One challenge to guiding students through the research process is the focus on finding an answer – any answer – as quickly and efficiently as possible. Good ideas and new insights get tossed aside and trampled in the process. Rich sources and complex ideas don’t stand a chance against their leaner, narrower competitors. In this session, participants are invited to find tools, sites, or physical objects with the purpose of inspiring curiosity and exploration. You may think up brain-teasers to thwart simple google searches, play with novel ways of turning searches inside-out and backwards, or think up ways to ask questions or create games that outsmart our usual habit of beating a path to the most obvious solution.

I would like to propose a session about using Scripto to organize crowdsourcing projects with cultural heritage resources. Specifically, I’d like to talk about how to use transcription tools (are there others?) to get students, alumni, and community members working with our extensive archival collections of documents dating from the Civil War through to the present and to create online communities of transcribers, editors, and researchers. So far I haven’t even managed to get Scripto installed as a plug-in to Omeka (or any other platform), so I am seeking both technical assistance and an opportunity to brainstorm about pedagogical and community-building opportunities!

What are the relationships between DH and Online Teaching? In this talk session, I imagine a discussion of the (possible) overlaps, contradictions, infusions, and rejections between these two “online” activities. Is the DH scholar also a DH online teacher? In what ways could DH inform online teaching (or online pedagogy inform DH)? In what ways are these two activities antithetical?

In the interest of continuing our discussion from today’s BootCamp about WordPress, I would like to propose a session on how to best apply WordPress for active students, scholars, and job-seekers in the humanities. Since the needs and interests of those who work in the humanities are very different from those who work in STEM, business, and other fields, what are some of the key elements to a successful site in humanities disciplines? How do we manage self-promotion, possible new connections (interdisciplinary and within disciplines), and creative digital ways to present our work?

Recently I’ve been part of a project to building a timeline and set of resources on resistance, direct action and organizing across the history of UW-Milwaukee. This is based on examination of archives at the UWM Library, as well as interviews with past participants. The timeline describes civil rights mobilization, anti-war efforts, labor organizing, the establishment and progress of the Black Student Union, alter-globalization movement on campus, Latin American solidarity campaigns, the Palermo Boycott movement, Gay Liberation Organization, police accountability efforts and many other efforts across UWM’s sixty year history. These resources have currently informed several off-campus discussions as well as a walking tour that explored some of the contentious sites of resistance.

For this session, I’m proposing a discussion on ways to use digital resources to make these resources more accessible, building tools to make forgotten moments of resistance be visible to more people, in ways that can inform current activism, organization and teaching. I am interested in broadening and expanding the process of research and presentation, to be able to spread awareness of extraordinary moments in the campus history. Such resources can also be a tool to explore the underlying structures that have created success and failure for various attempts to shift power within the university.

For format, this would  involve a 10 minute presentation on some of the content that has been currently gathered, followed by extended open discussion on ways to expand the virtual presence for such materials.

This could be either a “talking” or “making” session depending on what we want out of it, but I thought THATCamp might be a good place to have an extended conversation about processes of promotion, tenure, and peer review in the digital age. As a current PhD student who thinks of traditional modes of scholarly production (books, articles, etc.) as somewhat limiting conceptually and, in certain respects, intellectually and is eager to cultivate a cv/resume that features a range of digital projects and collaborative experiences that, in all likelihood, deviate from what my department—history—thinks of as “creditable” scholarship, I feel like now is the perfect time to strategize ways to push our respective departments in more open-minded directions when it comes to evaluating and appreciating the methods and results of the digital work we are producing.

This issue is perhaps best described by Alex Galarza, Jason Heppler and Douglas Seefeldt in their call to redefine historical scholarship at the 2012 AHA:

“Digital tools are transforming the practice of history, yet junior scholars and graduate students are facing obstacles and risks to their professional advancement in using methods unrecognized as rigorous scholarly work. Their peers and evaluators are often unable or unwilling to address the scholarship on its merits…The disconnect between traditional evaluation and training and new digital methods means young scholars take on greater risks when dividing their limited time and attention on new methods that ultimately may not ever face scholarly evaluation on par with traditional scholarly production.”

Not to be assigning homework for a fun, informal event like THATCamp, but The Journal of the Digital Humanities recently did a good job of explaining what is at stake regarding the assessment and review of digital scholarship, while also providing some solutions and potential guidelines for academic departments and scholars to follow.

Therefore, I propose we talk about promotion, tenure, and peer review as it relates to the various digital projects we and others are pouring our time and mental energies into. If we are feeling up for the challenge, we could even draft a white paper to present to our respective departments that illustrates the merits of digital scholarship and how it might be properly assessed in line with existing disciplinary standards. Sure nothing may come of it, but at least we’ll have made our voices heard.

At UWM we’ve been digitizing our archival and special collections materials since 2001 – right now we have nearly 120,000 objects available online and that number is growing. Like us, many libraries and archives are working toward greater access to archival collections via digitization. We do this to provide broader and open access to the public so people can make new uses of these materials, to increase access for research and teaching, and potentially to ease the burden on fragile physical items.

At THATCamp, I’m interested in inviting a lively discussion about how researchers, instructors, artists, students, etc… actually use these digitized archival collections, especially now that we’ve entered an age of big data, access to massive corpora, and expectations of open and online access.

