If you are like me there are some TED talks on your ‘to watch’ list that you never get around to watching.  Let’s choose a few to watch and then have a group discussion after each one.

We watched the following video’s:

The price of shame | Monica Lewinsky

and

The library is not a place, it’s a concept. | Bill Ptacek | TEDxCalgary

Digital Humanities projects are fantastic and quite versatile but they are often severely limited due to being inaccessible and/or from requiring far too much computing power. I would like all of to take time to consider the GO::DH minimal computing (#minicomp) guidelines and how they can be implemented and integrated into existing and future digital humanities projects along with the guidelines of the #a11y project. Ensuring that our digital humanities projects and assignments are accessible to all is to me a critical aspect of digital humanities. Along with GO::DH #minicomp and #a11y project if there is time I think it would be great to discuss ways to begin DH projects with the end in mind and how to keep them online after the project has concluded or the researcher(s) have moved institutions and/or platforms.

PS If anyone would like to practice/play making a minicomp site that would also be wonderful.

Updated: What is #minicomp resources.

‘Distant reading’ is an alternative approach for historians and literary scholars who are working on large and extra-canonical corpora. But the problem is, how can we ‘feed the texts into computer’? Do we have to code a lot? In this session, I will briefly introduces the web-based analytics tools provided by the HathiTrust Research Center and apply these tools to explore a strange question:  what states in America are more poetic than others?

In my travels I seem to discover cool, interesting little tips (and sometimes they show up a couple of times in different places). This could be anything…..academic, Microsoft office short cut, cooking recipe, etc.  Let’s share these with each other.

I’m attaching the quickie powerpoint I created for the session, including tips from the group.

Tips and Tricks (Life Hacks)

This talk session would be a time to discuss how Digital Humanities / Scholarship plays a role at our institutions, sharing what is going well and also what challenges / gaps are impacting growth, scaling, sustainability, etc. The goal would be to learn more about how we can help each other (based on comparing the strengths and challenges institutions are facing) and a potential way to communicate with each other when needs for others’ assistance / expertise arise (maybe research some free tools to use for this). Depending on where the conversation goes, maybe end with a speed networking activity where we share current projects that could be strengthened if cross-collaborations could take place.

HistoryForge is an open-source program being developed by The History Center in Tompkins County that combines historic maps, data from the US Census, archival and user-generated content to allow users to engage with local history in unique ways.

thehistorycenter.net/historyforge

thehistorycenter.net/historyforge/about-historyforge

We propose a workshop in which we will lead participants in an exploration of the program and its capabilities as well as what it takes to create an engaging digital public history project

Some of the topics we can discuss include:

Building the HistoryForge database:

-Fun with the census!  Transcribing and standardizing census data

-Playing with historic maps! Geo-rectifying historic maps and/or using maps to verify census data

Using HistoryForge:

-Scavenger hunt! Searching and finding historic data on HistoryForge

-More fun with maps! See the results of your search visually displayed on map layers

Please come with questions and ideas!

Our beautiful world is ever changing, and ever staying the same. Many years have passed since the BOAI formally defined Open Access in the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative), 2002, though the heart of the matter stands strong:

“Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review.”-Suber, Peter.

Open Access Week, www.openaccessweek.org/ an international week in support of Open Access, Open Educational Resources, OA publishing, and other scholarly communications endeavors, is the third week of October, every year and October 21-27, 2019. SPARC, sparcopen.org/, a national advocacy organization on Open Access lends support.

This year’s theme is Open For Whom? Equity for Open Knowledge?

Everyday discourse at Syracuse University often considers many conversation topics around diversity, inclusion, scholarship, research, and teaching. This talk session will consist of a panel discussion with faculty and staff who participate in open access publishing workflows. We will discuss topics and consider themes of equity, openness, and open knowledge.

Panel Participants will include Syracuse University faculty and staff affiliates (who are editors of open access journals) Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature: wordgathering.com/ and also Public: a Journal of Imagining America, which is a multimedia design journal. public.imaginingamerica.org/welcome/

Amanda Page, Open Publishing and Copyright Librarian, will moderate and guide this discussion.

ThatCamp participants will also be encouraged to participate in our conversation and discuss conversation topics and questions. Example questions include: What is equity in openness? Why publish Open Access? Open For Whom?

In this session we will discuss approaches to teaching algorithmic principles in first year classrooms (and beyond). In the first part of this session, we will engage with 2-3 short activities that can be used to spur discussion with students about the “hidden” ways algorithms influence our encounters with information and our approaches to decision-making. The second part of this session is dedicated to discussing and brainstorming additional activities to bring into our respective classrooms.

Participants will leave this session with at least 3 ideas of activities they can use to start discussions with students in their classroom, but may potentially brainstorm many more with their co-participants.

Do you like crosswords, but find them hard to crack? Do you wish you could get past the confusing clues and themes and finish a tough puzzle? Crosswords are an excellent way to flex your cognitive muscles in the name of fun!

I propose a session wherein we solve the NYT Crossword Puzzle as a group using the projection screen.  It’s a Friday, which is the second most difficult to solve (Saturday is hardest!). I’ll share tips and tricks for solving, and introduce participants to the wonderful analyzer that is Xword.info  If we have time, I’ll show you my own published NYT puzzle!

On this session, we will look at several examples of creative interactive (mostly-text-based) writing platforms. We will play a few examples, talk about applications, and explore the backend interfaces of tools like Tiny Choice & Twine, considering pedagogical and creative endeavors to undertake with each.

Participants will leave the session with the beginnings of a small, playable game written in Tiny Choice that can serve as a basis or model for future projects.