Category Archives: Digital Scholarship

Acquisitions/Foreign Travel, Area Studies, Collections, Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, Global Studies, Humanities & Liberal Arts, Uncategorized

Down and Out in Lisbon and London: Antiquarian Books and Digital Humanities in Europe

September 18, 2025 Ian Goodale Leave a comment

Thanks to the generous support of the Center for European Studies and the UT Libraries, I was recently able to travel to London, England and Lisbon, Portugal. On my trip, I had the chance to attend a scholarly conference, acquire unique materials to add to UTL’s collections, network with academics, vendors, and librarians, and purchase books for the UT Libraries’ collections.

A street in London lined with bookstores containing antiquarian and rare books.

My time in London was an invaluable opportunity to build stronger connections with an international cohort of colleagues. For example, I met with one of the UT Libraries’ vendors who I work with to procure rare materials on early twentieth century European politics. The vendor I met with, Carl Slienger, frequently supplies us with items not held by any other North American libraries, making the materials he sources very important for our distinctive holdings of pamphlets and other propagandistic literature, as well as antiquarian books that enhance our holdings of rare and unique European occult and spiritualist materials. I also met with a colleague at the British Library to discuss coding workflows and best practices for working with digital materials. Meeting with my colleague at the British Library was likewise very beneficial, as much of my work involving digital methodologies is focused on programming in Python and other languages, and I am currently supervising a project focused on using Python to automate digital archival workflows.

Ian standing outside of the British Library. — Ian outside of the British Library.

In Lisbon, I attended and presented at the The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) Digital Humanities 2025 conference. My poster presentation focused on software packages I have written in the Rust programming language to support multilingual computational approaches to linguistics and digital humanities. My poster highlighted three software packages: a package for performing lemmatization, a key natural language processing task, on text; a package for assessing the readability of a text containing a variety of algorithms to choose from; and a package to perform stylometric analysis on text. They were all built with multilingual support in mind, and as such are specifically designed to move outside of an Anglocentric paradigm often found in technologies for natural language processing and textual analysis, creating new opportunities for multilingual and non-English textual analysis and digital humanities. Beyond my own presentation, I was able to attend talks on other digital research methodologies throughout the conference. Being able to attend talks by colleagues from all around the globe was both invigorating and rewarding, and an invaluable way to stay on top of the current research being done in the digital humanities. I also took the opportunity to acquire a small amount of zines while in Lisbon, adding to our collection of unique materials that we would not be able to purchase without undergoing a foreign acquisitions trip.

The poster session area at the DH 2025 conference in Lisbon.

This trip allowed me the opportunity to represent UT Austin internationally to a diverse group of colleagues, and I’m grateful that I was able to serve the Libraries in such a capacity. I look forward to building on our distinctive holdings and further expanding UT’s collections while continuing to work on using digital methodologies to enhance accessibility for research and open source software.

Area Studies, Digital Humanities, Global Studies, Read Hot and Digitized, Scholars Lab, South Asia Collection

Read, Hot and Digitized: AI for OCR & Translation

July 31, 2025 mrader 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 foundation of digital humanities is data. Lots of it.

As the early phases of AI have shown us, there is a staggering amount of textual data available to manipulate and compute–both openly available and that which exists behind paywalls. All too often the depth and accessibility of digital scholarly textual data in non-English and non-Roman scripts is lacking. Rather than be left behind or constrained by these lacuna, individual scholars are working to generate their own digital research corpora, often building upon AI tools.

Recently I was introduced to the MITRA project and have been nothing short of amazed.

A research project from the University of California-Berkeley’s AI Research Lab, MITRA “focuses on bridging the linguistic divide between ancient wisdom source languages and contemporary languages through the application of advanced Deep Learning and AI technologies.” Using Gemini APIs, MITRA builds upon an extensive digitized text corpus and contributions from translators and researchers alike to “harness AI technologies to promote the scholarly study and personal practice of the dharma and to accelerate academic and individual research through open-source collaboration on datasets, models and applications.” In so doing, MITRA aims to “overcome the challenges inherent in low-resource language translation,” to “minimize language barriers,” and to create “more equitable access to literature and wisdom.”

