Category Archives: Open Educational Resources

Happy Open Education Week!

Today marks the start of Open Education Week! Open Educational Resources are openly licensed materials that can be: 

  • Retained
  • Reused
  • Revised
  • Remixed
  • Redistributed 

OER can make a huge difference to our students. In the 2022-2023 academic year alone, students saved over $1.8 million dollars because OER was prioritized over paid course materials. 

However, as important as these resources might be, they’re often overlooked or misunderstood. Are you curious about OER? Check out this infographic to learn more. 

And if you’d like to learn even more about OER, here are our upcoming OE Week activities: 

Monday March 4th – Friday, March 8th: Come visit our blog for a daily post spotlighting OER work happening here at UT Austin.  

Tuesday, March 5th, 12pm-2pm: Tabling event in PCL Lobby. Come by to chat with a librarian about OER. 

Friday, March 8th, 1pm-2pm: OE Week Virtual Panel. Our joint student/faculty panel will discuss their experiences with adopting, implementing and even creating OER. The event is free, but you do need to register.

Open Education News

We may have put a bow on Open Education Week, but the work of OER continues, so we recognize a few achievements in those efforts.

University of Texas at Austin faculty member Dr. Jeanette Okur’s OER textbook, Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar! received an honorable mention in the OER category for the 2023 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Award, a national award recognizing outstanding, innovative, and transformative uses of technology in the teaching of Less Commonly Taught Languages. The award committee commented that Jeanette’s work stood out “because of the impressive quality of the materials and focus on contemporary issues.” Congratulations to Dr. Okur both for the award, and for her work in promoting OER.

UT faculty members Dr. Josh Frank and Guillermina Ogando Lavin have published the first edition of their OER textbook, Business in Hispanic Life and Culture. The textbook was completed as part of the Open Education Fellows Program, and is intended to promote both Spanish language learning and business world knowledge. The OER Working Group, along with University of Texas Libraries, celebrates Dr. Frank and Professor Ogando Lavin’s accomplishment and continued work in developing OER.

Celebrating Open Education Week 2023

The Libraries joined in the global celebration of Open Education Week March 6-10, to recognize and raise awareness of the value of open educational resources (OER).

Open Education Week (OE Week) is celebrated annually as an opportunity for actively sharing and learning about the latest achievements in Open Education worldwide. It was launched in 2012 by Open Education Global as a collaborative, community-built open forum.

OE Week provides practitioners, educators, and students with an opportunity to build a greater understanding of open educational practices and be inspired by the wonderful work being developed by the community around the world.

This year, the Libraries’ new Open Education Librarian Heather Walter hit the ground running with support of the Scholarly Communications and Teaching and Learning teams to host events and highlight ongoing work in OERs at UT.

The Libraries launched a submission process in February allowing students to nominate faculty members who extended access and enhanced equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. The Libraries partnered with the Senate of College Councils and the Natural Sciences Council to choose instructors from the pool of nominees who best employ open education practices in their classrooms. Five Affordable Education Champions were announced throughout OE Week:

The Libraries hosted a faculty panel on OER on Tuesday, March 7. The virtual panel discussion was open to the UT and broader academic community, and included Dr. Joshua Frank (Spanish and Portuguese), Dr. Milica Cudina (Mexican American Studies), and Elena Perez-Zetune (Mathematics). Panelists shared their expertise in open education trends and practices, along with their unique experiences with incorporating OER into their curriculum, including how OERs helped them build relationships with their students.

The Libraries also hosted a tabling event at PCL Wednesday, March 8, with experts engaging students, faculty and other members of the community on the impacts of OER on their teaching, learning and finances. Staff engaged with a flow of people answering questions, and visitors were invited to participate in thought experiments about the cost of textbooks relative to OERs.

For a quick overview of OERs, check out the video below, and reach out to OE Librarian Heather Walter (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu) if you have questions or are interested in learning more about OER.

Affordable Education Champion: Erin Reilly

In celebration of Open Education Week 2023, the Senate of College Councils, the Natural Sciences Council, and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We celebrate their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 


Today, we recognize and thank Prof. Erin Reilly, who was nominated as an Affordable Education Champion for ADV 365, Audience Development and Engagement.

