Category Archives: Global Studies

Global Studies, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot and Digitized: The Library of Lost Books

Leave a comment

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

In 2019 I have written about Footprints, a project that aims to track the circulation of printed ‘Jewish books’ around the world as it is evidenced through provenance research.[1] The Library of Lost Books is a “citizen science” (aka crowd sourcing) international project that similarly to Footprints, aims to trace books looted by the Nazis from the library of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums) and track their journey around the world through provenance data. Operating from 1872 until it was closed down by the Nazis in 1942, the Higher Institute was dedicated to the study of Jewish history and culture, as well as rabbinical studies in Liberal Judaism.[2] The original library is reported to have around 60,000 volumes, but only around 5,000 of them have been rediscovered since the war. The Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture in Jerusalem, with support from the German Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) and the German Ministry of Finance (BMF), has created this platform not only for the purpose of tracing the lost books, but also to commemorate and educate about the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin, its scholars, and its students.

The Library of Lost Books website features a database, an interactive map, and an online exhibition detailing the history and legacy of the Higher Institute. A great place to begin is with “The story of the missing books” and its three chapters (with optional narration). Chapter one gives the background story of the Higher Institute, its founders, and its academic landscape. The Higher Institute represented a modern current within Judaism, namely Liberal Judaism, that emphasizes universal values — personal freedom, individuality, and social responsibility. Chapter two describes the last years of the Higher Institute before it was shut down. It shows a chronology of systematic discrimination according to the Nazi ideology, explains why and how the books were moved out of the library, and brings detailed biographies of students and employees, some of whom kept working at the library as forced laborers until their deportation to concentration camps, while others managed to escape. This chapter also details the rescue efforts of part of the books before 1942. Chapter three details the fate of the books after the war; it explains how they were transferred to [nowadays] the Czech Republic, or were scattered in various libraries in Berlin. Yet, some books were relocated to the United States or Russia.  

The project owners are using “citizen science” (aka crowd sourcing) in their quest to identify the missing books. Users are encouraged to look at books in their local libraries or second-hand bookstores, cross-reference their findings with the virtual library, and share their findings through the platform, using a “lost and found” form. In order to support this provenance research, the project offers ‘hunting supplies’, including a detailed checklist that includes stamps, accession numbers, call numbers, and paper labels that might be found in or on the books. The goal is to virtually reunite the found books through the Library of Lost Books; the project owners specifically state that “physical copies will remain in their places where they were discovered, as that is also a part of their story.”[3]

The platform is also a teaching tool for educators. It includes learning units for students about pre-war Jewish life in Berlin, Nazi looting practices, provenance research, the importance of cultural heritage, and the roll of libraries in the pre-internet era. Besides English, all content on the platform has versions in German and Czech, as it is suspected that most of the books ended up in either Germany or the Czech Republic (although some were already located also in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel).

From the database view, one could browse the few thousands of books that were already identified so far. Browsing options are by book titles/authors/publication year, by owners (past and present), and by individuals or institutions that found the books. Clicking on a book entry, one gets full tracing information: gallery of associated images, supportive provenance evidence, and a timeline of related events, showing how the book traveled through time and various owners. See for example the eventful life of the title Zekhor le-Avraham : sheʼelot u-teshuvot – through interactive map. This book was published in 1837 in Istanbul, acquired by the Higher Institute (year unknown), looted in 1942, salvaged after the war, resurfaced in Jerusalem (year unknown), acquired by a private donor for UCLA in 1963, and currently held by UCLA. Similarly, thousands of books that were looted from the Higher Institute resurfaced years after the war and are now reunited again in the virtual library of lost books.   

