Category Archives: Spaces

Scholars Lab Newsletter – March 2024

Digital Humanities Workshop

 Introduction to Recogito

When: 3/8/24, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Where: Zoom

Presenters: Miriam Santana and Willem Borkgren

Recogito is an open-source semantic annotation tool that allows you to tag key terms and reveal the relationships between key names, places, and events between multiple documents. Attendees will learn how to create an account, upload documents, and start working on tags and annotations. They will also learn the deeper capabilities of Recogito, such as mapping relationships, working collaboratively on a corpora of documents, and exporting data for use in other DH tools.

Zoom Registration

Introduction to Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

When: 3/22/24, 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm

Where: Hybrid – Zoom and Scholars Lab Data Lab, Perry-Castañeda Library

Presenters: Dale J. Correa, Mercedes Morris, & Natalya Stanke

This workshop introduces the basics of optical character recognition (OCR), which allows for full-text searching and other types of text manipulation of a digitized document. Attendees will learn how to use Google Docs to create a basic machine-readable text from an image file and be introduced to Tesseract for OCR through exercises in Google Colab.

This workshop is open to researchers interested in OCR for any language. It is strongly recommended that attendees:

1) prepare a digitized, highly legible sample image file for trying out the tools

2) have a Google account to do the exercises fully and save their work.

Register for Zoom or PCL Scholars Lab Data Lab


Open Education Week Virtual Panel

When: 3/8/24, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Where: Zoom

UT Austin’s OER Working Group invites you to celebrate Open Education Week (March 4-8) by joining our faculty/student panel for a virtual discussion on open education practices. Join us for a special Open Education Week discussion on applying open education practices in your teaching. Our student/faculty panel will discuss their experiences finding, adopting, and even creating open educational resources (OER) and other no-cost course materials.

In addition to this faculty perspective, our panel will also include a student voice. Our student panelist is currently collaborating on an original OER project, bringing valuable and unique insight into how open pedagogy can transform student learning experiences.

Zoom Registration


Digital Scholarship in Practice

When: 3/8/24, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Where: Scholars Lab Data Lab, Perry-Castañeda Library

Want to get started with Digital Humanities in the classroom, but you don’t know where to start? This introductory workshop will provide advice and practical ideas to incorporate digital humanities methodologies at all levels of teaching — from syllabus design to assignments and classroom activities. Learn about platforms, strategies, and resources to fit your classroom, your teaching style, and your comfort level with technology. While the advice given will apply to a wide variety of classrooms, the workshop will highlight resources specific to Japanese and East Asian Studies.

Unraveling Trauma Through Maps: Rethinking Historical GIS

In a recent event hosted at the Scholars Lab in the Perry-Castañeda Library, the Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin delved into the complexities of mapping trauma in a workshop titled “Mapping Trauma: A Workshop on Space and Memory.”

This event, part of IHS’s exploration of the theme “Experiencing Place: Interrogating Spatial Dimensions of the Human Past,” brought together scholars and practitioners to discuss the limitations of traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in capturing the nuances of human experiences, particularly in contexts of trauma such as the Holocaust.

The keynote speakers, Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles and Levi Westerveld, presented insights gleaned from their extensive research collaboration spanning a decade. Knowles, a McBride Professor of History at the University of Maine and co-founder of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, along with Westerveld, a Senior Engineer & Geographer at the Norwegian Coastal Authority, offered innovative perspectives on mapping trauma, drawing from their work with Holocaust survivor testimonies.

Traditional GIS methodologies, while effective for certain types of mapping, often struggle to represent the complexities of human experiences. Knowles and Westerveld’s research challenges the default Cartesian grid approach of GIS, advocating for alternative mapping techniques that accommodate the fragmented and subjective nature of traumatic memories. They emphasized the importance of incorporating qualitative data and subjective narratives into geospatial practices, moving beyond mere coordinates to capture the emotional and psychological dimensions of historical events.

