’ rights?

I am hoping we can discuss creative approaches to graduate training within given disciplines as well as across them. In the humanities, there has been a groundswell of interest in reforming graduate education, revising masters and PhD expectations (most notably the dissertation), and integrating with other departments and programs within the university. These discussions link to, and in some ways anticipate, the increasingly conspicuous attention to alternate academic (#altac) careers. In what ways can we imagine, promote, and support new forms of graduate training at our own institutions or even across them? How can we construct programs or degrees that formalize what has been, at least in the digital humanities, the cherished narrative of the tinkering autodidact, learning ad hoc and hybridizing on her own time? This discussion might draw from current experiments in humanities graduate training (e.g. the Praxis Program in the UVa Scholars’ Lab; the Stanford Lit Lab) and further imagine fruitful collaborations with libraries. What are the skills grads need to know now? And what traditional forms of graduate training should endure, as their values become more apparent by contrast? How will these configurations adapt (or not) to online and distance education, to collaborative possibilities across institutions? And how do we develop the infrastructure to support student and institutional innovations?

(Link to session’s notes / Google Doc.)

A question that’s been explored before before, but one that remains current — especially with the appearance of several new open-source for digital records: What do archivists need to work with digital records? Of course, having a saw, hammer, and nails doesn’t mean that you know how to build something. The trick is to figure out how to use these tools wisely, to get a sense of crafts* and best practices.

Join in a conversation about tools you use and the skills essential to use those tools. Learn about other participants’ favorites. If interested, the group can continue the conversation as an online community to explore these ideas in depth. Participants should be prepared to talk about how they work, the tools they use, and what knowledge and skills they think are essential (whether they have them or not) to succeed in the digital era.

>Examples of tools include the Duke Data Accessioner, the Curator’s Workbench, and Archivematica. (Not to mention other tools that have been around for a while, such as Archon, Archivist’s Toolkit, not to mention Dspace. It’s just as important to have a safe place to “play.” VirtualBox allows you to host a fully functioning Ubuntu Linux computer, and many of these tools run best in a Linux environment. These applications will be available for demonstration during the session.

*Changed craftsmanship to craft out of respect for International Women’s Day (today) and to acknowledge the important issues raised in the session proposal: Is Coding Privileged Work?

{Inspired by the recent JISC article “Does the Library have a role to play in the Digital Humanities?“}

Pinterested?

I’m a librarian. Sort of. Well, not really. I mean, I work in a research library, I have the MLIS degree (union card) and its part of my job title. But, in the three real months that I’ve been officially employed I’ve not once assisted a patron, I am only truly familiar with the databases and research assistance at my library from my time as a student there, and I do NONE of the typical librarian day-to-day tasks – reference (virtual or face-to-face), departmental liaising, book/journal buying, vendor-negotiating, database culling, collection development, etc. Nada. And it looks like it could be that way for a while.

Which brings me around to the title of this post, which I blatantly borrowed(ripped off) from Bethany Nowviskie’s “#alt-ac,” a term many of us may be familiar with. In defining my involvement in the future of librarianship, I am constantly questioning the role of the library in the digital humanities, one I am interested in professionally, or broader on a ‘digital campus.’ We could go 100 different directions here, but I’ll recall a session I proposed at THATCamp CHNM last year – in light of McMastergate, the fact that the majority of fellowships in DH are post-docs who are placed in libraries, and that I am a hacktivist at heart: what is the role of the LIBRARIAN in the nitty gritty work of digital humanities, and more importantly, is the training matching the needs of the field? Further, when and how will the DH community begin to advocate for alt-LISers and offer fellowships or support to MLIS students in Scholarly Communications, Data Management, Digital Archives or other areas of import in which the community needs qualified individuals? What steps does Library Land need to take to fully join and develop these “collaborative partnerships” with the DHers? Or can it ever be, since library science education broadly trains ALL types of librarians?

To many in the history field and in libraries, it is unclear what the role of the library should be in digital humanities. This is not to imply that there is no role for libraries – only that this role has not yet been widely developed and adopted effectively. Libraries remain very much in transition when it comes to expanding models for supporting research on campus. – RSS4S History Project Interim Report

A colleague of mine often half jokes that librarianship as a whole suffers from an inferiority complex. I’m trying actively to avoid that in my work, and hope this doesn’t come off that way. I’m definitely not trying to stake out a turf war for the soul of the library. I suppose I am hoping to better define my own position as a pseudo-librarian in an evolving digital landscape of library services, and how that will fit with my interests in digital humanities. I’d also like to broach the topic for discussion, especially with our Emory DiSC Colleagues in town, as they seem to have worked out some productive ways of addressing the “Librarian in DH.”

Some readings to consult:

• What’s a Librarian?
• Of Hybrarians, Scholar-Librarians, Academic Refugees and Feral Professionals
• ARL’s Digital Humanities SPEC Kit (Executive Summary and Table of Contents PDF)
• Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries at NYPL
• Or basically anything from Miriam Posner’s fascinating and comprehensive DH and The Library Bibliography.

Ps. What work have I been doing, you ask? Open Access Public Policy advocacy, institutional repository management, Outreach and Education on open access, digital scholarship and author’s rights, and holding lots of meetings with lawyers concerning copyright, fair use and intellectual property. Nothing I was trained to do in library school.

