Tag Archives: digital humanities

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

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
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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.

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.

An Adventure in El Paso, Texas

One of my favorite parts of being a librarian is the opportunity to participate in community engagement projects. So when the opportunity to work with Albert A. Palacios on a traveling exhibit as one of my rotations, I immediately said yes. The exhibit was a collaboration with the University of Texas at El Paso’s C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, which was especially exciting as a UTEP alumnus. This is part of a long standing partnership made possible by a U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center grant. Our exhibit brought together holdings from the Benson Latin American Collection, the C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections, and the Municipal Archive of Saltillo in a joint physical and digital exhibit about the Mexican Revolution.

A Fight for Democracy exhibit at UTEP
Intertwined Destinies: El Paso and Northern Mexico exhibit at UTEP.

Albert and I traveled to El Paso in May 2025 to finally see the fruits of our labor. When we got to the library’s third floor, Claudia Rivers (Director of the C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections) was hard at work putting the finishing touches on her exhibit. The U.S.-Mexico border played a big role in the Mexican Revolution, which means that UTEP has a lot of special objects in their archives. One of these objects is a commemorative cigar from when Porfirio Díaz and William Howard Taft met at the border in 1909. It was an incredible experience to see these first hand, and to have people from the community view these as well.

The next day was dedicated to digital scholarship workshops to local scholars. We had participants from all over the El Paso-Juárez region, and an archivist even drove three hours from Alpine to attend! Elisabet Takehana, Director of UTEP’s Center of the Digital Humanities, taught stylometry using the stylo package in R. Sergio Morales, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Graduate Research Assistant and Latin American Studies Master’s student, taught ArcGIS’s Online and StoryMap tools for presenting spatial research using the official photographs from Mexico’s 1910 independence centennial celebration. And finally, I taught how to use Voyant Tools and UDPipe for text analysis using telegrams between Francisco Villa and Lázaro de la Garza. By the end of the day, participants had gotten hands-on experience with all of these different digital humanities tools and processes.

Sergio Morales teaching ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps tools.
Ana A. Rico teaching text analysis.

After the workshops, we headed upstairs to the third floor once again for the exhibit opening. The exhibit curated by Claudia Rivers was incredible – showcasing a silk print of Porfirio Díaz, a camera from the early 1900s, and portraits of Francisco I. Madero and his wife which were taken by an El Paso photographer. Though our exhibit didn’t get there on time for the opening (Albert and I learned how to roll with the punches) we were able to direct people to the digital version of the exhibit. All in all, it was a day full of learning and celebration, as well as making connections to scholars in the area.

People viewing exhibits during the opening reception.

Finally, on the third day, our exhibit arrived and we put it up for students, faculty, and the public to enjoy! It was a joy to share the Benson Latin American Collection with a wider audience. The exhibit, A Fight for Democracy: The First Years of the Mexican Revolution, will be displayed at UTEP for the summer and then travel to the El Paso Border Heritage Center in the fall. A second copy will circulate through the Austin Public Library later this year.

Albert A. Palacios and Ana A. Rico in front of their exhibit.

Acknowledgements
This initiative would not have been possible without the support of the following individuals and sponsorships:

C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, The University of Texas at El Paso
● Claudia Rivers, Head
● Susannah Holliday, Assistant Head
● Gina Stevenson, Photo and Processing Archivist

Center of the Digital Humanities, The University of Texas at El Paso
● Elisabet Takehana, Director

Municipal Archive of Saltillo
● Olivia Strozzi, Director
● Iván Vartan Muñoz Cotera, Head of Outreach

LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections
● Melissa Guy, Director, Benson Latin American Collection
● Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections
● Jennifer Mailloux, Graphic Designer (special thanks)
● Adela Pineda Franco, LLILAS Director & Lozano Long Endowed Professor
● Theresa Polk, Head of Digital Initiatives
● Ramya Iyer, Grants and Contracts Specialist
● Susanna Sharpe, Communications Coordinator (special thanks)
● Cindy Garza, Accountant
● Leah Long, Administrative Manager

Sponsors
● U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center Title VI Grant
● LLILAS Benson Collaborative Funds

Read, Hot and Digitized: Digital Benin

Launched in November 2022, Digital Benin isn’t necessarily a new digital project, but it is an important one that continues to shift how we understand and access African cultural heritage, in this case cultural objects from the Kingdom of Benin (present-day Nigeria).

At first glance, it’s an aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly interface that showcases more than 5,000 artifacts looted from Benin during a notorious 1897 British military campaign, an enduring symbol of colonial violence and theft. While this alone would make the project a valuable resource, a great strength of the project lies in how it highlights connections: between museum-held objects and their places of origin, between Western classifications and indigenous Edo terminology, between archival documents and the Benin objects themselves. It’s not just a database, but a dynamic tool for recontextualizing history.

Digital Benin connects the global locations of Benin artifacts across 130 institutions in 21 countries, most of which were looted during the colonial period and are now located in Western museums. Each object record includes high-resolution images, metadata, provenance information and translations in both English and Edo. Notably, you can trace how looted items moved from British soldiers in 1897, through art dealers and collectors, and into major museum collections.

Above is a screenshot of the Network Explorer tool, which allows users to explore connections between people, entities, objects and archival documents.