I have engaged with OCR and digital text conversion for years but have always found it to be a labor intensive and ultimately less-than-satisfying [or accurate] experience, especially for non-roman languages and scripts. Of Interest to me, therefore, is how MITRA has harnessed AI to allow one to drag-and-drop PDF files into the tool at which point it can both detect the language (Sanskrit & other Devanagari-based languages, Tibetan, scriptural Chinese or English) and use OCR to produce a relatively accurate text file. That unto itself is pretty amazing. From there, however, one can quickly transliterate, translate and/or explain the text into Sanskrit, Buddhist & Modern Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Hindi or Spanish.

To test it out, I grabbed a small amount of openly accessible text from HathiTrust. I chose an early Hindi novel, namely Rāmalāla Varmmā’s Banārasī Dupaṭṭā Yā Gularū Zarīnā from 1916 which is readily available in PDF form on HathiTrust. I grabbed the first page of the novel which looks like this:

Page one of Banārasī Dupaṭṭā Yā Gularū Zarīnā *from HathiTrust*

I then put a PDF of that page into MITRA to see if it could OCR the text. Despite some blurriness of the original source text, it most certainly could OCR it (even if not 100% accurate):

*MITRA’s OCR of page one of* Banārasī Dupaṭṭā Yā Gularū Zarīnā

Encouraged, I then asked MITRA to both transliterate (take the text written in Devanagari script and convert to roman script) and to translate the text which it also did quite quickly and easily:

Ever more optimistic, I then clicked on “English explained” and MITRA was also quite adept at parsing the translated text, the original script of the text, and the grammar and vocabulary.

*MITRA’s “English Explained” of page one of* Banārasī Dupaṭṭā Yā Gularū Zarīnā

I repeat, I stand amazed.

While MITRA has clearly captured my attention and my appreciation, I will note that there are other similar projects currently available and equally commendable, from Andrew Ollett’s Indological and OCR tools [and fabulous related explanations] to Tyler Neill’s toolkit, Skrutable.

Likewise, the UT Libraries is here to help explore the production of your own digital content for research. The Scan Tech Studio in the PCL Scholars Lab has the hardware and software you might need to convert print into digital texts, as well as a group of specialists to help you. We have online guides to introduce the practices and concepts of OCR as well as recordings from OCR workshops.

I encourage anyone interested in exploring non-English or non-roman digital texts to jump in, kick the tires, and have some fun with these impressive conversion projects.

Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, Global Studies, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot and Digitized: Country of Words | بلد من كلام

July 3, 2025 DJCorrea Leave a comment

One of the more complex questions we encounter in area studies is how we define a nation. Is it lines on a political map? A shared territory? For Palestinians, traditional maps can often feel inadequate, showing borders and divisions but failing to capture the full, lived reality of a people. The remarkable digital-born project, Country of Words | بلد من كلام : A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature, by Refqa Abu-Remaileh (Freie Universität Berlin) rethinks the very idea of a map. Instead of depicting political boundaries, it offers a form of literary cartography.

Screenshot of literature under British occupation essay title — Screenshot

Screenshot of Literary Diasporas essay title — Screenshot

At its heart, Country of Words is an interactive, web-based atlas that visualizes the vast geography of Palestinian literature. When you visit the site, you are met with a world map dotted with points and featuring an accompanying timeline. Each dot represents a location—Gaza, Jerusalem, Beirut, but also Paris, Santiago, and Iowa City—that appears in a work of Palestinian fiction or poetry. Clicking on a dot reveals an excerpt from the literary work set in that place, presented in both its original Arabic and in English translation.

The accompanying timeline summarizes essential events in Palestinian history and allows you to read essays on how these historical moments influenced and were shaped by key works of Palestinian literature. Additionally, you can look at an overall network visualization; a variety of visualizations of biographies, historical events, publishing histories, and publishing networks; and audio interviews with key current and recent Palestinian literary figures.

Screenshot of literary relationships visualization — Screenshot

Screenshot of map and timeline of Palestinian literary figures — Screenshot

The project is the work of Prof. Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh and her team at Freie Universität Berlin. It grew not from a desire to create a simple database, but rather from a potent intellectual argument. The project contends that for a people so often defined by exile and displacement, literature itself has created a “country”—a homeland of memory, imagination, and shared experience that transcends physical borders. This atlas makes that homeland visible.