The workshop explored various strategies for mapping traumatic memory, including the concept of “mental maps” and inductive visualization techniques. Participants engaged in hands-on exercises, analyzing survivor testimonies and experimenting with visualization tools to uncover hidden spatial narratives. Through these activities, attendees gained a deeper understanding of the challenges inherent in representing trauma spatially and the creative possibilities for addressing them.

The event offered a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between geography, memory, and trauma. By challenging traditional GIS approaches and embracing alternative mapping techniques, scholars are in a better position to uncover deeper insights into historical experiences and enrich understanding of the human past.

Learn more about IHS programs, including those under the “Experiencing Place” research theme this year, by following @utaustinihs and joining the mailing list here.

Watch video of the event.

Scholars Lab Newsletter – February 2024

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

Digitization, Digital Projects, and Copyright Issues

When: Feb. 2, 2024, 12 pm – 1 pm 

Where: Perry-Castañeda Library Scholars Lab Project Room 6 (2.218)

Join us in-person for a discussion about some of the common copyright issues that pop up when digitizing materials or creating digital projects. We’ll have some scenarios to talk through as a group, but feel free to also bring your questions and we’ll try to discuss some of those scenarios as well.

In-Person Registration

Interactive Writing in Twine

When: Feb. 9, 2024, 12 pm – 1 pm

Where: Zoom 

Twine is an open-source application used to write interactive narratives ranging from fictional adventures to practical decision trees. This workshop will introduce the basics of Twine story creation: creating your first passage of text, linking passages, incorporating HTML and variables, and publishing a Twine project. The session will include a variety of example Twines of different complexity and purpose, and by the end, participants will have their skeleton decision tree that they can expand into a larger text. 

Zoom Registration

Getting Started with Scalar

When: Feb. 23, 2024, 12 pm – 1 pm

Where: Zoom 

Scalar is a free, open-source publishing platform designed for long-form, born-digital, and media-rich digital scholarship. This workshop will give an overview of Scalar and discuss what differentiates it from other content management systems, before demonstrating how to build your Scalar site.

Zoom Registration


Data & Donuts Workshop Series

 Research Data Management Best Practices

When: Feb 16, 2024, 12 pm – 1:15 pm

Where: Perry-Castañeda Library Scholars Lab Data Lab (2.202) and Zoom

This workshop will go over helpful strategies and techniques for effective research data management in all stages of the research lifecycle, from the drafting of comprehensive data management plans to successful publication of research data. Join this session to learn how to overcome data management challenges and stay in compliance with research data management regulations.

Zoom Registration


The Institute for Historical Studies in the Department Workshop

“Mapping Trauma: A Workshop on Space and Memory”

When:  Feb 19, 2024, 12 pm – 1:30 pm 

Where:  Perry-Castañeda Library Scholars Lab Data Lab (2.202) and Zoom 

Anne Kelly Knowles has been a leading figure in the Digital and Spatial Humanities, particularly in the methodologies of Historical GIS, for more than twenty years. She has written or edited five books, including Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship (2008); Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868 (2013); and Geographies of the Holocaust (2014). Anne’s pioneering work with historical GIS has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including the American Ingenuity Award for Historical Scholarship (Smithsonian magazine, 2012), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), and three successive Digital Humanities Advancement grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2016-2022). She is a founding member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, an international group of historians and geographers who explore the spatial aspects of the Holocaust through digital scholarship. She is currently developing a public website to share data on over 2,200 Holocaust camps and ghettos and nearly 1,000 survivor testimonies to enable students and scholars to map the historical geographies of named and unnamed Holocaust places.

Levi Westerveld is a geographer and award-winning cartographer with broad experience in spatial data gathering, analysis and visualization. He has 8 years of work experience in GIS and mapping for environmental modeling, impact assessments, community engagement and communication. Levi has international project management experience overseeing multidisciplinary teams with delivery in the Arctic and Pacific, and thematic knowledge in land and marine environmental issues, including climate change, waste and biodiversity. He is the lead editor of the forthcoming Arctic Permafrost Atlas. He is currently employed as senior engineer in the section for digitalization and innovation at the Norwegian Coastal Authority.

