Digital collections offer researchers opportunities to develop new skills and scholarly communications networks

Digital collections, such as those built in libraries and other cultural heritage institutions, are being used less as mere static repositories but rather as live, interactive resources. Harriett Green and Angela Courtney have examined humanities researchers’ needs for digital collections and learned that they are not only essential to scholars’ ability to access materials but also influence multiple aspects of their research practices. Digital collections offer researchers opportunities to develop their digital scholarship skills and enhance their scholarly communications activities

Humanities Collaborations and Research Practices: Investigating New Modes of Collaborative Humanities Scholarship

This paper presents preliminary findings from “Humanities Collaborations and Research Practices: Exploring Scholarship in the Global Midwest,” (HCRP), a collaborative project led by librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University that examines how collaborative and experimental research practices in the humanities affects scholarly practices, scholarly communication, and research outcomes. The HCRP study examines a series of multi-institutional humanities research projects funded by the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Global Midwest initiative, a Mellon Foundation-funded consortium of Midwest university humanities centers. We conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with scholars from diverse humanities disciplines who were HWW Global Midwest awardees. The interviews explore how scholars share data, build self-generated research environment infrastructures for supporting data sharing and communications, and frame their collaborations in the context of broader goals. This short paper will offer new perspectives on scholarly communications and data curation in the humanities, as it will share valuable insights into how information professionals can engage with collaborative, experimental, and multimodal research

Digging, Reaching, and Learning: An Update on the First Year of the HathiTrust Research Center's Librarian Training Program

The HathiTrust Research Center is leading an IMLS-funded multi-institutional project that seeks to arm librarians with practical skills in text mining methods and knowledge of trends in digital scholarship. This poster will offer an overview of the instructional design approaches used in developing the curriculum, and an analysis of the assessment and revision process.Ope

State Art Collection 1987-2006

The State Art Collection:1987 - 2006 publication contains some facts about the history of the collection but focuses, primarily, on works purchased since 1987. It reveals some interesting statistical information that breaks down the collection by medium. A comprehensive list of the State Art Collection Acquisitions Committee, 1987 - 2006 recognizes individuals who have been instrumental in the decision making process. Lastly, the works presented in this publication are contextualized through an interpretive essay

Scholarly Needs for Text Analysis Resources: A User Assessment Study for the HathiTrust Research Center

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) is undertaking a study to better understand the needs of current and potential users of the center’s tools and services for computational text analysis. In this paper, we report on the results of the first phase of the study, which consisted of interviews with scholars, administrators, and librarians whose work involves text data mining. Our study reveals that text analysis workflows are specific to the individual research project and are often nonlinear. In spite of, and in some cases because of, the wealth of textual data available, scholars find it most difficult to locate, access, and curate textual data for their research. While the goals of the study directly relate to research and development for the HTRC, our results are useful for other large-scale data providers developing solutions for allowing computational access to their content

Building a Bridge to Next Generation DH Services in Libraries with a Campus Needs Assessment

This poster reports on a needs assessment for digital humanities library services undertaken at large research university in order to provide a basis for transition to a next phase of Digital Humanities (DH) support at a library supporting a growing amount of DH work on campus. It reports key findings and how the library services will evolve to meet needs identified on campus. The full report on which this presentation is based is available at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100081Ope

HathiTrust Research Center User Requirements Study White Paper

This paper presents findings from an investigation into trends and practices in humanities and social sciences research that incorporates text data mining. As affiliates of the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), the purpose of our study was to illuminate researcher needs and expectations for text data, tools, and training for text mining in order to better understand our current and potential user community. Results of our study have and will continue to inform development of HTRC tools and services for computational text analysis.Ope

Scholarly Commons Digital Humanities Needs Assessment Study

The members of the Digital Humanities Needs Assessment Working Group completed an analysis of current activities and future needs for digital humanities and digital scholarship-oriented research and teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This study originated as an investigation into the particular practices and work of digital humanities researchers, and how the University Library could support the needs for digital humanities research, particularly via the resources and expertise provided in the Scholarly Commons. This report delivers findings gathered via interviews and follow-up survey, and analyzed by the Working Group. It identifies thematic Areas of Need and also proposed Recommendations for the Library.Ope

"Digging deeper, reaching further: libraries empowering users to mine the HathiTrust Digital Library resources" curriculum

Modern academic librarianship demands reconfigured skillsets and expertise to meet the rapidly evolving, data-driven needs of today’s students, faculty, and researchers as they pursue digital scholarship and produce immense amounts of research data. These rapid developments in user needs and research services speak to an urgent need to provide training for academic librarians to support digital scholarship. We seek to address this need in “Digging Deeper, Reaching Further: Libraries Empowering Users to Mine the HathiTrust Digital Library Resources,” a three-year project funded by a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The curriculum developed by the DDRF project leverages the tools and data from HathiTrust Research Center to provide a “train the trainer” curriculum for library and information professionals on text mining and digital scholarship methods.IMLS #RE-00-15-0112-15Ope

Hogs and Harvesters in the Digital Age: The Farm, Field, and Fireside Collection at the UIUC Library

The Farm, Field, and Fireside collection is a newly created and extensive digital archive of farm newspapers published in the Midwest from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1940s and 1950s. The wide array of publications in the collection--ranging from the hog farmer's Berkshire Stockman to the women's publication The Farmer's Wife --are an invaluable source of primary research materials and they offer a fascinating perspective on historical issues during a pivotal period of economic, social, and political growth in the United States. The Farm, Field, and Fireside Collection is a stellar example of a digital library created to preserve a library's archived materials, and it employed digital tools for information organization, such as metadata to organize the collection and make it user accessible. The Farm, Field, and Fireside collection also is deeply immersed in the technologies of remembrance and forgetting, as it seeks to unearth and preserve a core part of Midwestern history. This poster will discuss the creation and maintenance of the Farm, Field, and Fireside digital newspaper archive, and examine the intent behind its creation for both the University of Illinois faculty, students, and staff, and scholarly communities at-large. The poster will explore: What research and information resources needs are addressed by the Farm, Field, and Fireside Collection? What was the most effective way of organizing the resources for students and researchers to use? The poster will also review the topical web research guides that were created to support research done with the Farm, Field, and Fireside collection. This part of the poster will examine questions such as: What was the most effective and efficient format for delivering the research guides? How could we utilize the guides to connect the digital newspaper archive to the Library's other subject and special collections? What type of background content was needed in the research guides in order to present the collection's items as viable sources for research? The poster session will explain how we addressed these issues in the maintenance and enhancement of the digital newspaper archive with Olive ActivePaper Librarian software, the Library's promotion of the collection to interested communities, and the process of creating web research guides to cement the Collection's interdisciplinary connections to the Library's other print and digital collections. This poster will offer an intriguing examination of a new and wholly unique digital archive that is a valuable resource for historians, digital humanists, student scholars, librarians, and the general public at large