Related resources:

Glickman, Mark, and Rachel Gould. Stolen Words : The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books / Mark Glickman ; Designed by Rachel Gould. 1st ed. Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania: The Jewish Publication Society, 2016. Digital. https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991058395754406011

Rydell, Anders. The Book Thieves : The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance / Anders Rydell ; Translated by Henning Koch. Trans. by Henning Koch. New York, New York: Viking, 2017. Print. https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991046059239706011

Peiss, Kathy Lee. Information Hunters : When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe / Kathy Peiss. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Digital. https://search.lib.utexas.edu/permalink/01UTAU_INST/9e1640/alma991058667683006011

[1] https://texlibris.lib.utexas.edu/2019/04/read-hot-and-digitized-footprints-the-chronotope-of-the-jewish-book/

[2] https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/the-library-of-lost-books/

[3] Citizen Science – Leo Baeck Institute

Global Studies, Illuminating Explorations

Illuminating Explorations: Israeli Cinema in the 20th Century

Leave a comment

“Illuminating Explorations” – This series of digital exhibits is designed to promote and celebrate UT Libraries collections in small-scale form. The exhibits will highlight unique materials to elevate awareness of a broad range of content. “Illuminating Explorations” will be created and released over time, with the intent of encouraging use of featured and related items, both digital and analog, in support of new inquiries, discoveries, enjoyment and further exploration.

The Israeli Cinema in the 20th Century  exhibition provides a concise survey of Israeli cinema from its beginnings up until the end of the 20th century, while highlighting the UT Libraries Israeli Cinema & Film Collection. Teaching and learning through filmic content provide valuable insights into historical events, cultural contexts, social issues, and artistic expressions. Textual content documents the evolution of film theory, criticism, and production. By preserving this body of knowledge and the intellectual heritage of filmmakers, critics, and scholars, the collection supports the research of Israeli society through cinema and film.

This is the Land (Barukh Agadati, 1935)
This is the Land (Barukh Agadati, 1935)

The exhibition starts with a short overview of the filmic production in Israel from its beginnings in pre-1948 Palestine until the end of the 1990s. It then divides into five sections: the first describes early beginnings through the 1950s, while the remaining four sections are organized by decades (60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s). Each section describes cinematic trends or phenomena, and shows how historical events were analyzed through films in that period of time. From early beginnings (as early as 1911) the filmic production promoted the Zionist project, and later on, well into the early 1960’s, it was utilized to support and promote the heroic Israeli ethos of ‘a few against many.’ During the years, the Israeli cinema has matured; from the 1960’s and on, it moved away from the national narrative, and developed a more critical treatment of societal processes, while venturing into genres such as satire, comedy, experimental, and personal cinema. As the young state developed and experienced major military conflicts, political shifts, and social and demographic changes, filmmakers reacted to those events in their work, dealing with topics such as the Israeli-Arab conflict, ethnic tensions, and queer life experiences from a personal point of view. 

Hill Halfon Doesn’t Answer (Assi Dayan, 1976)
Hill Halfon Doesn’t Answer (Assi Dayan, 1976)

While the exhibit highlights images of DVD covers from the Israeli Cinema & Film Collection, the broader collection includes many other items that could tell the story of Israeli cinema. UT Libraries collects everything that is or about Israeli cinema and film, including pre-1948 items, in all languages and in all formats. As would be expected, the collection is comprised of Audio-Visual content in various genres (features, documentaries, shorts, TV series) and on various media (VHS, DVD, streaming), but it also includes textual materials, either in print or digital, such as books, periodicals, film festival catalogs & programs, film screening programs, film school publications, original scripts, exhibition catalogs, promotional/commercial publications, theses and dissertations, instructional materials, film industry documentation, governmental reports, and ephemera. The entire collection is discoverable through the UT Libraries catalog.

Life according to Agfa (Assi Dayan, 1992)
Life according to Agfa (Assi Dayan, 1992)
Global Studies, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot and Digitized: The Complex History of Bananas Depicted in Artistic Works

Leave a comment

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

The banana has been used in many forms of art, ranging from paintings to sculpture, and demonstrated its popularity in iconography throughout the years. Why are bananas so popular, both as a fruit and as a modern emoji? One digital exhibit seeks to spread context behind the banana by organizing visual depictions of the fruit through Latin American artworks.

Banana Craze, a bilingual digital research project created by Juanita and Blanca Solano and translated by Banana Link, showcases the dark past and present of the banana industry, and how it has shaped the regions affected by the plantations. The database is available for viewing in both Spanish and English.

Before the globalization of the banana, the fruit itself was hardly eaten outside of its native regions. As the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) established plantations throughout Latin American countries and the Caribbean, bananas became a monoculture industry in itself, now being the number one sold fruit around the world.