For In-person Registration email: cmeador@austin.utexas.edu

Zoom Registration


Digital Scholarship in Practice

Computational Approaches in the Study of History: The Case of People’s Daily

When: Feb 21, 2024, 12 pm to 1 pm 

Where: Perry-Castañeda Library Learning Lab 3

In this talk, we will explore what computational approach and methods may look like in historical studies. Alongside the potential advantages, the talk will also discuss the limitations and pitfalls in computational historical analysis. We will focus on a case study of the People’s Daily 人民日报, a prominent national newspaper of the PRC, to demonstrate the outcomes and limitations of applying computational methods in historical research.

Scholars Lab Newsletter – November 2023

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

Getting Started with Omeka

When: Nov. 3, 2023, 12 pm – 1 pm 

Where: Zoom

Omeka is a free, open-source platform for creating digital archives, exhibitions, and more. This workshop will give an overview of the various versions of Omeka and their different uses, before covering how to set up a basic Omeka site.

Zoom Registration

Additional Information


Libraries Workshop

Patent Basics

When: Nov. 7, 2023, 11 am – 12 pm

Where: Zoom

A virtual workshop on patents aimed at a beginner audience. We will define patents as a type of intellectual property, describe the different ways in which patents can be useful to researchers, and show how to find patent documents on freely available websites such as Google Patents.

Zoom Registration

Additional Information

Author Profiles & Citation Metrics: An Introduction for Scholars

When: Nov. 8, 2023, 1 pm to 2 pm

Where: Zoom

Taking advantage of profile services and understanding publishing metrics can help you increase the discovery of your work and track its impact. This workshop will introduce you to ORCID and Google Scholar profile systems and give you some tips for making the most of these types of services. We will also highlight several widely used citation metrics (Impact Factors, h-indices, SJR indicators) and help to demystify what they mean and how to find them.

Zoom Registration

Additional Information


The Theory & Practice of Digitization: A Community Symposium

When: Nov. 9, 2023, 4:45 pm – 7 pm

Where: The Scholars Lab, Perry-Castañeda Library

Join us in the Scholars Lab for a symposium on digitization. What gets digitized and how it gets digitized are decisions that affect everyone, but most of all, marginalized communities that have been historically disadvantaged from participation in scholarship and the building of library collections. Come and listen to lightning talks from cohort members trained in OCR and digitization, followed by a keynote address by Dr. Raha Rafii.

 Additional Information


UT GIS Day

GIS Day 2023 Celebration

When: Nov. 15, 2023, 12:30 pm to 5 pm

Where: Scholars Lab, Perry-Castañeda Library and Zoom

Join the UT Austin community in celebrating GIS Day 2023 on Wednesday, November 15th! GIS Day is an internationally acknowledged annual event held each November on the Wednesday of Geography Awareness week. It is a day dedicated to appreciating, discussing, and learning about GIS (geographic information system) technology and all that it enables.
    Through our UT GIS Day events this year we hope to raise the profile of the innovative GIS work being carried out by the UT campus community and specifically highlight open geospatial research since 2023 has been designated a Year of Open Science by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

In Person & Zoom Registration

Additional Informational


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If you have any questions please feel free to email scholarslab@austin.utexas.edu

Engaging Digitization and Ethics at the Libraries

In summer 2023, the UT Libraries invited applications from UT Austin graduate students to participate in a community symposium program centered on developing thoughtful and reflective research and digitization practices. The symposium program aims to create a cohort of UT Austin graduate students engaged in critical reflections on collection development, research practices, and digitization, and the potentialities for reparative work within all of these spheres. The program is called “The Theory & Practice of Digitization Community Symposium” and it is co-sponsored by the UT Libraries and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at the Rare Book School.

Eight UT graduate students were selected to participate in the program cohort. The students–in MA and PhD programs–are studying in the African & African Diaspora Studies, English, History, and Middle Eastern Studies departments, as well as in the UT iSchool. They have a variety of experiences with research in libraries and archives, with digitization, and with publishing scholarship, all of which they bring to their cohort discussions. However, they are united to realize the goals of this symposium program, which include reading about, discussing, and creating approaches for research and collection development in a digitizable environment. The latter can be described with the question: what does it mean to create or select print and electronic content in an environment in which digitization is possible and high quality; in which there is support for the applications of machine-readable text; and in which the materials are stewarded by libraries and used by researchers outside of the materials’ region of origin?

