Digital Tools & Resources for Faculty

Anna Newman and Vika Zafrin BU Libraries — Services April 2017

Introduction

This is an annotated list of some resources we think you will find useful as you work to re-consider existing courses — and create new ones — in light of the work of the BU Task Force on General Education. These are just some starting points; a list like this is always incomplete. Would you like to sit down together and brainstorm digital sources, tools, and methodologies as you revise an existing course or create a new one? Please email us at [email protected]. We also invite you to visit our website and sign up for our mailing list using the short form in the sidebar.

A note on the availability of technological help and infrastructure: services around digital scholarship and pedagogy at BU are young. Tech infrastructure is often built in response to an existing need. Some things you will need, we do not yet have to offer; but we would like to work with you to find solutions, up to and including building new infrastructure.

Digital history resources for research and teaching

Digital Public Library of America

Aggregates over 15 million digital items from the nation’s libraries, archives, and museums. Everything from world maps to Americana photographs to slavery abolishing ordinances. Multiple ways of exploring the collections, including search, Explore by Place, Explore by Date, and curated digital exhibitions. Has an API, encourages app development, and offers a list of over 30 third-party apps that draw on DPLA materials.

Texas Slavery Project

By University of . “Examines the spread of American slavery into the borderlands between the United States and Mexico in the decades between 1820 and 1850.” Has a map with a timeline and a customizable graph that draws on an underlying database; the population database is browse-able and searchable. Separate primary sources section offers full text of the slavery-relevant sections of five different publications from legislation to diplomatic correspondence to newspapers.

The HistoryMakers

“The Nation’s Largest African American Video Oral History Collection.” A treasure trove of interviews created by the nonprofit behind it. “By recording, preserving and sharing the life stories of thousands of African Americans, from President Barack Obama to the oldest living black cowboy, The HistoryMakers is a leader in helping to educate and enlighten millions worldwide through refashioning a more inclusive record of American history.” N.B.: the interviews themselves are available via BU’s institutional subscription, linked above. The interface for those is not our favorite, but the content is worth it. The public site is a much better experience aesthetically; the Makers menu item in particular gives a full listing of those interviewed for the project, with photos and brief bios.

Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution

By the nonprofit Clio: Visualizing History. This digital exhibit “highlights the collective action and individual achievements of women from the 1940s to the present, exploring the power and complexity of gender consciousness in modern American life.”

Data sets

There are many. A comprehensive list of humanities data sets does not exist, though here’s an extensive one (DH Toy Chest) curated by Alan Liu of UCSB. If you’d like more, please get in touch to talk about what you’d like to teach, and we can research available data sets together.

Digital Islamic Humanities Project

By Brown University. Research initiative “host[ing] a series of frequent gatherings, workshops, symposia, and other kinds of research projects, all oriented around the digital study of the Islamic world.” The Resources section has links to textual databases, manuscript and image collections, online dictionaries, and other useful resources.

Europeana

Extensive pan-European digital cultural heritage resource. Materials from GLAM — galleries, libraries, archives, and museums — from all over Europe. SHARE

Consortial higher ed initiative seeking to “maximize research impact by making research widely accessible, discoverable, and reusable.” They do this by aggregating metadata about what they call “research events” — which can be anything from the publication of an article to the deposit of research data into a digital repository, and also grant proposals, preprints, presentations, etc.

OER Commons

Database of over 50,000 open educational resources (OERs), including syllabi, online courses, class assignments, open textbooks, and primary sources. Users can search by subject area and material type, and all resources are free to use and reuse. OER Commons also has subject collections of OERs curated by educators. Created and maintained by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education.

Tools Relevant to Digital History

DiRT — Digital Research Tools Directory

“Registry of digital research tools for scholarly use.” Users can browse lists of tools categorized by function and find a short description and basic technical information for each tool. The directory is open to contributions from anyone, and is monitored by an editorial board. The directory does not contain reviews of the tools it collects, but it is a good starting point for further exploration and assessment of digital research tools.

Programming Historian

Collection of “novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate their research.” Lessons cover topics such as data management, data manipulation, mapping and GIS, and digital exhibits. Good resource for discovering and exploring digital history tools.