The Banana Craze website itself is not only a visual spectacle, but it also features organizational tools so that the viewer can dive deeper into individual artists as well as explore the art on a timeline to provide historical context. For example, the images of this gold leafed banana plant can be found in Mariá José Argerenzio’s entry in the alphabetized index. Maria is an Ecuadorian artist who created the installation to emphasize the extraction of two major resources from Ecuador, bananas and gold, linking Spanish empire colonialism to more modern day practices that exacerbate the region’s environmental health and disparities in wealth.

The viewer can also explore the artworks by other subcategories, such as violences, ecosystems, and country location. Violences is one of the three thematic ways to view the website through the curatorial lenses of the exhibit creators. This framework exercises the function of a digital art exhibit, allowing viewers to explore the history of banana culture with selected artworks.

Building such an interactive online exhibit requires the use of a digital tool that is catered to accessible viewership. The meticulous metadata for each artwork blends seamlessly with each page, allowing me to search and view specific content, while keeping me immersed in the overall project. The multipage exhibits provide context and can function either as a digital archive or art database, depending on how I chose to begin my journey. I appreciated that I can view all the images and documents on the site without downloading any attachments. This provided for a seamless viewing experience.

The exhibit was a visual feast for the eyes. Its contrasting colors are electrifying, almost bordering on jarring, and produces an effective look as I went on to view the art and how they symbolize the practices that have affected the people, the land, and the traditions of Latin America and beyond.

Want to learn more about the history of bananas or protest art? Check out these resources from the UT Libraries:

D’Souza, A., Bright, P., & Lumumba, P. (2018). Whitewalling : art, race & protest in 3 acts. Badlands Unlimited.

Fassio, D., Seuret, F., & Abita, V. (2010). Banana wars: A presentation of Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.

Koeppel, D. (2008). Banana : The fate of the fruit that changed the world. Hudson Street Press.

Mercurio, G., & Banksy. (2020). A visual protest : the art of Banksy. (English edition.). Prestel.

Portillo Villeda, S. G. (2021). Roots of resistance : A story of gender, race, and labor on the north coast of Honduras. (1st Ed.). University of Texas Press.

Tags: art, history, food

[1] 

This is a fun blog post and a quirky yet incredible important interventional art project. Great work bringing it to everyone’s attention through this post, Tina!

Benson Latin American Collection, Books, Global Studies, LLILAS Benson

Primeros Libros Triennial Takes Place in Oaxaca

Leave a comment

The 2024 Primeros Libros Triennial Partner Meeting and Symposium, held at the Francisco de Burgoa Library in Oaxaca on October 10–11, brought together scholars, librarians and cultural heritage experts to celebrate and examine the legacy of early Mexican printed books and their impact on understanding the colonial period.

The Primeros Libros de las Américas project is a collaborative digital initiative to preserve and provide access to the first books printed in the Americas during the 16th century. It emphasizes the creation of a comprehensive digital corpus to promote global access and scholarship. With contributions from institutions across Europe and the Americas, the project embodies the shared heritage of colonial Mexico and serves as a vital resource for understanding the history of print, culture and language in the New World.

Day 1 of the gathering opened with a keynote lecture, “The Christian Doctrine in Mixtec by Fray Benito Hernández (1567-1568): Its Historical and Current Context,” delivered by a panel of experts, including bilingual educators, psychologists, and philologists. The presentation highlighted efforts to preserve indigenous Mixtec texts through interdisciplinary research.

Panel discussions throughout the day explored the artistry and subversion in 16th-century Mexican prints, including analyses of the unique Franciscan Library’s “Warnings for Indian Confessors” and the survival of anti-colonial Nahuatl codices.

A virtual presentation from the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca shed light on the discovery of rare early American prints in European collections, illustrating the transatlantic reach of colonial print culture.

The second day delved deeper into the lives of early printers, such as Pedro Ocharte and the Calderón family, with a spotlight on technological advances in printmaking during the colonial era. Discussions also explored the circulation and reception of printed works across the Americas, including a case study of an indigenous sacristan in Zacatecas who risked punishment to preserve knowledge.

The symposium also included a visit to the Juan de Córdova Research Library and concluded with a book presentation on the history of engraving in Mexican print. Scholars and participants hailed the event as a critical platform for fostering collaboration and preserving the shared heritage of the Americas.