As a librarian, I see this as a powerful tool for teaching and research. It allows students to literally see the global reach of the Palestinian experience. For scholars, it is a dynamic data visualization that can spark new questions about place, identity, and literary networks. It is a beautiful, poignant, and profoundly human entry point into a rich literary tradition. It invites you to wander through this country of words and discover the stories that connect a people, wherever they may be.

To dive deeper into the literary world mapped by the project, here are a few key works from the UT Libraries’ collections that speak to the themes of place, exile, and memory:

غسان الكنفاني ، الأثار الكاملة. The complete collection of a foundational writer of modern Palestinian literature, Ghassan Kanafani. Included is his novella, Men in the Sun, about Palestinian men seeking to cross a border in a water tanker. It is a searing allegory of the search for life and dignity in the face of statelessness.
After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives by Edward Said. A landmark book of essays and reflections paired with photographs by Jean Mohr. Said, a major figure in postcolonial studies, meditates on the nature of Palestinian identity in exile.
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad. Isabella Hammad’s second novel centers on Sonia, an actress who journeys back to Palestine and joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Enter Ghost offers a vivid portrait of contemporary Palestine and explores themes of exile, belonging, and the deep bonds formed through family and collective struggle.

Digital Humanities, Digitization, Global Studies, Texas ScholarWorks

Israeli Literary Magazine Digitization Project Complete

March 5, 2025 urikolodney Leave a comment

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/29709

Iton 77 is one of the prominent literary magazines of literature, poetry, and culture in Israel.[1] The UT Libraries has cooperated with the publishers of Iton 77 since 2013 and recently finished the digitization of 391 issues, bringing almost the whole run online.[2] Additional issues will be digitized or added as digitally-born files in the near future. This is the most complete digital archive of Iton 77 currently in existence. Being a searchable, full text archive, openly accessible to the public worldwide with no restrictions, it promises to be a valuable resource for scholars as well as for the general public.

Established by the late poet and editor Yaakov Besser in 1977, the magazine is now celebrating 48 years of commitment to literary work. Many Israeli poets and authors published their first texts in Iton 77, and it is still a desired platform for emerging and experienced writers alike. Published works include poems, short stories, book reviews, literary criticism and research, opinion editorials, essays, and works in translation. Wide representation is given to Israeli writers who write in languages other than Hebrew, such as Arabic, Russian, and Yiddish. Being a pluralistic platform, Iton 77 is open to alternative narratives and opinions, acknowledging the importance of historical contexts while discussing the complicities and difficulties of Israeli existence. Current editors are Yaakov Besser’s son, Michael Besser, and ‘Amit Yisre’eli-Gil’ad.

Upon the acquisition of some print back issues of the magazine in 2013, UT Libraries and the Iton 77 publishing house discussed a future online visibility for the publication, and the possibility for hosting the digital issues on the UT Libraries digital repository – now known as Texas ScholarWorks or TSW. Like many other digital repositories, TSW was established to provide open, online access to the products of the University’s research and scholarship, and to preserve these works for future generations. In addition, TSW is also used as a platform for digital content that is not necessarily created on campus, but is rather a product of cooperation with off campus content owners, such as the Iton 77 publishing house.

Screenshot of a Texas ScholarWorks repository page from The University of Texas at Austin, displaying metadata for "Iton 77, issue 001." The page includes a thumbnail image of the magazine cover, access to full-text PDF files, publication date (1977-02), authors (Besser, Micha; Gilad-Yisre’eli, Amit), and publisher (Iton 77). It also lists the department (UT Libraries), keywords and LCSH subject headings related to Israeli literature and periodicals, and links to the item's URI and DOI.

TSW provides stable and long-term access to submitted works, as well as associated descriptive and administrative metadata, by employing a strategy combining secure backup, storage media refreshment, and file format migration. Conveniently and helpfully, all works submitted to TSW are assigned persistent URLs, – permanent web addresses that will not change overtime.