Mapping and Timelines

TimelineJS

Easy-to-use interactive timeline creation tool, which integrates media from a variety of sources, including Flickr, , Wikipedia, YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud. Each timeline is based on a Google spreadsheet and can be displayed on a website or blog. Free and open source, it is created and maintained by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University. You’ll need: Google Apps account; website for hosting, such as Wordpress (contact DiSc at [email protected]) Sample projects: Collection of example timelines

StoryMapJS

Storytelling and mapping tool, which highlights the locations of a series of events and integrates media from a variety of sources, including Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud. Can be displayed on a custom website, Wordpress, Squarespace, or Wix. Free and open source, it is created and maintained by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University. You’ll need: Google Apps account; website for hosting, such as Wordpress (contact DiSc at [email protected]) Sample projects: Collection of example StoryMaps

Historypin

Crowdsourced archive of historical photos, videos, audio recordings, and personal recollections that are “pinned” to Google Maps. Users can create collections and tours composed of their pins. You’ll need: free Historypin account Sample projects: Mapping San Francisco’s 1915 World Fair, Explore Chicago: The Lincoln Park Neighborhoods’s Collection

Neatline

Add-on to Omeka (see Digital Collections/Exhibits below) that allows users to create interactive maps and timelines using items collected and curated in Omeka. Neatline is developed by the Scholars’ Lab at the . You’ll need: hosted Omeka site (contact DiSc at [email protected]) Sample projects: Collection of Neatline demos

Google Maps

For basic mapping projects, enables users to create maps with markers and annotations. You’ll need: Google Apps account Sample projects: U.S. Civil War, Lewis and Clark’s expedition QGIS

Free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) tool, which supports more advanced mapping and spatial analysis projects. You’ll need: Download QGIS (Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix supported) General Resources: DH GIS Projects: Annotated list of GIS projects, created using a variety of tools Digital Timelines: Overview of why and how to use a timelines-based assignment

Data Visualization

Palladio

Web-based tool that allows users to upload structured data and visual data in a variety of ways, including mapping and network graphs. Free and open source, Palladio is developed at Humanities + Design, . You’ll need: Web browser Sample projects: Digital History Methods at Rice

Gephi

Free and open source visualization tool, which supports more advanced graph and network visualizations. You’ll need: Download Gephi (Mac, Windows, Linux supported) Sample projects: Viral Texts, Mapping the Republic of Letters

D3.js

JavaScript library for producing data visualizations in web browsers that builds on existing SVG, HTML5, and CSS standards. Knowledge of these standards and the JavaScript programming language are necessary, so this is best for more advanced data visualization projects. You’ll need: Contact [email protected] Sample projects: D3 Gallery /Analysis

Voyant Tools

Web-based tool for analyzing digital texts. Users can input or upload a textual work and then analyze and visualize the text in a variety of ways. You’ll need: Web browser Sample projects: Lincoln Logarithms: Finding Meaning in Sermons, Digital History Methods at Rice

Juxta

Tool for comparing and visualizing different versions of a text. Free and open source, Juxta is available as both a download or as a beta web-based tool, Juxta Commons. You’ll need: Web browser or download Juxta Sample projects: Blake, or, The Huts of America, The Declaration of Independence, Wikipedia’s Climate Change pages

Bookworm

Tool for analyzing collections of text as data. To build a “bookworm” database, users run a script on input files of text and metadata; then they can analyze the dataset in a variety of ways. Some technical knowledge of command line and data manipulation techniques is necessary to build a bookworm, although users can run their own searches on existing bookworms, such as Chronicling America or the HathiTrust . You’ll need: Contact [email protected] Sample projects: The State of the Union in Context

Digital Collections/Exhibits

Omeka

Digital collection and exhibit platform. Users can upload collections of images, video, and audio files; create detailed descriptive metadata; and build digital exhibits that combine items in collections with narrative text. Of particular note is its add-on Neatline, which allows users to create interactive maps and timelines using items collected and curated in Omeka. Free and open source, Omeka is created and maintained by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and at . You’ll need: for basic exhibits, account with omeka.net; for more advanced digital collections and Neatline integration, hosted Omeka site (contact DiSc at [email protected]) Sample projects: Omeka Showcase, wiki of sites using Omeka

Wikis

There are many types of wiki software, including MediaWiki, Wiki.js, UserPress, and Git-Wiki. Which one you use depends partly on what you want to do with it. You’ll need: depends on software; contact DiSc at [email protected] Sample projects: History of Canada Online

Publishing/Blogging

Scalar

Publishing platform for long-form, digital scholarship, which enables digital writing through the integration of text and media from various sources. It also supports collaborative authoring and reader commentary. Free and open source, Scalar is a project of the Alliance of Networking Visual Culture. You’ll need: account with Scalar Sample projects: Digital Paxton, Black Quotidian

Wordpress

Popular website and blogging platform, which can be used to publish and disseminate scholarship. BU Wordpress is necessarily limited, though may be well suited to your needs. If it’s not (for example, if there are external plugins you’d like to use), please get in touch with DiSc. We can help you host your own install—the catch is, you or someone you hire will have to administer it. You’ll need: BU Wordpress (contact IS&T) or hosted Wordpress site (contact DiSc at [email protected])

Productivity/Collaboration

There are many tools available to enable productivity and collaboration. A few options are listed below, but DiSc can make further recommendations, based on your specific needs. • Document sharing: Google Docs, Dropbox • Citation/resource management: , RefWorks • Project management: Asana, Trello • Social media: Twitter, Storify

A great collective scholarly blog at the intersection of technology, pedagogy, and productivity is ProfHacker.