One of the most powerful aspects of the project is the “Ẹyo Otọ” section that highlights the Edo object classification system. Instead of relying on Western museum categories (like “pottery” or “bronze”), Digital Benin introduces a controlled vocabulary based on Edo knowledge systems. For example, you’ll notice distinct categories like Akhẹ Amẹ (water pot) or Akhẹ Osun (Osun shrine pot). These designations reflect the original, indigenous understanding and use of the object.

Object records are organized by the Edo object classification system under the “Ẹyo Otọ section. Here are all the records for Iyeọkhọkhọ hen figures used on female altars.

The design of the site is equally impressive, with extensive documentation on the project development, data acquisition and management, and the Edo controlled vocabulary. The Italian studio Calibro, known for projects like the open source data visualization tool RAWGraphs and The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, built custom visual tools and interfaces for the site.

Good design intersects with dynamic function in the “Paper Trails” section of the project, which connects the individual Benin objects to archival documents like letters, catalogues, photographs and newspaper clippings that mention them. You can click through the documents, read transcriptions and follow specific objects as they are referenced over time.

The Archival Documents database shows a flyer for a demonstration advocating for the return of the Benin Bronzes. The archival record links to the specific Uhunmwu-Elao, or commemorative head, mentioned in the document.

A unique strength of Digital Benin is its overall approach to this work. The project is led by Nigerian and international scholars, deeply grounded in local knowledge, oral traditions and indigenous frameworks. It models a powerful kind of digital restitution by not just returning information to descendant communities, but empowering them to define how that knowledge is structured and shared. This value is embedded into the project as a whole, shaping everything from the site’s design and data organization to its commitment to centering Edo perspectives and reclaiming cultural authority.


See more resources in our library catalog:

Abungu, George Okello, and Webber Ndoro. Cultural Heritage Management in Africa: The Heritage of the Colonized. London: Routledge, 2022.

Coombes, Annie E. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. Yale University Press, 1994.

Falola, Toyin. Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development? London ; Zed, 1987.

Hicks, Dan. The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. London: Pluto Press, 2020.

Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art : The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection. Milan, Italy: 5 Continents Editions, 2011.

Phillipe, Nora. Restitution?: Africa’s Fight for its Art. Paris: Cinétévé, 2021.

Phillips, Barnaby. Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes. London: Oneworld, 2021.

Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, Damiana Oțoiu, and Felicity Bodenstein. Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022.

Read, Hot and Digitized: A Digital Survey of the Scottish Witch Trials

The witch trials of Europe in the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, resulted in the prosecution, often violent, of over 100,000 people. Studying this history and understanding its causes—which were multifaceted, and incorporated elements of religious persecution of alleged heresy, superstition, and religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants—is an important way we can understand the motivations of past atrocities and learn from them to avoid similar violence and intolerance in the future. The Witches: Survey of Scottish Witchcraft project at the University of Edinburgh is one project that makes this history more broadly accessible and understandable both to scholars and the general public.

The site itself contains an excellent introduction to the history of witch trials in Scotland. It states:

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Scotland went through a series of changes to the state and church which fuelled the Scottish witch hunt. As a result of the Reformation, when Scotland broke away from the Catholic Church and moved towards Protestantism, the church went through an upheaval of religious belief and became much more interested in what ordinary people did and believed. 

This concern led to great concern from Church and state about people’s religious beliefs and practices, deviations from behavior expected by the Church and society (such as not attending Church on a Sunday), and witchcraft. More than 4,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736, and confessions were often evinced using torture. Of people accused of being witches it is estimated that around 2,500, or roughly two-thirds, were executed, with the majority of those executed (about 85%) being women.

The main map on the site’s landing page, showing locations where witches in the database lived.
The main map on the site’s landing page, showing locations where witches in the database lived.

The site’s most striking feature is a map showing accused witches’ residences and details about their case and personal lives, including their occupations. This provides an intuitive and visually appealing way to explore the dataset, and allows for free exploration of the data without digging into the spreadsheets and metadata underlying the map. Users can also search the complete dataset used to make the map, exploring the same by searching for an accused’s name. In addition to these exploratory tools, the site also features a very helpful introduction that explains many details of the dataset and provides further background information, as well as a number of additional visualizations. Particularly affecting is the Story of Isobel Young visualization, which chronicles the life and death of one woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed.

The Story of Isobel Young visualization, showing a map of places where Isobel lived and background information on the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563.
The Story of Isobel Young visualization.

The site also provides a host of references that provide scholarly background on the history of witch trials in Scotland. There are also a number of resources, including a GitHub repository for the project’s website and the CSV files used to make the map. It also provides lists of accused witches, trials, people involved, and memorials and sites of interest within Scotland that users may wish to visit.

The Witches: Survey of Scottish Witchcraft site offers a robust but inviting introduction to this period of European history. I encourage you to explore the site for yourself and find out what it has to offer.

Related resources at the UT Libraries:

Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia

Demonology and Witch-hunting in Early Modern Europe

Witch Hunts: A history of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America

Spanish Paleography + Digital Humanities Institute Focuses Research on Colonial Texts

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 17th and 18th 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.

Transforming Text: A Year of the Scan Tech Studio

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? 

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.

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

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