All scanned issues of Iton 77 have been OCR-ed for full-text searchability and can be downloaded either as text or PDF files. Currently issues are sortable by date and title, with sorting by author and subject in the works. With the permission of UTL and the Iton 77 publishing house, most of the content is mirrored and indexed on the Ohio State University Modern Hebrew Literature Lexicon.

The total number of downloads of all issues to-date is 241,947. Issues are viewed and downloaded from every corner of the globe. Not surprisingly, most of the users are from Israel, with the United States and Germany in second and third place. Other Hebrew readers connect from many other countries, including Egypt, Japan, Togo, and Syria.

The most popular issue since going online in TSW with 6194 downloads to-date is the double issue from January 1987, called the ‘decade issue.’ It celebrated some of the most prominent Israeli authors, poets, and essayists of that time, such as Yitsḥaḳ Aṿerbukh Orpaz, Aharon Meged, Erez Biton, A.B. Yehoshua, Dalia Rabikovitch, Anton Shamas, Shimon Balas, and many others.

We are excited about this partnership to bring Iton 77 to a global audience in this stable open access format and encourage all to browse and use it!

Iton 77 double issue 84-85 (January 1987). https://hdl.handle.net/2152/75368

[1] “Iton” is the transliterated form of the Hebrew word for “newspaper” (עתון).

[2] This count includes 67 double-issues. Three issues (200; 293; 341-342) were published as printed books and are not included in the project.

Benson Latin American Collection, Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, Global Studies, LLILAS Benson, Uncategorized

Spanish Paleography + Digital Humanities Institute Focuses Research on Colonial Texts

February 6, 2025 Texlibris Leave a comment

Scholars and graduate students from institutions across the country gathered at the Benson Latin American Collection for the Spanish Paleography + Digital Humanities Institute. The immersive three-day program provided intensive training in reading and transcribing Spanish manuscripts from the 16th to 18th centuries while introducing participants to digital humanities tools that enhance historical research.

Funded by LLILAS’s U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI Program and the Excellence Fund for Technology and Development in Latin America, the institute sought to equip researchers with specialized skills to navigate colonial texts, visualize historical data, and foster a collaborative academic community. The event was spearheaded by LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Coordinator Albert A. Palacios, and brought together a cohort of graduate students and faculty members specializing in history, literature, linguistics, and related disciplines.

The institute focused on three key objectives: providing paleography training, introducing participants to digital humanities tools, and fostering a collaborative research network. Participants engaged in hands-on workshops to develop their ability to accurately read and transcribe colonial manuscripts. They also received instruction on open-source technologies for text extraction, geospatial analysis, and network visualization. The program fostered a community of scholars who will continue sharing insights and resources beyond the institute.

Participants had the opportunity to work with historical materials, including royal documents, inquisition records, religious texts, and economic transactions. Case studies were examined through paleography working groups, where scholars collaboratively deciphered difficult handwriting styles and abbreviations.

To apply their newly acquired digital humanities skills, each participant developed a pilot research project using Spanish colonial manuscripts. These projects utilized handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology, geographical text analysis, and data visualization tools to enhance historical inquiry. The final day of the institute featured a lightning round of presentations, allowing scholars to showcase their preliminary findings and discuss future applications.

This year’s participants hailed from universities across the U.S., including the University of Chicago, the University of North Texas, Columbia University, the University of Texas at El Paso, the University of California-Santa Barbara, Purdue University, City College of New York, West Liberty University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of California-Merced. The interdisciplinary nature of the group enriched discussions, providing diverse perspectives on archival research and manuscript interpretation.

A highlight of the institute was the introduction and use of the handwritten text recognition (HTR) model the LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Office trained and recently launched on 17^th and 18^th century Spanish handwriting preserved at the Benson. This innovation is expected to significantly accelerate the study of colonial-era documents and democratize access to these historical resources.

Additionally, the program provided a comprehensive list of recommended paleography resources, including books, digital collections, and online tools to support continued scholarship in Spanish manuscript studies.

Palacios is leading an online Spanish version of the institute for participants worldwide this spring and fall. He will be leading another onsite institute June 4-6, 2025.The demand for the LLILAS Benson Spanish Paleography + Digital Humanities Institute in the Colonial Latin Americanist field underscores the growing interest in merging traditional archival research with computational methodologies. By equipping scholars with both paleographic expertise and digital tools, the institute is paving the way for innovative research on the Spanish Empire and its historical records.

Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, Scholars Lab

Transforming Text: A Year of the Scan Tech Studio

January 29, 2025 karinasanchez Leave a comment

The Scan Tech Studio (STS), located in the new PCL Scholars Lab, is a self-service facility designed to empower scholars and researchers in digitization, image processing, and text analysis projects. Equipped with advanced scanning equipment and software, the STS allows the UT community to independently digitize materials, apply optical character recognition (OCR) and handwritten text recognition (HTR), and engage in digital text analysis. From helping patrons scan historical documents to applying machine-readable techniques to modern texts, the STS has had an exciting first year guiding users in elevating their research.

The team behind this effort is the Scan Tech Studio Working Group, composed of seven librarians and digitization experts dedicated to helping scholars maximize the studio’s resources. We’re also grateful for the support of UT Libraries IT and the Scholars Lab Graduate Research Assistants, who keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes. The working group develops workshops, creates research guides, and promotes the use of digital scholarship tools related to OCR, HTR, and text analysis. Additionally, we offer guidance on copyright considerations and assist users in navigating the complexities of text recognition and analysis. Over the past year, the STS Working Group has been instrumental in fostering a dynamic learning environment within the Scholars Lab and building campus-wide connections to unlock the studio’s potential.

The working group has been dedicated to developing services that meet the evolving needs of the campus community. So far, our primary focus has been providing consultations and instruction related to digitization, OCR/HTR, and text analysis. With the diverse expertise of our team, we’ve been able to offer tailored, one-on-one consultations and small group sessions that help users think through the various stages of their digital projects, from planning to execution. Scheduling time with STS experts is simple through our user-friendly request form, ensuring patrons have easy access to specialized support.

Overall, we received 18 reservation requests, which meant that users had a consultation with one of the STS Working Group members, needed the space for digitization, and/or used our digital tool to OCR their materials. Many of these requests came from graduate students, specifically from the Department of History and the School of Information.

In addition to consultations, we’ve developed instructional tools such as a comprehensive research guide on research data management and the use of the studio’s equipment and software. The STS has also become a valuable teaching space, regularly hosting classes that integrate the studio’s technology into their curriculum, allowing students hands-on experience with advanced digitization tools and methods.

Reflecting on the past year, the STS has hosted several workshops inside and outside the studio to showcase its tools and demonstrate the possibilities to the campus community. For example, STS team members led workshops at this past summer’s Digital Scholarship Pedagogy Institute, focusing on digitization, OCR, and text analysis. Additionally, we contributed to the Digital Humanities Workshop Series, providing training in these specialized areas.

It’s also worth noting that the working group dedicates time to internal development by hosting workshops for ourselves, allowing us to learn from one another and build up our collective skillset. As the saying goes, the best way to learn is to teach—and we’ve embraced this approach to better serve our users!

Due to the Scan Tech Studio being a new service, we wanted to partner with existing programs and reach out to various centers. We invited and provided an overview of our services to different centers around campus, such as JapanLab and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. This gave us great insight into the needs around campus regarding digitization and OCR.

Additionally, we provided training in using specialized OCR tools such as Abbyy FineReader, a paid program under Adobe that is exclusively available at STS. It works exceptionally well for accurately OCRing text and training. We had about 36 uses in just our first year in the space.

As we continue to see the success of our space, we are planning to expand our services and tools. We aim to create additional resources covering various OCR tools and processes. We also plan to continue to collaborate with the Digital Humanities Workshop series to present different OCR and text analysis tools. Additionally, we intend to develop workshops tailored to researchers, including pre-research and post-research workshops. These workshops will help researchers understand what they need to do when conducting their research to ensure a successful OCR experience and facilitate the beginning of text analysis upon their return. We look forward to seeing how the groundwork we laid during the first year will impact our service in the upcoming year.

As you can see, we have a lot of promising plans to build off the Scan Tech Studio’s successful first year. We look forward to continuing to grow the space as a new hub for digitization and text analysis on campus. Scan you feel the excitement?