Working with Data

The tools referenced above may involve working with structured data, doing data cleaning or data manipulation. There are tools for that--many of which you can find on DiRt, or which we can recommend. These may include tools for editing XML (commonly used markup format for structured data), such as oXygen, TextWrangler (Mac), and Notepad++ (PC); OpenRefine (Excel on steroids) or regular expressions.

App Building

Building an app can require a significant amount of time and resources, for strategy, content creation, development, testing, and marketing. You could try to find funding for projects like this, but look for opportunities to creates apps based on customizable templates. For example, Curatescape allows users to create their own walking tour apps, based on an Omeka site. Sample site: Cleveland Historical.

Readings for Students

Digital History Reader

OER (open educational resource) by VirginiaTech. U.S. (colonial to present) and modern European history reader. Modules “designed for introductory-level survey courses at colleges and universities and for advanced history courses at the secondary level.” Digital History

OER by University of Houston. “The materials on this Web site include a U.S. history textbook; over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, supplemented by primary sources on slavery, Mexican American, Asian American, and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; succinct essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; and reference resources that include a database of annotated links, classroom handouts, chronologies, glossaries, an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images.” Site presents “inquiry-based” modules, allows students to build digital exhibits, and has teaching tools like multiple choice quizzes.

Readings and Resources for Faculty

Digital History @UM

University of Michigan. By far the best digital history pedagogical resource we’ve found. The digital history initiative at Michigan, spearheaded by graduate students, seeks to address a “gap in training” they see in their department through resource building and a series of workshops. The most useful sections of the website are: • DgHist Web Materials (linked lists of “general websites”, current digital history practitioners, university centers, digital history projects, seven courses/syllabi, and others) • DgHist Tools (broadly speaking—both software and methods)

Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web.

By Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. The seminal, if a bit dated, monograph on digital history. Still a relevant orientation to the academic pursuit of history on the web. Freely available on the web and also available for purchase as a paperback. One of its coauthors, Dan Cohen, is now directing the Digital Public Library of America (until June, when he will move to Northeastern.)

Teaching History in the Digital Age

By T. Mills Kelly. University of Michigan Press, 2013. Part of the University of Michigan’s series, this openly available book provides an overview of digital history through the processes of thinking, finding, analyzing, presenting, and making. Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities

By Modern Language Association, 2016ff. Open peer review website for what will eventually be a printed volume — “a curated collection of reusable and remixable pedagogical artifacts for humanities scholars.” Organized into keywords, each of which is curated by a noted scholar in the area. Each keyword article consists of a curatorial statement, digital artifacts (often existing pedagogical materials) illustrating the keyword and discussion around them, and a statement of the keyword’s applicability to digital pedagogy. At the time of this writing, there are 60 keywords in the collection.

Debates in the Digital Humanities

Two (so far) edited volumes of essays on contentious issues in digital humanities. Published by UMN Press, available for purchase in print, and also in their entirety for free online. See in particular Selisker, Hsu, Robertson, Blevins, Drucker.

Sample Courses and Syllabi

Courses

Topics in Digital History

George Mason University, Fall 2016. Students in this course collected primary sources and created digital exhibits about topics in the history of the Appalachian Trail. Ongoing project.

Experiments with the Getty’s Provenance Data

UCLA, Spring 2015. This course used the Getty Provenance Index to develop five case studies that explore different art history questions. Students first familiarized themselves with the dataset, formulated research questions, created textual and spatial visualizations of the dataset, and published long-form digital reports of their work.

Digital History Methods

Rice University, Spring 2014. This course explored digital history methods using a sample data set of nineteenth-century runaway slave ads. Students created visualizations of the paths of runaway slaves collected from jailers’ notices, performed textual analysis on the runaway slave ads, and created a Twitter account to publish excerpts from the advertisements.

Syllabi

Digital Public History (IUPUI, Spring 2017) Digital Middle Ages (Stanford, Winter 2016) Digital History (Central Connecticut State University, Fall 2016) Creating Digital History (NYU, Fall 2015) Digital History: Sources, Methods, Problems (Stanford, Fall 2014) The City (University of Washington, Winter 2013) The Digital Historian’s Toolkit (Stanford, Fall 2012)

Further sources of syllabi:

• Zotero collection of digital humanities syllabi (Note: syllabi are mainly from 2012-2013) • Humanities Commons digital humanities syllabi

To Keep an Eye On

Current Research in Digital History

2018 conference at GMU’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

Questions? Visit the Digital Scholarship Services website or email [email protected].