The Theory & Practice of Digitization cohort, with Dale J. Correa and Beth Dodd.

Cohort participants are encouraged to engage with existing writing (scholarly and popular) on these topics in thoughtful and critical ways, with the end goal being to create a sense of belonging to the conversation. What gets digitized and how it gets digitized are decisions that affect everyone, but most of all, marginalized communities that have been historically disadvantaged from participation in scholarship and the building of library collections (even, and especially, collections for which they are the subject). As part of this program, cohort participants are trained in the basics of scanning, OCR, and outputs/applications with a material selection of their choice, so that they have insight into the hands-on processes of digitization and how to use this technology for their goals. The program’s culminating public symposium puts the cohort’s theoretical and practical experiences in conversation with a digital cultural heritage scholar and engagement with the audience in order to realize new approaches to digitized resources.

I developed The Theory & Practice of Digitization Community Symposium Program as the final project for my Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage at the Rare Book School. As fellows, we are asked to put together a community symposium at our home institution that advances understanding of cultural heritage, archives, and/or special collections and allows us to promote aspects of our collections to broader publics and communities. With the development of the new Scholars Lab at the Perry-Castañeda Library, and considering my own interests in reparative and restorative practices in librarianship and scholarship, I wanted to create an opportunity for graduate students to expand their researcher skill-sets and build reflective approaches to their future professions. We are incredibly fortunate to have a wide range and depth of expertise at the UT Libraries, and it is from this well of experience and insight that this program has drawn.

Our first session, held at the end of August shortly after the semester began, featured a conversation with Rachel E. Winston (Black Diaspora Archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection) and Beth Dodd (Curator at the Alexander Architectural Archives) on defining terms for our work in this program through their experience with digitization as archivists at UT. Rachel and Beth presented on the process of selecting and adding items to the archives, including when, how, and why they make decisions around digitization. Their experiences with a variety of collections––from donors or vendors; recent or older; created in the U.S. or around the world––gave them insight to respond to students’ questions regarding the ethics of archival digitization and stimulated the students’ engagement with crucial concepts by providing real and tried examples for them to consider.

TPD cohort session #1 with Rachel E. Winston and Beth Dodd in the PCL Learning Labs,

The program’s second session introduced students to the basic principles of handling cultural heritage materials and digitizing them. My colleagues from the UT Libraries’ Stewardship department, Brittany Centeno (Preservation Librarian) and Kiana Fekette (Head of Digitization) led the students through a review of best practices for handling paper materials such as books, periodicals, and personal archives. The session was held in the new Scan Tech Studio in the Scholars Lab, which functions as a self-service facility for independent researcher digitization, image processing, and text recognition-based scholarship. Brittany and Kiana brought sample materials so that the students could get a sense of what to do for for different preservation situations, such as a book with a broken spine, brittle and flaking paper or leather, bent or misshapen items, and materials that are tightly bound. They also demonstrated how to use a diffuser light set up, which can be particularly useful for items with a difficult-to-capture sheen (such as different types of photographs) or for mobile applications when traveling for research.

In our third session, we met with Allyssa Guzman (Head of Digital Scholarship Services) and Ian Goodale (European Studies Librarian) for a survey of, training with, and discussion of tools that the students might use for their research with digitized materials. Allyssa covered how to get started with digital scholarship, including project planning/management and tool selection. She created an excellent LibGuide for the cohort to refer back to as they move forward with their work. Ian reviewed a number of tools that we recommend and regularly use here at the UT Libraries for transcription/OCR correction and text analysis, including some that he has developed himself.

TPD cohort session #3, with Allyssa Guzman in this image.