Benson Latin American Collection, Black Diaspora Archive, Digital Scholarship

New Website Chronicles Texas’s Domestic Slave Trade

October 2, 2024 tex libris Leave a comment

The Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project (TXDST) has launched a new website, From Slavery to Freedom in Texas, exploring the often-overlooked stories of enslaved individuals in Texas. The site focuses on four counties—Brazoria, Red River, Waller, and Washington—to illuminate both individual stories and the broader legacy of slavery in the state.

The project emphasizes firsthand experiences of enslaved people and delves into the history that continues to shape Texas today. The stories include the account of Eli Terry, a free Black man who was sold into slavery in Red River County before reclaiming his freedom after over seven years. Another featured story discusses the Alta Vista plantation, where Prairie View A&M University—a historically Black college/university (HBCU)—now stands, and highlights efforts by plantation descendants to confront and preserve this history.

Educators will find a variety of resources to bring these narratives into the classroom, providing deeper insights into Texas’s complex history.

The project is a collaboration between The University of Texas at Austin and Prairie View A&M University, made possible through a Start-Up Grant for Collaborative Digital Editions from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), with support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Archives.

Libraries’ Black Diaspora Archivist Rachel E. Winston played a significant role in this effort, serving as co-Principal Investigator from 2022 to 2024. The History Department also highlights contributions from several current and former students, including Dr. Signe Peterson Fourmy (PhD 2020), Sheena Moore, and current PhD candidate Ron Davis, who is also Curator of American History at the Witte Museum in San Antonio.

For more information, visit txdstproject.org.

Digital Scholarship, Scholars Lab, Staff, Uncategorized

Data Analysis of Library Data

June 28, 2024 karinasanchez Leave a comment

Anusha Ravi, a Scholars Lab Graduate Research Assistant (GRA), is entering her second year in the School of Information Science, specializing in Data Science and Analytics. During the last academic year, she undertook a Digital Scholarship Project as part of her GRA position. Collaborating with the Collection Development team, she cleaned, analyzed, and visualized data they had collected over the past few years.

I am a passionate data analyst with a keen interest in leveraging data to drive meaningful insights and decisions. My recent work at Scholars Lab Graduate Research Assistant(GRA) has given me a valuable opportunity to apply my skills in a real-world setting, addressing practical challenges and contributing to the enhancement of our informational resources present at the library. My journey in data science is driven by a curiosity to explore data intricacies and a commitment to using technology for the greater good. As part of my responsibilities, I have to complete a digital scholarship project.

The data points in this graph have been anonymized to safeguard confidentiality.

As my digital scholarship project, I worked with the Collection Development team on improving the process of handling suggested purchase requests. These requests are crucial as their analysis would help them understand and enhance the breadth and depth of the collections available in the library. My role involved exploring historical data to identify gaps and understand its structure thoroughly for future enhancements. Collaborating with the Collection Development team who are my stakeholders, I ensured their needs were clearly understood and actionable. This collaborative approach not only enriched my perspective but also aligned our efforts with the library’s strategic goals.

Using Python, I undertook the task of cleaning and anonymizing the data. Fixing missing values and ensuring data confidentiality was challenging, yet automating these processes was a significant achievement. Python’s versatility and powerful libraries were instrumental in this endeavor. Looking ahead, I aim to deepen my expertise in Python to automate more complex data workflows and improve efficiency further. Learning to automate this process was a big challenge, but overcoming it was a significant achievement. I had to code with a future use case in mind, which proved to be very insightful and thereby allowed me to improve my skills.

For data visualization, I turned to Tableau, known for its user-friendly interface and powerful visualization capabilities. Creating interactive and simple charts made it easier to communicate complex data insights to non-technical stakeholders. This was confirmed on presenting this dashboard to the Collection Development team who praised the simple but effective dashboard. Additionally, based on their feedback, I plan to create documentation on using Tableau to ensure easy navigation for future use of the team.

The Scholars Lab provided invaluable support, offering resources and expert advice that enhanced my analysis. Presenting my findings at a poster session was a highlight, showcasing the success and the practical recommendations for better data organization and future collection improvements. This project taught me the importance of stakeholder collaboration, secure data practices, and the continuous quest for automation and efficiency in data processes.

