The central Gulf Coast’s first THATCamp was held on May 17, 2013, in New Orleans. THATCamp NOLA was a successful “unconference” held at the Louisiana Humanities Center Building. Digital Humanities folk in New Orleans based at the University of New Orleans and several from the University of Southern Mississippi collaborated on introducing THATCamp to the area. Volunteers from Loyola and Xavier Universities also contributed to the successful unconference, which featured 63 registrants and drew participants from as far as Kentucky.

Any one interested in helping with planning for the next THATCamp NOLA should contact Michael Mizell-Nelson: mmizelln@uno.edu

If you would like to learn a bit more about who participated and what some of the sessions were like, please visit some of the pages from our 2013 event.

Just a reminder to add a link to your dork shorts sites in the comments to this post (whether you showed us your work in person or if the comments are the first time we see it).

Also, if you took notes in a session that you’d like to share, please post them in the Google drive folder we set up for THATCamp New Orleans. Even though WiFi was spotty, I will type handwritten notes from sessions I attended and post them. Hoping someone (or several someones) who attended the other sessions can do the same.

If you are in town for the evening or weekend and looking for fellow campers to join you in dinner, Boogaloo’ing, or anything not against the law, don’t forget the hashtag #tcno13.

Keep an eye here and on @tcampnola2013 for further news, and stay in touch!

Gena

Some of the first old media to be transformed by digital technology does not occupy much discussion at THATCamps. (Neither film nor video have earned their own categories for our THATCamp posts.) The first THATCamp New Orleans features an intriguing number of distinguished filmmakers, documentary producers, and media scholars. One filmmaker was awarded a Guggenheim. Another serves as editor of Television and New Media. One worked as a producer for PBS’s Frontline. I hope we might have one session with such people and the archivists charged with the extremely difficult task of preserving film and video collections and making them available for present and future audiences. The WWII Museum is involved in a fascinating project funded by the IMLS using Annotator’s Workbench to encode their video oral histories. Another IMLS grant funded a planning project for the Louisiana State Archives and Louisiana Public Broadcasting to preserve and catalogue the state’s film and video resources. I know one person at UNO has been struggling with similar issues regarding digitized video storage. Anyone want to talk about some of these topics?

In the spirit of the very well received session proposal Tech Learning Modules Travers posted, I would like to propose this as a “session module,” one that might either be discussed on its own or fitted into another session. I want to discuss how best to engage undergraduate students in meaningful work with digital humanists working in libraries, museums, and archives. This might be a good forum through which to address what possibilities digital projects as engaged service learning offer both for undergraduate students and participating institutions. Greg Lambousy (Louisiana State Museum) and I have piloted one such digital partnership in one of my US survey history courses. One of the best examples I know of is László Fülöp’s UNO film students who learn documentary video production at UNO while producing PSAs for community non-profits.

I understand that Tulane, LSU, and USM offer a “best practices” approach for these sorts of partnerships, but I am interested in how these partnerships might work in the real world of public institutions whose interests are never well-served or properly funded. My best partnership experiences are with other public institutions, such as New Orleans Public Library and the LSM. We are the Coalition of the Unwillingly Underfunded.

We will have a 30-minute Dork Shorts session during the last part of our 90-minute lunch break.
12:00-1:30 Lunch and 1:00 -1:30 Dork Shorts

THATCAmp Central states:
“Dork shorts, known in some corners as ‘lightning talks,’ are brief (2-minute) presentations in which attendees discuss current or upcoming projects, demonstrate new tools, or call for collaborators. Like most of THATCamp, Dork Shorts are meant to be as informal as possible. Although the concept might be unfamiliar to new THATCampers, veterans think it’s one of the most fun and useful parts of each meeting: Dork Shorts let you learn a lot in a little bit of time.”

Since not everybody will be able to attend, we want to follow the approach taken by THATCamp New England, whose instructions we borrow.

“Tell us about your project, the great tools or apps that make your life worth living or anything that you think is relevant and worth telling about. You have two minutes, one topic, and you get to use one URL. No PowerPoint, no time to load anything, no USB sticks.”

This comment thread will allow those people having a great lunch break the opportunity to learn a little bit about your project regardless of how late they may be in rejoining THATCamp. If you’d like to present, sign up by adding a comment and URL below. We will have time for about 15 presentations. If there’s space available, one can sign up on Friday. The order we follow in this session will be based upon when you post your comment.