“​​Erin Reilly is a creator, educator, and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches, products, services, and experiences about storytelling, engagement, and learning through immersive technology. As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice in the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations, as well as founding Director of Texas Immersive Institute, the interactive and immersive media hub at the University of Texas at Austin focused on research, projects, and learning the future of media. Erin has been a guest lecturer worldwide at universities and industry conferences. She is an Executive Committee Board Member of the Infinity Festival, member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group, Past Board President of NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education) and serves on advisory boards, such as SXSW Pitch and PBS children’s programming, Hero Elementary and Emmy-award winning Sci Girls.”

As the first course in the Texas Immersive sequence, Prof. Reilly’s class is designed around experiences, and especially around using technology like virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI). “These tools are often too expensive for a student to have on their own, so as a professor — I should ensure they are available for them to use and experiment with…” The student who nominated Prof. Reilly as an Affordable Education Champion appreciated this commitment to putting technology like VR within reach of the students in the class. After reorganizing her class to a flipped model that allowed students time to use these tools, Prof. Reilly noticed that her students understood better what virtual worlds were like and what they could do with them. She wrote “Through weekly sandbox demos, students gain better cognitive abilities of spatial literacy and learn to identify the possible interactions that can happen within a 3D environment whether it is a physical, digital or combination of both.” Because of this focus on using technology collaboratively, the class was also able to come together into a stronger learning community. 

Providing free access to these tools  was the right thing for her students’ learning in this class, but Prof. Reilly also believes in leveling the educational playing field in general. She wrote of her decision to lower the cost barrier for her students  “There are too many things in this world that divide us but as instructors, we can combat this.” In her view “Making education affordable to everyone advances our society…. Making our materials affordable and accessible helps to address the unequal access to opportunities, experiences, skills and knowledge that will prepare our students for full participation in the world of today and tomorrow.”


If you are a faculty member who would like to discuss finding and using OER and other free or low cost course materials in your class(es), please contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Thomas Jesús Garza

In celebration of Open Education Week 2023, the Senate of College Councils, the Natural Sciences Council, and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We celebrate their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 


Today, we recognize and thank Thomas Jesús Garza, who was nominated as an Affordable Education Champion for E 316N, World Literature.

“Thomas Jesús Garza is University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and Founding Director of the Texas Language Center. He teaches Russian language and literature, language pedagogy, and contemporary Russian culture.  He has been traveling to and researching in Russia since 1979 and has lived in Moscow for over six years.  A native Texan, Dr. Garza received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1987. During his more than 30 years at the University, he has received numerous prizes for undergraduate and graduate teaching, including the Texas Excellence Award, the President’s Associates Award, the Harry Ransom Award, was inducted into the University Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2003, selected for a Regents Outstanding Teaching Award in 2009, and chosen a “Texas Top Ten” instructor by the Texas Exes in 2018. He recently completed a book manuscript on filmic portraits of machismo in contemporary Russian and Mexican cultures and is currently working on a new project on Russian actor and bard, Vladimir Vysotsky in the Americas in the 1970s.”

“No student should ever have to make the choice between buying course books or eating lunch.”

Like many of the other Affordable Education Champions, Dr. Garza recognizes the role accessibility to textbooks plays in promoting equity among the student body. He writes, “The issues of equity and access to a quality higher education are extremely important to me. As [a first generation college student] myself, I understand how challenging undertaking college courses can be, especially when that difficulty is compounded by the excessive cost of books and course materials.” When students don’t have to worry about how they will manage to pay for expensive textbooks, they can focus more fully on the class content. The student nominator for Dr. Garza mentioned that they used the money they saved by not having to purchase textbooks for this particular class to pay for needed medication. This exemplifies the difficult financial decisions some UT students have to make. As Dr. Garza says, “No student should ever have to make the choice between buying course books or eating lunch.”

Furthermore, the student nominator appreciated that the format chosen by Dr. Garza (PDFs uploaded to the class Canvas page) allowed them to go back later to read or reread texts when they had more time to fully appreciate their nuances. They wrote that they planned to return to the texts in the future because of the quality of the discussions held in class and that “[it] made me feel cared for because he understands that we already spend so much money on courses and their materials and that there are ways of accessing wonderful literature without putting any burden on the students. Since a lot of them were in pdf form, I still have the ability to go back and read the ones I loved or save them for when I have time.” Using free materials in courses is a way of approaching teaching in a holistic manner. Students are balancing many responsibilities. Giving them flexibility for how they access texts allows them to engage with the material in the way that works best for them.