Books, Digital Scholarship, Faculty, Open Educational Resources, Resources

Open Education Fellows Launch Cost-Free Italian Language Textbook

June 14, 2024 tex libris Leave a comment

Exemplifying an embrace of affordable education, 2023 Open Education Fellows Dr. Amanda Bush and Silvia Luongo have successfully completed their fellowship project by creating Giornate Italiane, an Italian language textbook now available on Pressbooks.

Authored entirely by Dr. Bush and Professor Luongo, this textbook carries a Creative Commons license, providing students with free access and eliminating the need to purchase a paid resource. Consequently, their course is now cost-free in terms of course materials, offering substantial financial relief to students.

The Open Education Fellows program, supported by the University of Texas Libraries, encourages faculty to develop open educational resources (OER) that enhance learning accessibility and affordability.

The creation of OER textbooks ensures that all students, regardless of their financial situation, have equal access to essential learning materials. This initiative aligns with broader efforts to alleviate the financial burden of higher education and supports a more equitable academic environment.

Archives, Area Studies, Benson Latin American Collection, Black Diaspora Archive, Collaborations, Digital Humanities, LLILAS Benson

A Visit to Eldorado: Archivists Attend the Annual Gathering of Quilombolas in Brazil’s Vale do Ribeira

May 14, 2024 Susanna Sharpe Leave a comment

LER EM PORTUGUÊS

Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections and Senior Archivist at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and Rachel E. Winston, Black Diaspora Archivist, attended the annual meeting of traditional Black communities in Eldorado, state of São Paulo, as guests of EAACONE, one of the Benson’s archival partners.

ONE OF THE PARTNERSHIPS that emerged from the LLILAS Benson Mellon-funded project “Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archival Community” involved extensive collaboration with EAACONE, Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira, located in Eldorado, Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo, Brazil. (EAACONE’s name translates as Team for Articulation and Assessment of Black Communities of Vale do Ribeira).

A circle of women of various ages holds hands. They are wearing white blouses and multicolored floral skirts. A few of them wear straw hats. — Women from Quilombo Sapatu perform “Nha Muruca” at the Encontrão .

Digitized materials and metadata from the EAACONE archive are available in three languages on the Latin American Digital Initiatives Repository. LLILAS Benson’s collaboration consisted, in part, of training of EAACONE staff in digitization and metadata, as well as funding the purchase of equipment and the salaries of archival employees from the quilombola^* community. Additional funds covered the creation of a traveling exhibition for the purpose of introducing schoolchildren and other community members to the archive and to the history of EAACONE and MOAB, the anti-dam movement with which it is associated.

Three people stand in front of a chain link fence hung with vinyl posters, part of the traveling exhibition describing the EAACONE archive. On the left is a man, who is talking, in the middle, a woman whose t-shirt reads "Fight Like a Black Woman" (in Portuguese) and on the far right, another woman holds a yellow folder and is looking toward the man. — From left: Attorneys Fernando Prioste (Instituto Socioambiental, ISA) and Rafaela Santos (EAACONE) speak with Letícia de França (EAACONE).

EAACONE’s archive, titled Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira (Quilombos of Vale do Ribeira), consists of materials compiled from 25 years of EAACONE history and 35 years of MOAB (Movimento dos Ameaçados por Barragens, or Movement of Peoples Threatened by Dams), a grassroots movement protesting the construction of hydroelectric dams with negative impacts on the communities and environment of Vale do Ribeira. The dates of materials range from 1955 to the late 1990s.

Several members of the LLILAS Benson archival team have visited Eldorado during the years of the collaboration. Most recently, Ryan Lynch (Benson Head of Special Collections and Senior Archivist) and Rachel E. Winston (Black Diaspora Archivist) visited Eldorado to attend the XXVIII Encontro das Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (28th Meeting of Black Communities of Vale do Ribeira)—known as the Encontrão (Big Meetup)—on November 18, 2023. Documents from the EAACONE archives were on display on tables at the event, as were vinyl panels from a traveling exhibition about the archive and the history of the area’s Black communities.