Some Dork Shorts in action:

As internal access to collections increases through collection management systems and as online publishing formats multiply, how do we work together within organizations to effectively “curate” content? What does it mean to curate?  How can different departments within organizations work together to bring material to the public? This may be the “looking-in” version of Michael’s proposal!

There is now a Google Drive space just for us, and everybody should be able to access it by clicking that link. You will need to sign in to Google and click the “Add to Drive” button. Then you’ll see the “THATCamp New Orleans 2013” folder among all your other Google Drive folders and documents.

In addition to the session schedule that we create Friday morning, this will be a space where we can post session notes, dinner and event sign-up sheets, “digital dork shorts,” or anything else you might imagine now or in the future.

We hope this is a good way for all of us to keep in touch during the day and long afterward.

I think my particular proposal, related to a project I am currently working on, might be a sub-topic for any number of sessions already offered (specifically, Michael’s, Anne’s and/or Doreen’s). I am trying to sort out the best technology/interface to use for a project I’m developing with colleagues that will be submitted to the online journal “Liminalities” once completed. I have a colleague at Xavier willing to help me with some of my technological needs, but I need to figure out for myself and my co-author what those needs might be and how to best fulfill them.  To that end, I’m attaching a proposal I submitted  last academic year to a National Communication Association round table panel, the goals of which were “to identify themes and specific projects for communication scholars in the digital humanities and to help scholars develop projects to submit to digital humanities’ journals and/or ODH start-up grant proposals,” as an introduction to my topic, themes, and potential needs.

Digital_Humanities_Proposal_Flanagan

Three Government Documents Librarians want to share a few things about the nexus of  government information, technology, and the humanities.  Yes, the feds have gone all-out-techie and have developed many online resources to help citizens find information on everything from basic e-government applications to sophisticated research portals.  While much of what those sophisticated portals contain is science and technology oriented, the humanities have not been ignored.  Each librarian will discuss a specific type of digital government resource:  web portals that provide links to humanities topics; individual web sites sponsored by government organizations like the National Endowment for the Humanities; and, finally, mobile apps that can link citizens to collections of art, tours of the National Mall in DC (museums, landmarks, cherry blossoms, what more could you want?) and, for the children, an interactive version of a 1919 illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables from the Library of Congress! If time permits, we will discuss the newest fed gov initiative, federal eBooks, to be made available through Government Printing Office (GPO) partnerships with Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors.

Our discussion will involve asking provocative questions–including those that address just how much interest there exists in having the government provide multiple technologies for accessing its information.  Another question will seek answers to the following:  how does the government’s  move to digital affect the legal and ethical demands for preservation of all government information?

Hello, THATCampers. Here is a general schedule for the day. The content of the sessions is up to you, so be sure to propose a session (or several) if you haven’t already. Keep an eye on this blog, too, since most news about the event will go here. Get ready, get excited, it’s almost Friday!

THATCamp Schedule of Events

8:30- 9:00  THATCamp Registration

9:00-9:15 Welcome to THATCamp

9:15-9:45 Last-Minute Proposals and Session Selection

9:45-10:00 Session Scheduling

10:00-10:55 First Session

11:00-11:55 Second Session

12:00-1:30 Lunch and Dork Shorts (1:00-1:30)

1:30-2:25 Third Session

2:30-3:25 Fourth Session

3:30-4:00 THATCamp Reflections and Closing Remarks

For THATCamp New Orleans, I propose a problem-solving session on developing technological skills-training modules that could be inserted in a variety of humanities courses. Typical semester-length classes devoted to learning software applications quickly become outdated, and campus tutorials or workshops are taught in isolation from course content, critical thinking, and creative applications.

We could identify and share relatively easy-to-learn, free, open-source software tools such as ArcGIS mapmaking, Sophie multimedia books, or Korsakow nonlinear video editing. Learning modules would be developed that were largely independent of specific course content or technological tool: a creative problem-solving assignment, question, or provocation that could be adapted to a variety of humanities disciplines, subjects, and digital tools. (E.g., “Use this technological tool to express multiple sides of an ethical dilemma in this field.”)

The goal would to be to develop short, one- or two-class digital technology modules that could be inserted into a syllabus, providing students with technological tools training from a distinctively humanities perspective, integrated with course content, and without laborious specialized training for the instructor.

As someone who has been using digital media (to qualify, rather erratically) in her research and teaching for many years, I am a bit of a lone wolf in an English Department that strictly adheres to traditional print culture in both scholarship and in the classroom. This session intends to pose a series of questions that will lead to some kind of action plan for dissolving fears and disdain of all things academic and digital.