For more information about Primeros Libros and ongoing preservation initiatives, visit primeroslibros.org.

Global Studies

NEH-Funded Project Pioneers AI Solutions for Spanish Colonial Texts

Leave a comment

Work on the “Unlocking the Colonial Archive” project – which was funded through the NEH/AHRC New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions program,  a collaborative initiative between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council – has been completed. 

Dr. Kelly McDonough, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Dr. Albert A. Palacios, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Coordinator and lecturer in the School of Information, co-led the three-year initiative. With $149,915.00 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the project has focused on transcribing digitized Spanish colonial materials in the Benson Latin American Collection and its post-custodial partners, addressing linguistic challenges in Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technologies, and sharing innovative workflows with the scholarly community.

Key activities include the development of HTR models for Spanish calligraphic styles from the 16th through the 18th century, the establishment of a publicly accessible data repository for transcriptions of Benson collection materials, and the organization of paleography and digital humanities institutes that benefitted scholars from over 15 countries and 20 U.S. states.

Project dissemination has been extensive, with presentations and keynote speeches at conferences and institutions across Latin America and the United States, highlighting the use of artificial intelligence in historical research. 

You can read more about the program activities here: https://apps.neh.gov/publicquery/AwardDetail.aspx?gn=HC-278116-21 and read the final project white paper here: https://hdl.handle.net/2152/129230.

Acquisitions/Foreign Travel, Global Studies

Books, Bookstores, and Bonds

Leave a comment

Last July I went to Israel for yet another successful acquisition trip, made possible by the generous support of UT’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The Schusterman Center, and donations to a recent UT Libraries’ HornRaiser campaign. In previous trips, my efforts were centered around the acquisition of unique items for our collection; this is, after all, one of the main objectives of such trips. But this time around, I decided to emphasize networking — meeting old vendors (who are now good friends) and making acquaintances with new ones — while still leaving time for hunting for and purchasing materials. Since it was a relatively short week-long trip, and due to the tension in the region, I mainly visited the Tel Aviv area, with some short-day trips to Jerusalem and Haifa.

As always, I bumped into acquisition opportunities that I could not resist. The most exciting one being a set of 118 back issues of Israeli cinema periodicals that fill in gaps in UT’s holdings. When I went to visit Na’im, who works at the Little Prince Bookstore and Café and is a long time vendor acquaintance of mine, he asked me to follow him to his ‘kingdom’ at the second floor… and when he does that, you know that some treasures are to be found! We were sitting there for a couple hours, sorting those issues. A few days later, I returned to the shop and he handed me a box – “look what I found upstairs!” Sure enough, again I could not resist an offer of dozens more items related to Israeli film & cinema.

The Little Prince – Books and Coffee, Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Little Prince – Books and Coffee, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Nurturing friendships with vendors proves to be fruitful not only when it comes to acquiring materials; we also work together in order to make the entire process of acquisition easier and more efficient. For example, back at my office in Austin before this trip, I worked with one of my other vendors in Tel Aviv and together we prepared a ‘real-time’ inventory of the library’s main cinema periodicals. I took that inventory with me on my trip and found that it made checking holdings ‘on the ground’ so much easier and it helped me to not acquire duplicates. I used this inventory list extensively when Na’im and I sorted out those issues at his storage.

Also in Tel Aviv, I paid a visit to another dear vendor who has become a friend – Fanny from Fanny’s Bookshelf. Her store is one of those second-hand book stores that one can hardly move in – full with books to the brim. Like Na’im’s ‘secret’ storage area in the café’s second floor, Fanny keeps her special items away from regular customers’ reach—but be sure this is the first area I look at when I drop by! While there have been some visits when I found rare materials there, this time around I didn’t have much luck. Yet, I am undeterred as one could never know when and where the next ‘stellar’ find would appear; when it comes to collecting, patience is a virtue! 

Person at far end of tall metal shelves with books in a bookstore. Fanny’s Bookshelf, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Fanny’s Bookshelf, Tel Aviv, Israel.  