Dr. Garza’s class addresses trauma and healing, and the diversity of the readings reflects the many different ways to approach this complex topic. Nevertheless, he was “pleasantly surprised” to discover that many of the texts he wanted to use were already available in digital formats that he could link to in Canvas.


If you are a faculty member who would like to discuss finding and using OER and other free or low cost course materials in your class(es), please contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Deborah Jacobvitz

In celebration of Open Education Week 2023, the Senate of College Councils, the Natural Sciences Council, and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We celebrate their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 


Today, we recognize and thank Deborah Jacobvitz, who was nominated as an Affordable Education Champion for HDF 342, Development of Psychopathology from Infancy through Adolescence.

Deborah Jacobvitz is the Phyllis L. Richards Endowed Professor in Child Development, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences. “[She] specializes in the field of parenting and social and emotional development in children.  Her research focuses on the links between family relationships, emotions, health, and development, with a particular focus on the transmission of caregiving across generations, attachment security across the life course and the effects of marital conflict on children’s well being. Her studies address how early caregiving experiences shape how we remember, organize and perceive information and the relationships we form with others.  In her work, Dr. Jacobvitz is interested in developing interventions to help families and children in need of support. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, St. David’s Foundation, the Hudson Foundation, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Egg Nutrition Center and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.”*

There is a direct link between Dr. Jacobvitz’s emphasis on free and low-cost materials and her genuine care for those whom she teaches. In their nomination, a student quoted from the course syllabus, “My top priority in this course is YOU and YOUR learning experience” and went on to say that Dr. Jacobvitz was “one of the most caring and selfless professors I’ve met during my time at UT.” Furthermore, they said that since they didn’t worry as much about buying expensive materials for the course, they experienced less stress and were able to focus more fully on the class itself. In other words, having low-cost materials as an option led to the student feeling more engaged in the content and more connected to their professor.

When asked about what led her to choose affordable materials for her course, Dr. Jacobvitz wrote, “I noticed there were students in my class that skipped buying textbooks even though it would hurt their grade because they could not afford them. . . .These students asked if they could purchase older used editions which had out-of-date material.” After she adopted the new approach, she noticed an increase in students being prepared for class, participating in discussions, and performing better on class assignments. 

While she acknowledges that finding and providing free and low cost materials may take a little more time than requiring a traditional (often expensive) textbook, Jacobvitz feels that it was worth it. She also suggests that faculty who teach similar courses at different universities work together to suggest readings and other resources in the public domain. This has the advantage of bringing together an academic community that goes beyond the bounds of UT. Besides the clear benefit to the student experience, Dr. Jacobvitz pointed out that providing these types of materials aligned with her belief in equal access, as students were not prohibited from accessing up to date materials by a lack of funding.

If you are a faculty member who also believes in open access and would like more information about finding OER and other free or low cost course materials, we encourage you to contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu).

AFFORDABLE EDUCATION CHAMPION: MJ Johns

In celebration of Open Education Week 2023, the Senate of College Councils, the Natural Sciences Council, and UT Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We celebrate their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 


Today, we recognize and thank MJ Johns, who was nominated for their CS 303E class, Elements of Computers/Programming. “MJ Johns (they/them) received their M.E.T in entertainment technology with a concentration in game design from Carnegie Mellon University and their B.A. in computer science from The Ohio State University. MJ is a mobile app developer, game and experience designer, and founder/director of the indie game studio Astire Games.”

In an email, Prof. Johns shared the reasons they create affordable courses: “When I was in college I was working part time and paying my own way, and there were several occasions where I had to choose not to take a class I wanted because the materials required were too expensive. I don’t want any student to choose not to take my class because they can’t afford the materials or textbook.” They elaborated on their process for identifying and creating materials, writing, “I do a lot of research to find free resources for students, and I also create a lot of them myself (I always try to include a mixture of video and reading sources to improve accessibility).” This hard work was reflected in the student nomination, which was especially appreciative of the materials Prof. Johns created themself and of the breadth of materials they assigned. 

If you’re looking to make a course more affordable, Prof. Johns has some advice. They recommend to “look for partnership opportunities around campus where such resources and materials could be offered to students for free – the campus libraries and labs have been very supportive and helpful whenever I have tried to make this work.” With partners like the libraries and other campus units, faculty can find access to book chapters, scholarly articles, and even software and hardware needed for the course – all for free for the student. “As for textbooks, my advice is to find out if there are websites or articles that offer similar concepts without the price barrier.” Prof Johns concluded by reiterating their commitment to creating affordable courses, stating, “It takes a bit of extra effort to make sure there are options for students, but in my mind it is well worth the extra time because there will be students who couldn’t take your class otherwise!” 