My first question posed is: how can those of us who are digitally-oriented not only get support for e-projects and e-pedagogies (as Michael suggests in his proposal) that move beyond just a simple transference of media but move into the realm of re-conceiving what humanities can do in terms of methods and pedagogies? And what arguments can we make to persuade resistant faculty of the possibilities of digital media in their scholarship and teaching? How can we persuade faculty (especially in this age of budget cuts and education as instrumentalist rhetoric) that indeed some digital tools may offer to re-engage us with our subjects in novel and dynamic ways as well as energize our teaching?

Secondly, what digital programs and tools would best serve particular departments and/or disciplines as a whole? What tools can we bring to our departments via professional development workshops (taken for service credit) that would be most amenable and accessible to resistant faculty? Whether Omeka or Drupal for digital literary projects/archives or Mendeley/Zotero/Udini for research/data collecting.

Third, I’ve been thinking about starting a Digital Humanities Working Group or University-Wide Committee that could begin to think through implementing the digital in our work as scholars and teachers and to create sustainable collaborative relations with folks in library and computer science. I would like to hear from people who may be doing this and what they have learned and frankly whether this kind of college-wide effort is worth undertaking.

There is already a session about faculty with little or no web training, but that underlies this too.  I am actually trying to build two websites:  one for the 50th Anniversary of the Desegregation of Tulane; and one for the 1811 Louisiana Slave Revolt.  The latter is in the context of a class.  Both have some progress already.  Ideally, we want a high level of academically vetted history content, scanned documents; and on both sites access to video–on the desegregation website that will be oral history interviews (or maybe edited versions thereof with subsidiary links to full interviews); while on both sites we will have event footage.  My experience in both cases so far has been, because no one has a real budget or time for much professional training, whoever volunteers with pretty good web skills does what they can.  The end results are not bad; but there has got to be way to do this smoother and with more best-practices especially for the historical material–my big concern–good ways to present things like timelines and images; and useful ways to present scanned materials, but for the visual interest of the public, and perhaps for future researchers.  Putting up designed-to-be-permanent major history websites like this should have some best-practices goals/ideas/standards, beyond ‘what we can do with our limited professional skills and financial and professional resources.

I am interested in discussing how faculty members who receive no training or support can develop sites and online archives to promote their research and create online communities. Much of my research has been invested in the recovery of forgotten or under-appreciated authors. As the President of a society devoted to research on an under-appreciated author, I am interested in creating an online archive of the author’s works as well as archival material for use by researchers, teachers, and students. I have seen a few useful models on line, which I could present. One model was created in part by Ed White at Tulane. He is not able to attend the conference, but I have discussed the project with him and can share some of his experience. His site was created with WordPress with support from the American Antiquarian Society.

I would like to host a session on Zotero, an open source reference management application. In the session, I will explain what Zotero is, and provided a brief tutorial on how to setup, create and manage your Zotero account. I would also like to have a discussion on what free tools or resources others are implementing in their courses or on campus.

In case you haven’t seen Michael’s e-mail, it’s time to start thinking up amazing things for us to talk about when we descend upon the CBD next week. There are some ideas and suggestions over on the Sessions page, but these are more guides than rules. As the Rebirth Brass Band would say, “Do Whatcha Wanna.” We’ve got a few up already, so take a look at them for inspiration, and comment on the posts to get the conversation going!

We’ve also got a Twitter account up and running at @tcampnola2013. Follow it if Twitter’s your thing, and if it’s not, now’s a good excuse to give it a try!

It’s also as good a time as any to think about after-THATCamp plans. There’s always a ton going on around town, and next weekend is no exception. Feel free to post any events you hear about that you might want to share with fellow THATCampers in the comments, and I’ll compile them later. Bayou Boogaloo begins Friday evening (with Rebirth Brass Band!) and runs through Sunday, but there’s also the new Star Trek movie, countless amazing restaurants, city tours, and more.

Excited yet? Start posting!

It’s everywhere. Every library or museum of a certain size seems to have digital collections in it. You can’t escape it. It’s CONTENTdm!

But is that a bad thing?

In this session, I’d like to talk/share/commiserate with other CONTENTdm users on some of the challenges and opportunities offered by the new version, particularly in regards to digital humanities projects and supporting those who are doing them. I’m still a relative newcomer to the software, and I’m excited by some of the things I see other users doing with it, but I’m frustrated, too, by some of my day-to-day problems with it. I imagine others feel the same.