The cohort’s efforts will culminate in a community symposium on November 9, 2023, 5 – 7 PM in the PCL Scholars Lab Data Lab. This event is free and open to the public: everyone is invited and encouraged to attend. The symposium is an opportunity for the UT, Austin, and greater central Texas communities to learn about the digitization of cultural heritage through the experiences of the student cohort members. It’s also an opportunity to hear from a respected scholar of digital cultural heritage, Dr. Raha Rafii, who will be giving the keynote address. Her lecture, titled, “Navigating the Ethical Landscape of Manuscript Digitization,” will look at recent examples of digitized forms of cultural heritage and the impact on their origin communities in order to think through complex issues of ethics, and to determine the lines between academic researcher priorities and digitization as an extension of colonial and imperialist practices. For more information on the community symposium, please see the UT Libraries’ Events page.

Scholars Lab Celebrates Grand Opening

The much-anticipated grand opening of the new Scholars’ Lab at the University of Texas at Austin’s Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) officially launched the new space on Thursday, October 5, with more than 100 members of the campus community and beyond in attendance. This event marked a significant milestone in the university’s commitment to fostering innovation, collaboration, and research excellence.

The Lab is a dynamic space designed to support interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and digital scholarship, welcomed scholars, researchers, students, and community members to its beautifully designed premises. The event was a celebration of the university’s dedication to providing cutting-edge resources for its academic community.

The grand opening event featured from university administrators and experts in libraries, who highlighted the importance of the Scholars’ Lab in advancing research and scholarship at UT Austin. Attendees were then given an opportunity to explore the state-of-the-art facilities, including dedicated workstations equipped with the latest technology, collaborative spaces for group projects, and a vast collection of digital resources.

As the Scholars’ Lab officially opens its doors, it is poised to become a vibrant center for academic inquiry and collaboration. The university’s investment in this cutting-edge facility reaffirms its commitment to fostering innovation and excellence in research.

In the coming months and years, we can expect to see exciting developments and groundbreaking research emerge from the Scholars’ Lab at UT Austin. The grand opening event was just the beginning of what promises to be a transformative journey for the academic community and the university as a whole.

Scholars Lab Newsletter – October 2023

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

Introduction to StoryMaps

When: Friday, October 13, 12-1 pm

Where:  Zoom

StoryMaps is a digital tool that enables you to craft a narrative using maps, images, videos, and text. This workshop session will provide an introductory overview of creating a digital exhibit with StoryMaps. Participants will learn to weave together data points, images, videos, and text to form engaging stories.

Zoom Registration


Data & Donuts

Customer Reviews Data

When: Friday, October 20, 12-1:15 pm

Where: Zoom

How much is a star really worth? This session will examine customer review data including how to use reviews effectively, how to spot fake reviews, and what consumers, companies and academic researchers do with customer review data.

Zoom Registration

Open Source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 

When: Friday, October 27, 11-12 pm

Where: Zoom and Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL), Scholars Lab, Data Lab

This workshop will provide an explanation of key geospatial terms and concepts and an introduction to open source geographic information system (GIS) software for visualizing, analyzing, storing, processing, and managing geospatial data. By the end of this session you should have the core knowledge required to start working effectively with geospatial datasets using open source tools.

In-person &

Zoom Registration

More Information


OA Week 2023

Support for Open Access Publishing at UT

When: Tuesday, October 24, 12 – 1 pm

Where: Zoom

In this session we’ll talk about Libraries’ support for open access (OA) publishing, including support that eliminates article processing charges (APCs) for UT authors. We’ll discuss the main types of OA publishing business models (including OA book publishing), and how the Libraries is strategically investing in these options. Finally, we’ll show participants how they can share their work regardless of the publication model. This free session is open to anyone, but will be of most interest to faculty, students, and staff who publish scholarly content. Registration is required. 

Zoom Registration

You’re Invited to the Grand Opening of the Scholars Lab

Join us for the Grand Opening celebration and ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Scholars Lab in the Perry-Castañeda Library. 

When: Thursday, October 5, 12-2 p.m. 