Need help finding OER and other free or low cost course materials? Contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu). 

Affordable Education Champion: Dr. Kiril Avramov

In celebration of Open Education Week 2023, the Senate of College Councils, the Natural Sciences Council, and the Libraries partnered to solicit nominations from students across campus to recognize instructors who increased access and equity by selecting free or low cost course materials for their classes. We’ll be recognizing a few of those nominees this week as Affordable Education Champions!

Affordable Education Champions are instructors who assign free or low cost resources — like textbooks, websites, films, and more — for their courses. Sometimes they author their own materials, and sometimes they’re able to reuse free or low cost work created by others. We celebrate their commitment to fostering access to high quality education at the lowest possible cost barrier for their students. 


Today, we recognize and thank Dr. Kiril Avramov, who was nominated as an Affordable Education Champion 14 times by students in his EUS 348 class, Intelligence and Espionage in the Eastern Bloc (cross-listed as GOV 324E and REE 335). 

“Kiril Avramov is currently an Assistant Professor at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and a non-resident Fellow to the Intelligence Studies Project (ISP) at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Previously he was the Acting Vice-Rector for International Relations and Research at the New Bulgarian University (NBU) in Sofia, Bulgaria and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at NBU. He studied previously at Gustavus Adolphus College (USA/MN), the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), University of Sofia (Bulgaria), Central European University (Hungary), and NBU. He taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Sofia until 2005 and, from 2006-2010, was also the Director of the international consultancy and research institute ‘Political Capital’ in Bulgaria. In 2010, he was appointed as the Director for International Relations of Political Capital at the firm’s headquarters in Budapest. Dr. Avramov was a Fulbright Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) at the University of Texas at Austin in 2015-2016. He earned a full scholarship for his PhD research at the University of Sofia and received an ‘Open Society Institute-Sofia’ scholarship for his year-long PhD specialization at the Central European University in Budapest.”*

Dr. Avramov, who shared his thoughts on this course with us via email,  called EUS 348 “a course that is an actual labor of love that deals with meaningful and diverse topics that require a wide array of core theoretical and specific issue-focused texts, multiple audiovisual materials, and an AI discussion platform simultaneously to provide relevant context to a very diverse student body.” This variety of sources could become prohibitively expensive, so as one student noted in their nomination, “He [Dr. Avramov] retrieved a mass amount of readings for us, free of cost.” For Dr. Avramov, this strategy was intentional. “To keep the balance between narrowing the scope and the number of sources and keeping the price at a minimum, the natural choice was to seek, combine and incorporate free or affordable source materials.” Students recognized and appreciated this work, noting that the low cost of this course allowed them to buy other textbooks, to fund general living expenses, and, as one student wrote, “I could save money as I’m about to graduate and need to start having money to live on my own.” Students were required to buy one affordable program and found it an integral part of the course. According to one student nomination, “The one program we did have to buy has been very impactful in facilitating conversations with our classmates.”

The experience of teaching this intentionally affordable course has made Dr. Avramov a believer in creating courses this way where possible. He wrote, “Even though crafting a course syllabus based on free or accessible source materials could be taxing in terms of time and effort investment, the results from this investment are more than worth it. I firmly believe that easily accessible quality information does transform lives for the better!” 

Need help finding OER and other free or low cost course materials? Contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu). 

*Biography of Dr. Avramov from https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/slavic/faculty/kaa2656

Happy Open Education Week!

Join us in the global celebration of the open education movement for Open Education Week, March 6-10, 2023.

In recognition, the Libraries is hosting events to raise awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER) and introducing faculty who are using the technology for the benefit of their work and their students.

Events

  • OER Faculty Panel, March 7, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.: Join UT faculty members as they discuss the benefits, challenges, and rewards of incorporating OER into their teaching practices. This event is free and virtual. Register here.
  • OER Tabling Event, March 8, 11:00 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Stop by the PCL lobby to learn about OER initiatives happening at UT. Ask questions, complete our poll, or just come see what OER is all about.