In Jerusalem, I was able to visit and build networks with both people and institutions.  For example, I went to see the new building of the Israeli National Library, with a friend who has some ‘connections,’ so we got a tour in their preservation labs and the enormous underground robotic storage area. I also paid a visit to the Hansen House Center for Design, Media and Technology that is housed in an impressive historic building, a former leprosy hospital built in 1887. Meeting with colleagues there, I managed to put my hand on some rare issues of a Jerusalemite independent journal of arts, culture and society titled Erev Rav (“mixed multitude”).

Also while in Jerusalem, I was able to attend the opening event of the Jerusalem Film Festival where I had the opportunity to grab this year’s festival’s catalog. Film festival catalogs are always hard to acquire, because they do not sell in stores and usually, would not be considered as literature to be included in library collections. Yet, they contain valuable information about films, filmmakers, and the local film industry. Acquiring such catalogs is a constant work of hunting and relying not only on vendors, but also on scholars in the field. In fact, the lion’s share of our current holdings of both the Jerusalem and Haifa Film Festivals’ catalogs was donated to UTL by a film studies professor at the Tel Aviv University, who I met during one of my past acquisition trips.

During my career I’ve learned that networking in conferences, combined with work on the ground, could lead to small but significant ‘success stories.’ See for example, this previous post about my 2015 trip.  This past summer I has a similar experience in the Association for Israel Studies conference in Prague. I attended a talk by a literature professor who teaches at Oranim college in the north of Israel. When we spoke afterwards over coffee, I mentioned that I’ve been searching for a Hebrew literature periodical published by her college. She immediately introduced me via email to a colleague of hers at their publishing house. When I arrived in Israel a few days later on my acquisition trip, I was gifted a full run of their literature journal, around 25 issues. The impact of cultivating personal connections across continents adds significant value to our collections.

Events, Global Studies, Humanities & Liberal Arts, The Foundry

A Warm Welcome for Fall

Leave a comment

As students made their way back to campus for the fall 2024 semester, the University of Texas Libraries put together a fun and engaging lineup of events as part of Longhorn Welcome. The Libraries’ Welcome Week was all about giving new and returning students a chance to meet new people, get creative, and discover everything the Libraries have to offer.

Things kicked off on Monday, August 26, with the “Color and Geometry in Islamic Art” event at The Foundry in the Fine Arts Library. Students got hands-on with geometric patterns and the math behind Islamic art, working with 3D models and crafting their own intricate designs, some even taking time to make Arabic jewelry. With about 35 attendees from different departments, everyone got the chance to be creative and learn more about The Foundry’s resources for future projects.

Tuesday, August 27, brought the Zine Making Party, which transformed the Fine Arts Library into a buzzing creative space. Over 60 students, faculty, and staff dove into the zine collection, scissors and glue sticks in hand, and created their own zine pages. It was a DIY vibe all around, with people blending personal creativity and ideas with inspiration from the Libraries’ growing collection of zines.

On Wednesday, August 28, nearly 100 people gathered for “Stepping into Fall: A Celebration of Indian Dance and Music.” The night featured amazing performances from student groups like Texas Taraana, Gandharva, Sindhu Vasudevan, and Fusion Bollywood. From live Hindustani music to Bollywood fusion choreography, the audience got to experience an exciting mix of traditional and contemporary Indian art forms. The event was cosponsored by the South Asia Institute and SPIC MACAY, giving attendees a chance to learn more about these student groups and how to get involved.

Thursday, August 29, the UFCU Room in PCL was transformed into a Bibliogarden—a relaxed space where students could explore all kinds of cool books, graphic novels, zines, maps, and more from the Libraries’ collections. Around 40 attendees wandered through the offerings, checking out everything from rare books to fun reading materials that Libraries staff recommended. The variety of formats and languages sparked curiosity, and many left inspired to dive deeper into the Libraries’ collections and maybe even learn a new language or two.

To wrap up the week on Friday, August 30, the Libraries teamed up with the Center for Asian American Studies to screen Everything, Everywhere All at Once (2022) at the PCL. About 100 people showed up to enjoy the sci-fi adventure, which had everyone laughing and tearing up at different moments. The screening wasn’t just a movie night—it was also a chance to enjoy some great food from Tso Chinese, highlighting how partnerships can bring cultural events to campus in a big way.

All in all, the UT Libraries’ week of events brought students and faculty together, sparking creativity and offering a fun way to connect with the resources and communities on campus. It was a perfect way to kick off Longhorn Welcome 2024, and everyone walked away feeling a little more inspired.