Where: Perry-Castañeda Library Entry Level  

Program Schedule 

12:00-12:30 – Introductory Remarks and Ribbon Cutting 

lorraine haricombe – Vice Provost and Director, UT Libraries 

Jennifer Lyon Gardner ­– Deputy Vice President for Research  

Joan Lippincott – Associate Executive Director Emerita/Coalition for Networked Information

Sharon Wood –  Executive Vice-President and Provost 

12:30-2:00 – Self-guided tours, Activities, Refreshments and Giveaways! 

Free and open to the public.

About the Scholars Lab 

The new Scholars Lab is a campus-wide resource with spaces and infrastructure designed to enhance multidisciplinary research and advance digital scholarship. It will facilitate collaboration among students, faculty, departments, and centers across campus. The Scholars Lab supports experiential learning, provides access to University of Texas Libraries’ experts for research lifecycle consultation, and offers training on the use of robust technologies and tools. 

Scholars Lab Hosts First Open Science Summit

The doors of the new Scholars Lab at the Perry-Castañeda Library swung open for the first Texas Open Science Summit, held on Wednesday, September 20.

Hosted by the Libraries, this summit was organized as a call to action for the advancement of open science in recognition of the Year of Open Science, a move by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to advance national open science policies across the federal government in 2023.

The Summit marked an initiatory gathering to highlight the commitment of advocates in the campus community to openness, collaboration, and the dissemination of knowledge. The event took place both in-person and virtually, to ensure accessibility to a wide audience.

The event served a diversity of ideas and perspectives to attendees, with participants from various disciplines and backgrounds coming together to explore the benefits of open science practices and individual experiences in the application of those practices. It offered a platform for sharing success stories, discussing challenges, and brainstorming solutions, all with the ultimate goal of promoting transparency and accessibility in research.

The summit provided inspiring keynote addresses and panel discussions featuring local and national experts in open science, including representatives from Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) and NASA’s Transform to Open Science (TOPS) program.

These thought-provoking sessions covered a broad spectrum of topics, from open-access publishing to data sharing and reproducibility. Participants left inspired and armed with practical insights to implement in their own work.

Attendees were also introduced to the university’s new Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) – funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation – which has recently been launched to promote open source and open science opportunities to students, faculty, staff and researchers at UT.

Those who attended expressed that the Summit was a resounding success in reaffirming the global scientific community’s dedication to open science principles. Participants left the event with a deeper understanding of open science practices and a shared commitment to making research more transparent and accessible.

Into the Next Normal

Hard to believe it’s been two years since the sudden closure of these Libraries upended our work and forced us to rethink how we continue to operate in a world that has the potential to throw such wild curveballs. A lot of the work we did before will likely return much as it was before we left the Forty Acres and adjusted to the boxed in screen of video interactions that would become the workspace for much of our library work for an extended period.

But much of the change required to keep the Libraries running through the remote period and into the initial reopening of spaces and return to in-person activity will remain in place as we enter the next normal. The paradigm of normal has shifted irrevocably thanks to a health crisis that has cost over 5 million lives, upended social practices and impacted the way we behave in so many ways, positive and negative. There was a normal before we knew of COVID-19, and there is a different normal as we proceed. To address that next normal, there are changes that won’t disappear, even when the pandemic eventually does.

So, what are the sustainable, smart changes that the Libraries will continue going forward?

Accessibility to Online Resources. The primacy of digital access was clear immediately upon the arrival of COVID. Without a robust online presence, academic enterprise and research innovation would have been greatly hindered, but through quick negotiation affected by a shared interest in continuity with providers, staff were able to ensure the best possible resources were available through emergency accommodations by the publishers, and favorable decisions about access to resources in HathiTrust. That experience provides a blueprint for continued access to resources and can inform future negotiations with publishers and content partners.

IDEA and Collections. One byproduct of the crisis was our captivity to a constant stream of news, and the effect of social upheaval on our strategic practices. The racial reckoning provided an opportunity to reflect on collections strategy and recalibrate our orientation. A project to diversify the collections is already well underway and will be a permanent part of our thinking going forward. And new digital applications like Spotlight will allow for the curation and highlighting of materials that reflect the breadth and diversity of our user community’s interests.

