UC’s Digital Scholarship Center presents “Digital Integrator and Transdisciplinary Research Partner”

This Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Spring 2021 Digital Scholarship Section featured “Digital Integrator & Transdisciplinary Research Partner,” a virtual panel highlighting the University of Cincinnati’s Digital Scholarship Center’s (DSC) unique model and work with research teams focused on misinformation and missing information.

The DSC partnered with UC Libraries’ Research and Data Services Team and the Department of Journalism to research Twitter’s impact on misinformation, false information and conspiracy theories about coronavirus. Using machine learning and linguistic analysis, the team also partnered with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to understand the role of missing information in electronic health records as it relates to social determinants of health. During the presentation, the panel discussed the unique organization of the DSC and its partnerships on campus and how health information professionals and the DSC work together on research projects involving social media, social justice and social determinants of health. The recording and slides are available online.

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UCBA Library Hosts 2018-19 Practical Applications Series

by Lauren Wahman

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Digital Humanities & Digital Scholarship

electronic brain graphicWednesday, November 28 from 1:30-2:30 pm
Muntz 117
Presenters: Arlene Johnson & James Lee, Co-Directors, Digital Scholarship Center

Please join Digital Scholarship Center Co-Directors, Arlene Johnson and James Lee, for a faculty-focused session on the applications of digital humanities/digital scholarship in the classroom as well as support and resources for digital humanities/digital scholarship activities and initiatives in your teaching and research.  This workshop is sponsored by the UCBA Library and the Learning + Teaching Center.

Please Note: Due to travel requirements for these presenters, please make sure to register through Faculty OneStop (click image below).  This workshop requires a minimum of 5 participants to be held.

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Zhaowei Ren Joins UC Libraries as a Software Developer in the Digital Scholarship Center

Zhaowei Ren started work as a software developer in the Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) on Tuesday, May 29. Zhaowei is the first hire funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of the Digital Scholarship Center’s research on machine learning and data visualization in multiple disciplines in the humanities and beyond.

Zhaowei received his Master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, where he focused on data mining, algorithm design and semantic modeling. He has worked at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center on several bioinformatics projects, and at Spatial.ai, a data science firm.

He brings a terrific set of both theoretical and practical skills to the DSC that will help in implementing and scaling up their machine learning and data visualization platform for transdisciplinary research.

Two additional hires funded by the Mellon grant will begin in the DSC in July.

Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Much Ado About Digital

By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

Within the archives profession, “Digital Archivist” is one of the fastest-growing job titles (http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol31/iss2/5/). The Society of American Archivists offers a Digital Archives Specialist curriculum and certificate (www2.archivists.org/prof-education/das).   And library and archives conferences abound on topics of an electronic and digital nature – like Saving The Web (https://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/news/save-web-2016.html), the Digital Library Federation (https://www.diglib.org/), and the Software Preservation Network Forum (http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/spn-forum/).

So what does a digital archivist do? Every digital archivist’s responsibilities will look slightly different depending on institutional mission, priorities and resources. As the first link indicates, there isn’t even professional consensus whether a digital archivist is one who works with digitization of analog material (like paper documents and manuscripts, rare books, maps, etc), or someone who works with “born-digital” materials. In many institutions, both of those responsibilities may be within the Digital Archivist’s charge. As UC’s Digital Archivist/Records Manager, my responsibilities center on working with born-digital archives, digital preservation, and overseeing UC’s Records Management program. I also work closely with my colleagues in Digital Collections on digitization projects (http://digital.libraries.uc.edu/).

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Meet the UC Libraries’ Science Informationist

Hello! I am Amy Koshoffer, the new UC Libraries Science Informationist.

I am one member of a team of informationists working to provide research data services and instruction to the UC research community. My primary focus will be on researchers in Engineering and the Sciences, including Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Geology, Geography, Mathematics, and Physics. The informationist team includes others based in the Health Sciences Library (East Campus), including Tiffany Grant, a Research Informationist who is focusing on services to biomedical researchers.

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UC Libraries Receive Mellon Foundation Scholarly Communications and Information Technology Grant

The University of Cincinnati Libraries were awarded a $58,000 Scholarly Communications and Information Technology Program planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to define and describe the key skills and competencies required to support a robust digital scholarship program. This is the first Mellon grant ever received by UC Libraries. Continue reading