I’m also intrigued by the software’s roots at the University of Washington circa 1999 and how it became the proprietary commercial juggernaut that it is today. I wonder what will become of tools like Omeka, DSpace, Fedora, and others that some of us depend on today in fourteen years’ time.

I would like to know how others are supporting digital collection data growth and integrity. As a system and storage administrator, I’ve found it difficult to predict storage growth over time, especially within the confines of grant funding. I would also like to explore the pros and cons of hosted storage solutions with those who may have experiences to share.

I have been fortunate to attend a few THATCamps connected to academic conferences for historians, and I have wanted to work with others to create a THATCamp (and, we hope, a series of unconferences) rooted in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. UNO and USM folk from various backgrounds started to collaborate on digital projects several years ago via content development for the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, whose project funding birthed the precursor to Omeka. Therefore, we sought to begin the process of making connections and building a community that transcends the typical borders separating people engaged in digital projects.

One of the best features of THATCamps is their ability to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges. The conversations that take place when librarians, archivists, museum curators, graduate students, K-12 faculty, public historians, humanities faculty, and others gather together are invaluable. I hope our first gathering will help us to develop a supportive community. I had the pleasure of teaching history and writing classes in a computer classroom starting in 1993 and presenting at Computers & Writing in 1997, so I know how much good comes from getting out of disciplinary ruts or sinkholes.

Maybe we will come up with some solutions to a few of the common problems facing most who work on noncommercial digital projects in the Deep South:

*lack of funding and/or the constant threat of losing meager funding sources;

*lack of administrative support, including attention to key issues such as time & labor & technical support; and

*lack of interest and/or respect for non-commercial digital work, regardless of whether it’s presented as “digital humanities” and if DH’s time as the latest academic fad may seem to have come (and gone).

The arrival of Gena Chattin and Jennifer Jackson on UNO’s campus in concert with the long-term interest shown by Jeanne Pavy and others at UNO as well as Jeanne Gillespie and Diane Ross on USM’s campus have served as the catalyzing energies that have allowed us to move forward. More recently, UNO’s History Department has partnered with Vicki Mayer in Tulane’s Communication Department for a mobile history (ios and Android or Google Play) project using omeka known as neworleanshistorical.org.

Let’s begin to collaborate to build a more effective DH community.

Now it can be told: Registration for THATCamp New Orleans 2013 is open! Space is limited, so register today! Hope to see you in May!

Desire streetcar on Royal Street during its last day of service in 1948. Photograph by the late W. Bernadas.

A THATCamp is being planned for May 17, 2013, in New Orleans. It will take place in the Louisiana Humanities Center Building, 938 Lafayette Street, in downtown New Orleans. Digital Humanities folk in New Orleans hope that participants from throughout the Gulf Coast will help with planning.

THATCamp New Orleans’  Friday, May 17, date coincides with the Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo Festival. This is a smaller-scale, free festival held in the center of the city May 17-19 along Bayou St. John; it’s particularly popular among residents and visitors who have been priced out of Jazz Fest.

Come for THATCamp NOLA 2013; stay for the festival.

thebayouboogaloo.com/

Yes, “you are the big factor in providing this service,” so please contact any of the organizers with questions or planning suggestions.

University of New Orleans
*Michael Mizell-Nelson, Associate Professor, History
mmizelln@uno.edu
*Gena Chattin, Digital Initiatives Librarian
gchattin@uno.edu
*Jennifer Jackson, Learning Commons & Instruction Librarian
jmjacks9@uno.edu
*Jeanne Pavy, Scholarly Communications Officer
jpavy@uno.edu
 

University of Southern Mississippi
*Jeanne Gillespie, Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts & Letters
Jeanne.Gillespie@usm.edu
*Diane DeCesare Ross, Assist. to the Dean for External Publications & Digital Humanities
Diane.Ross@usm.edu

Loyola University New Orleans
*Elizabeth Kelly, Digital Initiatives Librarian
ejkelly@loyno.edu

Stephen F. Austin State University
*Linda Levitt, Assistant Professor, Languages, Cultures, and Communication
levitt.linda@gmail.com

Xavier University of Louisiana
*Lisa Flanagan, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies
lflanaga@xula.edu

Please help us to move these plans ahead and chime in on some crucial elements. Meanwhile, read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.