“Our time away from campus was not limited to the suffering brought on by the pandemic,” explains Head of Information Literacy Services Elise Nacca. “The murder of George Floyd prompted vital conversations on our campus, including interrogating whose story gets told at this University and what responsibility do we have to seek out diverse viewpoints? Critical pedagogy asks us to interrogate how power shapes the creation of and access to information. I worked to address in my classroom the gaps and silences in scholarship and how students can use our resources at the Libraries to seek out perspectives missing from the conversation.”

Promoting Legacy Content. The launch of the Libraries’ Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) in 2019 couldn’t have been more fortuitous, providing a framework and processes for sharing extant digital content with a community that was abruptly cut off from physical access to primary resources. Innovative thinking aligned with open access principles to realize opportunities for leveraging the DAMS for collaborative work. One such example is work on the David Reichard Williams Collection at the Alexander Architectural Archive, where staff enlisted a larger group of formal and citizen scholars to build out metadata for the collection through a crowdsourcing effort. This novel approach can be applied with equal effect even during a period that doesn’t require distance between contributors.

“We made a big push to provide more digital access to library resources,” explains Sean O’Bryan, Assistant Director of Access. “Along with exponentially increasing identification, description and ingest of content into the DAMS, we also took advantage of HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) making these digital surrogates easily discoverable in Primo (the Libraries’ content discovery system). This immediate benefit of providing a ‘virtual library’ during the pandemic has informed our exploration of controlled digital lending in order to advance that potential post-pandemic.”

The Dawn of the Virtual Session. Perhaps one of the most important evolutions of the pandemic was the development of collaborative meeting platforms like Zoom and Teams, allowing the adaptation of in-person services and expertise in a virtual environment. Research consultations, workshops and meetings all migrated to these platforms out of necessity during the pandemic, and now they have become a regular, and likely permanent fixture in how we interface with our constituents.

“One of the biggest changes made after the start of the pandemic was a switch from exclusively in-person workshops to completely virtual Zoom webinar-based workshops,” says Geospatial Data Coordinator Michael Shensky. “It wasn’t initially clear whether patrons would show up in the same numbers we had come to expect for in-person workshops, but we found that attendance for virtual workshops was actually significantly higher than for in-person workshops on similar topics that were organized during semesters prior to the pandemic.”

Having access to expert librarians for reference support is a core function at academic research institutions, and so the sudden impact of closures on research consultations – a service that was mostly an in-person exercise – could have been detrimental. Once again, Zoom provided a ready solution for an unexpected challenge. “It’s a great format for this type of work and allows people to meet with us from wherever they are,” says Jenifer Flaxbart, Assistant Director of Research Support and Digital Initiatives.

“Zoom was a godsend, for many reasons, and it’s now a staple in all facets of our work,” continues Flaxbart. “These virtual learning tools and platforms can be used both synchronously and asynchronously, and they permit global-level engagement, 24/7.”

Collaborating in the Digital Space. Teaching and learning online is not so easy to navigate successfully, and not every tool is equal, but what did work was using online whiteboards such as Padlet and Google Jam Boards during instruction sessions. These tools allow students to post ideas and responses quickly and teachers can see the posts in real time to facilitate discussion. Students can see what their colleagues are posting as well, and can participate anonymously. These tools will continue to find a space as in-person teaching and learning continues to ramp up with the gradual return to campus.

Where’s the Community? One of the greatest losses of the departure from campus at the arrival of the pandemic was the bustle and din of activity in Libraries’ spaces. When students returned in a limited capacity, the hesitancy created by risk factors made for a slow return to formerly beloved student congregation areas. Amplifying the challenge of providing a communal and collaborative workspace is the disparate experience of latter career students and those whose academic life began in a remote environment. Navigating the adapted needs of users in the physical space is a hard road of work ahead, but with the earnest return to campus, we’re seeing increasing traffic in spaces, and an expansion of in-person services, though not at pre-pandemic levels, yet.