But first, a primer…

What is open education? The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) defines it as “resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.” Open education expands access to the resources of higher education (like open textbooks!) and enables the sort of collaboration that can engage students in new ways (like contributing to those open textbooks!). 

It won’t shock you that cost remains a significant barrier to the pursuit of higher education. While the biggest costs, like tuition and housing, are generally beyond the reach of most instructors to impact, the cost of course materials is tangible and significant. At UT, students enrolled full-time in the fall and spring semesters can expect to spend $714 per year — and depending on their major, it could be much more. 

Open educational resources, or OER, are learning objects, like textbooks, websites, images, videos, and more, that are generally free of cost AND free of the legal barriers that restrict instructors from customizing them for their students’ needs. Replacing expensive course materials with OER can save a student tens to hundreds of dollars per course. 

Get more information on how high course materials costs impacts students, and contact Tocker Open Education Librarian Heather Walter if you’d like to know more or get help locating OER for your discipline. 

Latin Americanists Worldwide Unite to Decipher the Benson’s Spanish Colonial Archive

By Albert. A. Palacios, PhD

It is no secret that the Benson Latin American Collection preserves one of the most important Spanish colonial archives in the United States. Within the pages of hundreds of volumes and archival boxes in its stacks are countless historical gems documenting the lived experience of colonized people, colonizers, and everyone in between. However, these perspectives are largely inaccessible: archaic penmanship and obscure writing conventions encode these histories on brittle paper.

Detail of a document listing the instances in which Mixquiahuala’s corregidor, the district’s royal administrator and judge, defrauded the Tepatepec Pueblo, circa 1570–1572, Genaro García Manuscript Collection.

For years, the LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Office has been experimenting with digital technologies to transform this “unreadable” Spanish colonial archive into accessible humanities data for scholars. However, we tried something new this past year and reversed the equation: We convened colonial Latin Americanists online to transform handwritten words on pages into digital text that they could then use to make the digital humanities (DH) more accessible. This resulted in the “Spanish Paleography and Digital Humanities Institute,” a free online program that provided scholars with practical training in the reading and visualization of 16th- to 18th-century manuscripts in Spanish. The program’s syllabus and logistics were designed by Abisai Pérez Zamarripa, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship graduate research assistant and doctoral candidate in history, and myself. Anyone with advanced Spanish-reading proficiency was invited to apply.

“I found this institute thoughtful, generative, and inspiring. The coordinators made every effort to show the participants relevant tools and encourage our progress. It was uniquely helpful to identify DH methods and tools that would make sense in an early modern context and to discuss questions that relate to our field.”Fall 2021 participant

Geographic distribution of 2021–2022 institute participants

Colonial Latin Americanists from all over the world applied. While we were only planning to lead one institute, the overwhelming response to our call for applications prompted us to offer two, one in the fall (November–December 2021) and another in the spring (January–March 2022). In all, we accepted 60 participants, including 35 graduate students, eight junior faculty, eight tenured professors, five archive and library professionals, and four independent researchers. By the end of the academic year, we had trained scholars in 11 countries and 18 U.S. states who had varying experience in Spanish paleography and the digital humanities.

“The facilitators were very supportive, and the workshop itself was an invaluable opportunity to meet scholars from across the U.S. and Latin America despite not being able to travel, and to experience a variety of digital humanities tools relevant to our work.”Dr. Mallory E. Matsumoto, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

Various Early Modern Spanish handwriting styles represented in the Benson Latin American Collection

One of our main objectives was to help participants obtain and hone Spanish paleography skills. We invited experts from Germany, Portugal, France, and Mexico to provide introductions on specific colonial institutions and their records to expose students to specialized writing conventions and abbreviations. Each Friday, we would break the cohort into groups so that they could collaboratively read and transcribe the week’s case study in a shared Google Doc, which enabled us to give them live feedback and corrections on their transcriptions.

“The group transcription sessions every Friday were invaluable as they allowed us to decipher and discuss doubts with colleagues throughout the [transcription] process, while learning from those with greater knowledge.” — Spring 2022 participant

The spirit of collegiality during these sessions was truly inspiring. We witnessed how scholars, especially those with advanced Spanish paleography skills, actively supported each other in deciphering the texts. After the institute ended, some commented that they considered this group work as “one of the most enriching experiences from the institute.”