Another meeting with @floridastate General Counsel on copyright and fair use. This is becoming a biweekly thing for me. #scholcomm — Micah Vandegrift (@micahvandegrift) February 23, 2012

I’m interested in the ways that games, game studies, libraries, digital humanities, and liberal arts curriculum intersect, even though I’m not always completely sure how they intersect, especially from a pedagogical perspective.  I noticed the official, legal definition of “humanities” linked to on the THATCamp SE blog, and games is not explicitly listed among the disciplines humanistic scholars study, even though games definitely lead us to ask questions about language, history, ethics, etc.

I also realize that there is already a ton of great work in the THATcamp community on games going on (indeed, if this is truly my interest I may have signed up for the wrong THATcamp!).  Still, I would welcome some more discussions about games, humanities, liberal arts education, and libraries at this (un)conference for a few reasons.

First, my institution, the University of Montevallo, has a strong commitment to the liberal arts as a foundation for an education leading to “meaningful employment and responsible, informed citizenship.”  Second, one of our newest curricular expansions is the addition of a Game Studies minor.  There are many interdisciplinary conversations about games happening on our campus, and these include gaming and information literacy, or as I like to think of it more broadly, gaming and preparing for life in a participatory democracy.  In the past year, our library has hosted several gaming events at our library, which have been part of the ALA’s National Gaming Day @ your library events.

I was also compelled by a round-table panel this past summer at the New York Public Library called “Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries.”  A video of the event is on the NYPL page.  Most applicable is Kari Kraus’s talk, which begins around the 18 minute mark.

Kraus claims that the figure of the gamer shadows nearly all groundbreaking digital preservation work that happens today.  I think the implications of this statement are worth discussing.

Some of the questions I have in mind are:

• What role do libraries play in preserving games as a part of the cultural record, and how should libraries go about this?
• What other models for preserving games as a tool to teach from a humanities perspective exist?
• How can we preserve, annotate, and document games and game play to emphasize ways of knowing, learning, and participating in society?

I’m really excited about the types of DH projects university folks are creating. I’m also curious about discussing more applied DH projects that meet community needs and serve  people beyond university walls. Universities have notoriously contentious community relations and it seems like more intentional collaborative outreach could help. If communities were involved in DH, what kind of projects would be prioritized? I’d like to brainstorm ways to create community centered projects that not only advance academic goals, but help make our world a better place. What kind of SouthEast specific community based project can be dreamed up? All power to the people!

Having left an institute, Texas A&M, with a strong DH community and coming to ORNL which does not have a community of its own. I’ve been thinking about trying to bring together people to create a local community.

This session would be to talk about strategies, techniques, and challenges others are facing and have faced in their own localities and how we can get build DH even in areas where the activity may not be seen as favorably.

I was struck by a blog post from the Miram Posner’s Blog entitled,  “Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code.”

She writes:

Here, there, and everywhere, we’re being told: A DHer should code! Don’t know how?Learn! The work that’s getting noticed, one can’t help but see, is code. As digital humanities winds its way into academic departments, it seems reasonable to predict that the work that will get people jobs — the work that marks a real digital humanist — will be work that shows that you can code.

And that work is overwhelmingly by men. There are some important exceptions, but the pattern is pretty clear.

Is Digital Humanities equal parts Digital and Humanities, or are we privileging one area over another?  Is it easier to call yourself a “Digital Humanist” if you are more “digital” than “humanist”?

Can humanists who like to play with computers really call ourselves “DHers”?

If we say that humanists need to learn to code, should we also ask that coders learn Humanities, or should we admit we come to this profession with a preformatted division of labor?

I think this is an important discussion to have.

Universities are offering mega-classes online for no cost, the badge movement is growing, and it appears that Higher Education might be headed for a major overhall.

• What exactly are “badges”?
• Who is offering them?
• Who is earning them?
• Who is accepting them?
• What do they mean for the future of Higher Education?

I think it would be great for everyone to share what they know about this growing phenomenon.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an initiative that has brought together “leading experts in libraries, technology, law, and education” to develop a “realistic and detailed workplan” for launching “the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all.” (see dp.la for more information about the project)

This session will offer an opportunity to get caught up on the latest DPLA developments from DPLA Workstreams.

As a former member of the DLF DPLA Beta Sprint and IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project, I am able to lead a variety of discussions about DPLA.  We also hope that Emily Gore, member of the Technical Aspects Workstream, will be able to join us.

In the spirit of an un-conference,  this post is also a call for your comments. What do you want to know about DPLA?  Are you working on a DPLA project?  Want to know what DPLA means for your collections?  What does should a DPLA mean for academic and public humanities scholars? Join us!

While I am perfectly willing to discuss broader digital video issues, I would like to focus on adding video segments and annotation to Omeka, specifically Omeka Exhibits. I feel that rather than putting the burden of video editing, that is finding and cutting all the video segments you want to use from say a two hour interview, on the creator of the video in order to upload those segments individually as Omeka items to get the highlights or often the significant parts of the video online is not the best approach. I am proposing that we allow access to the entire video but that we can segment and annotate that video in a separate tool, in this case the Annotator’s Workbench (AWB), an open source, Java tool that allows the segmentation and annotation of video files, producing an xml file that contains this information. I then want to upload that xml file as a set of Omeka items that are based on the segments and annotations I created in the AWB. I should then be able to use those video segments and annotations as items in an exhibit without having to create a bunch of individual video files. I have done some work with this and would like to show everyone where the project stands and get input on whether such a plugin is valuable and how it might be improved.

What digital video segmentation and annotation might look like in Omeka

I might add that I have a NEH ODH start-up grant to work on this project so this session can have some direct impact on how such a plugin would be built.