Faculty, Fine Arts Library, Global Studies, The Foundry

Capturing Culture: Yiddish Folk Songs Come to Life in the Foundry

Leave a comment

In April, Dr. Adrien Smith, assistant professor of Instruction in the Department of Germanic Studies took her Yiddish class (YID 612) into the recording studio at the Fine Arts Library’s Foundry makerspace to capture the essence of traditional Yiddish folk songs.

The project was part of a year-long, accelerated language course that not only aimed to teach the Yiddish language but also to immerse students in its rich culture and history. The course utilized a range of instructional methods, including board games, songs, poetry, textbooks, and grammatical exercises. The rigorous approach fostered a close-knit community of students passionate about Yiddish language and culture.

Dr. Smith sought to create an engaging and practical learning experience for her students. She envisioned a project that would allow her students to practice their language skills and provide them with a lasting memento of their efforts. To achieve this, she attended a training session at the Foundry’s recording studio, with the hope of gaining the skills necessary to record her students singing traditional Yiddish folk songs.

After her training, Dr. Smith and the Foundry team met in late March to plan the recording sessions. They decided to hold two sessions: one focused on a group recording and another on small group projects. They carefully considered the logistics, including accommodating about a dozen students and instruments in the studio, selecting appropriate microphones, and allocating sufficient time for the recordings.

The first session took place on April 15. Nearly a dozen students, accompanied by a professional accordionist, gathered in the studio. Dr. Smith directed the students while the Foundry team assisted with the recording equipment and software. After a few test recordings, they successfully captured the entire class singing “Der alef-beys iz zeyer sheyn” and “Got hot bashafn himl mit erd.”

The second session, held on April 22, focused on small group recordings for a final project. Dr. Smith, now comfortable with the recording equipment, managed the session independently. She successfully recorded five more folk songs, which she later edited and published on SoundCloud, featuring cover art designed by one of her students.

This collaboration between Dr. Smith and the Foundry highlights the valuable opportunities the Foundry offers to modern languages and humanities courses. Recording sessions like these allow students to practice their language skills in a dynamic and cultural context, and, additionally, the recorded performances serve as a tangible reminder of their learning experience.

Dr. Smith  and her students thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and she looks forward to the opportunity of returning to the Foundry for projects in future semesters.

Events, Global Studies, Outreach

Welcome Week 2024

Leave a comment

As students return to campus for the fall 2024 semester, the University of Texas Libraries is offering an engaging series of events as part of Longhorn Welcome. These events are designed to welcome new and returning students, offering them a chance to connect, learn, and explore the diverse resources available at the Libraries. Here’s a look at what’s happening:

Color and Geometry in Islamic Art

  • Date: August 26, 2024
  • Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
  • Location: Perry-Castañeda Library
  • Description: Discover the beauty of Islamic art through its intricate patterns and vibrant colors. This event provides an introduction to the cultural and artistic significance of Islamic geometric designs.

UT Libraries Zine-Making Party

  • Date: August 27, 2024
  • Time: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
  • Location: Perry-Castañeda Library
  • Description: Get creative at our Zine-Making Party! This interactive event invites students to craft their own zines, with all materials provided. It’s a fun way to express your individuality and connect with others.

Stepping Into Fall: Celebration of Indian Dance and Music

  • Date: August 28, 2024
  • Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
  • Location: Perry-Castañeda Library
  • Description: Immerse yourself in the rich traditions of Indian dance and music. This celebration offers a vibrant performance that highlights the beauty of Indian culture and the joy of community.

UT Libraries Bibliogarden

  • Date: August 29, 2024
  • Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
  • Location: UT Libraries Plaza
  • Description: Relax in the Bibliogarden, a tranquil space where students can enjoy books and refreshments in a garden setting. It’s the perfect way to unwind and enjoy some quiet time amidst the hustle and bustle of campus life.

Film Screening: Everything Everywhere All at Once

  • Date: August 30, 2024
  • Time: 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
  • Location: Perry-Castañeda Library
  • Description: Don’t miss this special screening of Everything Everywhere All at Once. This critically acclaimed film is a thrilling, genre-bending adventure that’s sure to captivate audiences with its blend of action, humor, and emotional depth.