A table display shows old newspaper clippings, photo albums, notebooks, and papers. A Black woman reaches toward the table, placing items. Two other young Black people—a man and woman—stand near her. In the background, there is a counter labeled "Bar" where people in hair nets appear to be setting up food. — Tânia Moraes (foreground), Letícia de França, and Andrey Pupo set up a display table with EAACONE archival materials.

“Attending the Encontrão helped me contextualize the work that EAACONE does with quilombo communities,” said Lynch. “Watching residents of the different communities see themselves, or their friends and relatives, in the documents, was an invigorating reminder of the importance of our work as archivists and post-custodial partners. Many of the people in attendance had made history and continue to make history. Thanks to the Mellon grant, their story is available not only to themselves and their descendants but also to K–12 students, researchers, and activists in other independent Black communities in the Americas.”

A large white vinyl sheet hangs from a chainlink fence. It is printed with information in Portuguese and photos from the EAACONE archive named Quilombos of Vale do Ribeira Collection. The photos and text are related to women's meetings. LLILAS Benson is cited at the bottom of the vinyl sheet as a sponsor. — EAACONE’s traveling exhibition, which draws on archival materials digitized in collaboration with LLILAS Benson, will be used in schools and at events. This panel describes women’s meetings and includes archival photographs.

The LLILAS Benson collaboration was included in the event via the use of the LLILAS Benson logo on exhibition materials, and Lynch noted that it was also mentioned multiple times by speakers. He and Winston were introduced as VIPs at the beginning of the proceedings, and Lynch was invited by organizers to deliver a few impromptu remarks.

“I look forward to exploring future partnerships that will allow us to continue to play a role in this important documentation and exchange of knowledge and experience,” he said.

In a large cinderblock room with high ceilings, rows of Black, white, and mixed-race people sit in white plastic chairs facing the front. At front, a white man with dark hair, beard, and glasses, wearing a white shirt and dark pants, holds a microphone and speaks. There are numerous large posters hanging on the wall that talk about EAACONE, MOAB, and quilombola communities. — Benson Head of Collections / Senior Archivist Ryan Lynch shared greetings from LLILAS Benson and discussed the collaboration with EAACONE.

In her role as Black Diaspora Archivist, Winston has visited more than one post-custodial partner in Latin America. Both she and Lynch had visited Eldorado previously. “Reconnecting with EAACONE colleagues in person, and meeting more community members (documented and represented in the EAACONE collection) was incredible,” Winston said.

Three middle-aged Black men stand in a circle singing. The man on the right is playing a guitar. In the background, a banner hanging on the wall talks about MOAB, the historic anti-dam movement that has been a source of activism among quilombola communities in Vale do Ribeira. — From left: Noel Castelo, Rodrigo Marinho Rodrigues da Silva, and José Rodrigues da Silva sing after the conclusion of the Encontrão. The banner hanging on the wall talks about MOAB, the historic anti-dam movement that has been a source of activism among quilombola communities in Vale do Ribeira.

“Being a part of this project and partnership with EAACONE from the beginning to the end has been a highlight of my career at the Benson,” Winston adds. “When there, the importance of the work becomes more salient. EAACONE has been and continues to be an important fixture in the Vale do Ribeira. The impact of their work is amplified by our collaboration and by the work we do to preserve their archive. To see the EAACONE materials in the place of creation, used and viewed by the community members represented in them, and to be in community with that community, is a remarkable experience, and a reminder of the power of post-custodial archival praxis.”

Large yellow letters placed on a green lawn spell out I Love Eldorado (in Portuguese). There is a fanciful outline of a bright red heart in the design. These letters are on a green lawn. The sky is wide an gray and cloudy in the background and above. — “I Love Eldorado” sign at the bus station in Eldorado.

*Quilombolas are Afro-descendant Brazilians who live in rural Black communities known as quilombos, which were originally established by enslaved people who fled enslavement to establish autonomous communities. There are 88 such communities in Vale do Ribeira, an area in the Brazilian states of São Paulo and neighboring Paraná. To read more about quilombolas in Vale do Ribeira, see Edward Shore, Brazilian Roças: A Legacy in Peril (2017) and The Quilombo Activists’ Archive (2019).