Dreaming Big: Library-led Digital Scholarship for Undergraduates at a Small Institution

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted a student-focused, library-led initiative designed to promote creative undergraduate research: the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship. The fellowship is a ten-week, paid summer program for rising sophomores and juniors that introduces the student fellows to digital scholarship, exposes them to a range of digital tools, and provides space for them to converse with appropriate partners about research practices and possibilities. Unlike other research fellowship opportunities, the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship is programmatic, based on a curriculum designed to provide students a broad introduction to digital scholarship. Digital tools, project management, documentation, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship are equally considered. While a student-created, public-facing project is an expected outcome of the fellowship, the process of getting to that point is the primary pedagogical emphasis. Students are encouraged to use materials from Gettysburg College’s Special Collections & College Archives when conceiving their projects. Using our historic collections as the foundation of a digital project strengthens existing connections between the library and the academic curriculum and provides additional exposure to the library’s collections. The fellowship was inspired by digital scholarship initiatives at peer institutions and grew from the library’s position as a campus leader in supporting creative undergraduate research. By combining the best aspects from a variety of sources, we were able to create a new learning experience that allowed our students to start small and dream big

Successes and Challenges in Growing and Sustaining an Undergraduate Digital Scholarship Program

In July of 2017, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library completed the second iteration of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship, a library-led, student-focused program that introduces students to digital scholarship tools and methodology. Librarian R.C. Miessler discusses the successes and challenges of supporting a growing digital scholarship program, with a focus on its future sustainability and a vision of its expansion into a campus-wide initiative

Building a Home-Brew Text Message Notification System for Sierra

I am not a developer is a phrase I say more than I want. However, programming is something I\u27ve wanted to learn for a long time. When patrons began asking for text message notifications for circulating items, I took on the challenge to try to learn something new, and hacked together a basic text notification system that is both affordable and serves patron needs. Using the narrative of this tool\u27s creation as a foundation, this presentation will provide resources to get started in web development for Sierra using SQL, PHP, and Twilio

Digital Scholarship, with Undergraduates, in the Library

Three different Pennsylvania liberal arts colleges, Lafayette, Gettysburg, and Bucknell, have adopted library-led summer internship models as part of the effort to teach students about research using digital methods. Panelists from these colleges discuss perspectives on designing, leading, and adapting such programs, and on collaborating within and between institutions

Review: War Stories by Gabrielle Atwood Halko

War Stories, a digital project created by Gabrielle Atwood Halko of West Chester University, seeks to frame the narrative of World War II (WWII) through the stories of children, particularly children in internment or under occupation. Halko starts with the assumption that visitors to the website are unaware of these stories, and the site largely frames itself as an educational tool that aggregates primary and secondary sources related to children during WWII. [excerpt

The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs: A Digital History

This poster provides a high-level overview of The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs: A Digital History project, giving information on its creation, the collection of letters, how it has used digital mapping, and its use in the classroom

Designing Digital Projects for Your Courses

R.C. Miessler (Systems Librarian) and John Dettinger (Assistant Director of User Services) deliver a 30-minute workshop on how to design digital projects for your courses. They provide a model for digital project assignment design, including planning, instruction, and assessment strategies, as well as address how to successfully negotiate copyright concerns

\u27Shut Up and Take the Mellon Money!\u27: Adapting a Library-Led Digital Humanities Program to Accommodate Grant Funding.

This presentation discusses how the team of librarians who facilitate Musselman Library\u27s Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship program have negotiated the shift from local to grant funding, focusing on how we have organized our team and adapted program outcomes, assessment, and reporting to fit the requirements of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Presidential Leadership Grant. We review some unexpected challenges when working with grant funding and how we have successfully worked within the parameters of the grant to fit our needs locally

Developing a Community of Practice Among Undergraduate Digital Scholars

In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library piloted the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship (DSSF), a library-led, student-centered introduction to digital scholarship. For 10 weeks, a cohort of three undergraduate student fellows were introduced to digital tools, project management, research skills, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship, with the culmination the creation and presentation of a digital scholarship project. While the DSSF program is a library initiative, it drew support from partners from across campus, leveraging instructional support and the experience of digital scholarship practitioners from multiple departments to implement a broad curriculum in digital scholarship. The partners—who included the Educational Technology department, the Civil War Institute, and Gettysburg College faculty with a history of using digital pedagogy techniques in the classroom—worked with librarians to teach digital tools, discuss digital scholarship concepts, and help the student fellows realize the potential of their digital projects. The fellowship was a success, and the work of the Digital Scholarship Fellows continued into the fall and spring semesters as they acted as peer mentors, supporting digital scholarship work in the classroom by leading workshops, providing one-on-one consultations, and assisting with project management. Cross-departmental support for digital scholarship continued beyond the summer program, as librarians and educational technologists worked closely with faculty during the academic year to support digital classroom assignments when the fellows were supporting a class. Librarians R.C. Miessler and Janelle Wertzberger discuss the program, now in its 2nd year, with an emphasis on the ways in which the digital scholarship community of practice has been strengthened on the Gettysburg College campus through collaborative partnerships, student mentoring, and increased awareness of the value of digital scholarship activity in the classroom

Running Wires: Digital History in the Classroom and the Field

The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs is a digital history project that publishes the letters of a British World War I officer 100 years to the day they were written. By telling the story of one person, we have aimed to humanize a dehumanizing war and supported the effort to commemorate the centennial of the conflict. While the project was conceived with pedagogy in mind, it has grown beyond the letters and crossed boundaries: from the analog to the digital, from the classroom to the public, and from the archives to the field