“Teaching first year students, you’re always aware of the challenges someone coming to our campus for the first time might face,” says Elise Nacca. “It’s big and overwhelming and it’s easy to get lost physically and mentally. Before the pandemic sent us all home, I don’t think I appreciated how much most students really love being on campus and how much many lost staying home. I saw a lot of sad faces in Zoom classrooms and a lot of silent black boxes staring back at me. I wondered more than ever how they were feeling.”

“This led us to include more inclusive teaching practices into our work. This could be something simple like using inclusive language and examples in search demos to more intensive work, such as providing multiple formats for engagement with course materials,” explains Nacca. “I included more videos and screenshots of my content because I felt like I could not check in with students as easily as I could in person in order to check if they understood a concept. A stressed-out student on a lousy internet connection could follow images of searches or watch a video on their phone if the Zoom session wasn’t easy to engage with.”

“Overall, Covid has pushed our users to embrace the ‘Platform’ even more,” says Jenifer Flaxbart. “It’s key that our staffing and services align with that and do not overemphasize Library-as-Place and in-person work needlessly, particularly with faculty and graduate students, who’ve shown they prefer remote work and virtual collaborations with librarians and related Libraries’ experts.”

Working Differently. There’s no question that the experience of almost two years in a pandemic that has separated people from a professional structure and shared space can stymie efficiencies that have been built for existing practices and processes, so in adjusting workflows to a radically different work environment, staff chanced certain operational discoveries that might’ve otherwise not been considered.

The Digital Stewardship staff took on a lot of additional work to help units across the Libraries provide access to materials that were no longer available in physical form, including support in scanning materials for ILS (interlibrary loan) requests. That workflow could have sunsetted as ILS staff came back onsite, but the experience opened the door to the idea of scanning materials for different kinds of workflows. “Now we are scanning materials for the Controlled Digital Lending pilot,” says Assistant Director of Stewardship Wendy Martin, “and will build out those workflows as needed if that becomes a service.”

Transitional projects, which are mostly one-time affairs, gained some added benefit from the peace of campus closure. The pandemic allowed Stewardship staff to approach a project to vacate Battle Hall for a renovation project (as well as some other collection moves) in a more deliberate way than might have otherwise been possible. “The Storage and Logistics team and Architecture team and Preservation team were able to work onsite while the Architecture Library was closed for the pandemic, instead of having to fit the move into an intersession period,” says Martin. “The library was closed, but staff could work onsite preparing materials, and remain socially-distant from each other as they carried out the work. Having that time and space to move that collection out of Battle was beneficial for the move out, and also informs how we will move it all back in.”

Mindset and Headspace. There’s no question that the experiences of the past two years  have affected attitudes and orientation about work/life balance. So in addition to the outward facing changes that directly impact our users, there have been efforts to take into consideration the challenges and varying experiences of Libraries’ staff. There’s a real concern that with a slew of changes like those mentioned here, burnout and exhaustion can loom behind the satisfaction of surviving such an unexpected series of challenges. Units within the Libraries are recognizing a role in making sure that the Libraries’ are taking care of its own, as well as its users.

“While new approaches to our work have been exciting and productive, they are simultaneously overwhelming,” says Jenifer Flaxbart. “Managerially, the Research Support & Digital Initiatives Engagement Team focused on communication, reassurance and ‘grace’ in acknowledging that the many stresses and moving parts and unpredictable, ever-changing conditions regarding physical, psychological and emotional health, living arrangements, family roles and obligations, financial impacts, loss and more. We aimed for those things before the pandemic and continue to give more pronounced focus to those things now.”


As these Libraries move towards certainty, we’ll bring with us lessons learned from the challenges of the last two years. Amid the experimentation – some efforts resulting in success, others not –  there is one perspective that holds both in the last normal and in the next one, stated nicely by Head of Scholarly Communications Colleen Lyon: 

“We are a really service-minded profession and organization. I knew we would do what we had to do to be responsive to our users’ sudden and very different access needs. And we did. I think we spend a lot of time asking what we could do better in this profession of perfectionists, but we need to celebrate our work, too.”