At UWM we have begun to experiment with making entire archival collections available online. But through design or through necessity, given limited resources and space, most of what we have made available to date are selections from collections, rather than the whole thing (stay tuned, though …). But what changes when we go big? Making complete collections available online raises a number of provocative questions about how archives might be used and how archival research is conducted.

We have seen examples of how access to massive corpora of digitized texts can enable researchers to ask questions they couldn’t have asked before. What does access to more and more (but still only a fraction of) digitized archival collections enable? What are the benefits?; what new questions can be engaged (and by whom) with access to tools like full text searching, metadata structures that reinforce relationships between objects, and simply being able to access disparate collections in a homogeneous environment; can new relationships and contexts become apparent? What are the costs when you consult a digital rather than a physical artifact; what is crucial about consulting the physical object and what isn’t; are relationships between materials and the context of the collection still apparent in an online environment; does research that relies entirely on digital surrogates count in places like academia; does its “aura” matter?

Ultimately, the point in talking through these questions would be to come up with some best practices/protocols, etc. for how can we make research in the digitized archives richer and more productive.

I want to propose a Talk session in which THATCampers discuss the issues related to the “best way” to present photographs and video online. The photos and video were gathered in visits to Libya and Syria over the last two years (during their revolutions). What have people used to accomplish this in the past?” What are the most engaging ways this kind of material (photographs and video) can be presented?

Some additional info on my project:
The photographs are of people (portraits), people in demonstrations, fighters, damaged buildings, and of graffiti. The video runs the gamut of topics but much of it is interviews of Libyans and Syrians about their experiences during their revolutions. The graffiti is focused on the “revolutionary” graffiti I found in both places. In Libya much of it was (and all the interviews were) in English. In Syria, most of the graffiti and the interviews are in Arabic. I would like to be able to see, for example, how this material could be used as a project for the Digital Humanities Lab at UWM.

Greetings THATCampers,

We are very excited to announce the two locations for THATCamp Milwaukee 2014. That’s right, we are hosting our THATCamp at two distinct Milwaukee locations!

On Friday, May 23rd, we will feature a “Bootcamp” workshop series in the UW-Milwaukee Library’s Digital Humanities Lab. The DH lab is located on the UWM library’s second floor in the East Wing. The UWM library’s address is 2311 E Hartford Ave.

The Friday Bootcamp begins at 8:00am with breakfast, coffee, and introductions and lasts until 4:00pm. You will have an opportunity to attend at least three workshops. Unfortunately, lunch will not be provided on this day. However, there are plenty of dining options within walking distance. Please stay tuned for more information regarding scheduling and the workshops themselves. We do anticipate an exciting slate of workshops dealing with everything from mobile app development to the essentials of web design and search.

Then on Saturday, May 24th, we will all come back together for the THATCamp itself. The Saturday THATCamp—where we break out for and discuss our self-proposed sessions—will take place on the first floor of UWM’s Zilber School of Public Health. Zilber is located in the re-purposed Pabst Brewery complex near downtown. The school’s address is 1240 N 10th Street. Information regarding public transportation options and parking forthcoming. On Saturday, we will be providing you with some delicious FREE lunch (vegetarian friendly), so lets work up a big appetite talking about all things digital!

Note: If you registered for THATCamp, your camper profile should appear on the campers page after approval. That is the only action you need to take in terms of registering and you can expect that you have been admitted to the event. Also, please remember that our THATCamp is only as good as we make it. Now is the time to start proposing some THATCamp sessions on this very website. You can do so by clicking on the “Propose” menu option and following the step-by-step directions. Proposing THATCamp sessions need not be an agonizing process. They can take the form of a simple, well constructed question or be of more detail. Of course, the more thought-provoking and fully-formed the session proposal, the better the session (I can only assume)!

Please do not hesitate to email me with any questions: tchakir2@uwm.edu

Welcome to THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) Milwaukee 2014, an (un)conference organized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library’s Digital Humanities Lab and the UWM History Department. In this collegial setting, we invite you to have a little fun talking about new media and its wider application in the humanities, other scholarly disciplines, and the world beyond. Regardless of technical expertise or skill level, THATCamp Milwaukee provides an open and accessible space to “get your feet wet,” so to speak, in the digital humanities. Above all, it is a place to learn, experiment, and create.

For instance, you may have a project you are working on or about to start and want to brainstorm new ideas. Or perhaps you’re looking to add some digital elements to an existing project. Maybe you’re thinking about making a personal website and need to discuss what this might look like, or which platform to choose when establishing your online presence. Others may wish to lead more advanced discussions about digital pedagogy, 3D printing, topic modeling, or best practices in web design and development. No matter the subject, THATCamp’s informal, democratic session structure allows for spontaneity and collaboration. By working together, we all gain a better understanding of the digital humanities and its many possibilities in universities, libraries, museums, and other venues.

Still, for THATCamp to succeed, we need our “campers” to propose engaging and interesting sessions. Once you have registered for the unconference, take some time to craft a session proposal on our THATCamp blog. There is no required length to each post and your ideas need not be fully formed. We just want to have a good sense of what you’d like to talk about and the discussion should take off from there.

This particular THATCamp is loosely based around the theme of building community through the digital humanities. Many of the DH Lab’s initial projects focus on public-facing and community-oriented projects that document, visualize, and contextualize the city and state where we’re headquartered – Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Other UWM projects – proposed or underway –  look outward to other virtually imagined communities around the nation and the world.  The DH Lab is an experimental and growing community itself, grounded in the same improvisational spirit that animates THATCamp’s organizers.