These events are a fantastic way for students to start the semester on a high note. All are welcome, and students are encouraged to participate and make the most of these unique opportunities. For more information, visit the UT Libraries’ events page.

Global Studies, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot and Digitized: Following the Archives to Know Shanghai (Gen zhe dang an guan Shanghai 跟著檔案觀上海)”

Leave a comment

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

Among the candidates for the Best Data Visualization category in the 2023 Digital Humanities Award, I found this recent project from the Shanghai Archives (Shanghai dang an guan 上海檔案館, Following the Archives to Know Shanghai). The project beautifully takes viewers on a tour through Shanghai’s most significant historical sites. It is built on archival materials about over 100 city landmarks in Shanghai. All the sites are plotted onto georeferenced historical maps. Viewers can choose from 13 base historical maps ranging from 1855 to 2024 (The following screenshot features a base map from 1923). Currently, the site only supports Chinese as the interface language, but Google Translate does a sufficient job of making it navigable in English.

Figure 1. Screenshot of all landmarks referenced on a 1923 map.

Shanghai, one of the first treaty ports that China opened to the West in the 1840s, grew into one of Asia’s biggest international metropolises and financial centers by the late nineteenth century. The city was home to many of modern China’s political, economic, and cultural elites, and its foreign concessions hosted thousands of foreign merchants, colonial officials, missionaries, and adventurers. Since the nineteenth century, the city also saw many major historical events that shaped modern China. For example, as the hub of China’s emerging modern/Westernized educational institutions, Shanghai was one of the centers of the May Fourth movement in 1919 that popularized Western political and scientific values to new generations of Chinese youth. Soon after, the Chinese Communist Party convened its national congress in the city in 1921. The city was also home to many international banks and manufacturing enterprises, which incubated the labor movements of the 1920s and 1930s. Beyond all these, the battles between the Chinese soldiers and invading Japanese forces in 1931 and 1937 were fought on the city’s streets while spies serving various regimes hustled throughout the city ruled by both Chinese and foreign authorities.

This project by the Shanghai Archives aims to present this complex and exciting history to the users. Sites are categorized into five categories: famous people’s residences (mingren guju 名人故居), revolutionary landmarks (hongse dibiao 红色地标), youth movements sites (qingnian yundong 青年运动), transportation infrastructures (jiaotong 交通), and ships and shipyards (lun chuan 轮船).

To explore a location, you click on it on the map, and a new window opens up on the right side, showing a timeline with documents related to the landmark. The following example shows eleven items related to the HSBC Bank building on the bund (waitan 外灘). Most items are historical photographs of the building, but the collection also contains a digitized copy of the bank’s stock certificate from 1894. The site also provides 3D models of the buildings for users to explore.

Figure 2. A Stock Certificate of the HSBC Bank from 1894.

Figure 3. 3D model of the HSBC Bank Building.

The project also provides audiovisual materials for some storied sites. For example, among the items related to the racecourse (Pao Ma Chang 跑馬場), there is a short documentary showing historical clips of events held there.

Figure 4. A documentary clip featuring the Shanghai horse racecourse.

The project is commendable in making archival materials available to the public in an interactive and engaging way, although it does have a pronounced emphasis on the communists’ activities in presenting the story map. As metadata is the foundation of all digital humanities projects, I am compelled to comment that the metadata of presented archival items leaves much to be desired. In the map view, items are only provided with title, source, and year, without any identifying numbers linking back to the  Archives or its partner institutions. The browse view features a waterfall layout like Pinterest, which may be compelling to some but unfortunately does not provide more metadata than the story map view.

Figure 5. A waterfall view of archival materials available through the project.

Overall, the site offers an engaging journey through Shanghai’s recent past. It is exciting to see more locations and archival materials being added. I hope the quality of metadata can be enhanced one day. It would also be great if the textual documents could be OCRed and searched in full text.

Learn more about Shanghai and its history:

Dian Shi Zhai hua bao: A Major Shanghai-based pictorial magazine (1884–1898).

Liang You: Shanghai-based popular magazine published from 1926 to 1945.

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: the Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Harvard University Press, 1999).

Jin Jiang, Women Playing Men: Yue Opera and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009)

Frederick Wakeman, Policing Shanghai 1927-1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).