A corrected document transcription in FromThePage

After the collaborative transcription sessions, participants continued to hone their paleography skills through assigned weekly homework. Each scholar transcribed two to four pages in various handwriting styles using the University of Texas Libraries’ instance of FromThePage, a platform that enables collaborative transcription work and version tracking. Once they were done with a page, Abisai and I reviewed and corrected the transcriptions, which FromThePage documented and showed, as seen above, to further the students’ understanding of the scripts and abbreviations. 

Published institute transcriptions in the Texas Data Repository

Besides learning how to read the archaic penmanship, scholars were simultaneously helping us enhance the accessibility of the Spanish colonial collection. One the one hand, the cohorts transcribed, and consequently made intellectually accessible, over 90 documents (1,000+ pages) preserved in the Benson Latin American Collection. We are currently publishing them in the Texas Data Repository and will soon ingest them in the University of Texas Libraries’ Collections portal with the images of the original materials to broaden access.

Training of a handwritten text recognition model for a Spanish colonial handwriting style in Transkribus

On the other hand, participants also helped us leverage machine-learning technologies to automate this work in the future. As part of the “Unlocking the Colonial Archive” NEH-AHRC grant project, we are reusing these transcriptions to train handwritten text recognition (HTR) models for each of the handwriting styles we commonly find in Spanish colonial documentation. We are then running these models on untranscribed materials at the Benson and in other digital archives to obtain usable automatic transcriptions. To see a list of participants who made a significant contribution to this effort, visit the project website.

Annotation of the “Genealogy of the descendants of Nezahualcóyotl,” circa 1550–1580, Ex-Stendahl Collection, in Recogito (https://recogito.pelagios.org/document/yere0vydklv9s4/part/1/edit)

With transcriptions in hand, students then used them to learn several free and open-source digital humanities tools. Each Monday, we demonstrated how to extract, visualize, and analyze data from these transcribed texts in different platforms, including Recogito, Voyant-Tools, ArcGIS, and Onodo. As a capstone experience, we asked participants to develop and present a pilot digital humanities project using these tools and texts relevant to their research.

“I honestly did not know what to expect going into this institute. My focus was to improve my paleography skills with the digital programs as a benefit. Now, not only am I more confident in my paleography skills, but I have a plethora of digital tools to use for my projects.”Spring 2022 participant

Network visualization developed by a spring cohort member, Francisco Javier Fernández Rivera, Universidad Iberomexicana de Hidalgo, who considered the DH workshops “a great opportunity to learn about our documentary past through technological advances.”

Given the positive reception and subsequent demand for such training, we will be leading another round of institutes this fall, August 15–September 30, 2022, and next spring, January 23–March 10, 2023. So if you are interested, check out the call for applications and join the collaborative “unlocking” of the Spanish colonial archive!

“I think it is a very complete and ambitious program. You taught me many tools that changed my way of doing history, of thinking about the social sciences and the humanities. I am very grateful to you. I hope you continue to be very successful and that this project continues to grow.”Fall 2021 participant

These institutes would not have been possible without the support of these individuals:

  • Dr. Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory and Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)
  • Dr. Berenise Bravo Rubio, Researcher-Professor at the National School of Anthropology and History (Mexico)
  • Brittany Centeno, Preservation Librarian, UT Libraries
  • Dr. Guillaume Gaudin, Researcher-Professor at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (France)
  • Dr. Lidia Gómez García, Researcher-Professor at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (Mexico)
  • Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections, LLILAS Benson (United States of America)
  • Dr. Kelly McDonough, Associate Professor at the Spanish and Portuguese Department, The University of Texas at Austin (United States of America)
  • Dr. Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Professor in Digital Humanities and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Centre at Lancaster University  (United Kingdom)
  • Dr. Javier Pereda, Senior Researcher at the Arts & Humanities Research Council and Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration at Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom)
  • Theresa Polk, Head of Digital Initiatives, LLILAS Benson (United States of America)
  • Dr. Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço, Researcher at the Center of the Humanities, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)
  • Susanna Sharpe, Communications Coordinator, LLILAS Benson (United States of America)
  • Katherine Thornton, Digital Asset Delivery Coordinator, UT Libraries (United States of America)
  • Krissi Trumeter, Financial Analyst, LLILAS Benson (United States of America)

This initiative was generously sponsored by:

  • National Endowment for the Humanities (United States of America)
  • Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom)
  • LLILAS Excellence Fund for Technology and Development in Latin America

Albert A. Palacios, PhD, is the Digital Scholarship Coordinator at LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, The University of Texas at Austin.