SIG-AH Events

2019 Virtual Symposium on Information & Technology in the Arts and Humanities

Video Games and Information Science

April 4, 2019, 12:00pm-4:00pm EST

Conference Program

#VISitAH

@asist_ah

Sponsored by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Groups for Arts and Humanities (SIG AH)

Featuring:

Documenting Videogame Communities

Olle Skold, Uppsala University

The UW iSchool Game Research Group

Marc Schmalz, University of Washington

Potential benefits of Video Games for Urban Academic Libraries

Christina Boyle, CUNY College of Staten Island

Meta-FAQ: What motivates the authors of video game walkthroughs?

Michael Hughes, Trinity University

Theme

The theme for this year’s Virtual Symposium is “Video Games and Information Science.” Video games capture the imagination of hundreds of millions worldwide and comprise a major industry worldwide. What are the information needs of “gamers”? How can their experiences be documented and understood? How can libraries support and engage these communities?

Four presentations will answer these questions from different perspectives. A diverse range of librarians and information scholars will present their research, methodology, and experiences studying and engaging gaming enthusiasts.

A full program with abstracts will be available in March 2019. Please check this site or RSVP for updates.

Registration is free for ASIS&T members and $50 for non-members. Please register here so we can send you the latest information on the program and accessing the streaming platform.

Download the 2017 Virtual Symposium Program

The event will be held via Blackboard Collaborate. The link to access the event is below the schedule.

TUESDAY April 18

All Times Eastern

12-12:20 — Jeremy McLaughlin and Sandy Hirsh
12:20–1:05 — Kate Hayes, Research in the spotlight: Collaborations for viable research and art
1:05-1:50 — Alexander Monea, Speculative code studies, or, notes on the future of critique in the (digital) humanities
1:55–2:55 — Krystyna Matusiak and Anna Harper, Visual literacy in practice
3:00–3:45 — Miriam Posner, Translation problems: Why humanists are so difficult about data
3:45–4:30 — David Bourget, Transforming scholarly communications in philosophy: challenges and solutions

WEDNESDAY April 19

All Times Eastern

12-12:15 — Jeremy McLaughlin
12:15–1:00 — Björn Hammerfelt, Research assessment and evolving ideas of output and impact in the humanities
1:00–1:50 — Joan Beaudoin, Information and the art historian: Some notes on herding cats
1:55–2:40 — Michael Black, Datamining the ‘open’ Internet: Studying digital writing with Web scraping
2:40–3:25 — Jamie Thomas, Facilitating student collaboration in digital humanities on zombie discourse analysis
3:30–4:15 — Joe Locke and Ben Wright, Massive collaboration and the open humanities: The American Yawp as case study
4:15–4:30 — Jeremy McLaughlin

LINK TO ACCESS THE SYMPOSIUM (via Collaborate):

https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/dropin.jnlp?sid=2011274&password=D.CFBC6CF052CD279D120A2AFE4013E2

2017 Virtual Symposium on Information and Technology in the Arts and Humanities

The Information and the Technology of Open Science in the Humanities

April 18 & 19, 2017, 12-4:30pm ET/9-1:30PM PT

Sponsored by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Groups for Arts and Humanities (SIG AH)
and Visualization, Images, and Sound (SIG VIS)

#VISitAH         @asist_ah       @sigvis

The theme for the 2017 Symposium is The Information and the Technology of Open Science in the Humanities. Digital technology has had a profound impact on scientific and scholarly communication. This includes fundamental changes to how individuals and groups find information, carry out collaborative projects, and publish, assess, and preserve growing amounts of content. In the sciences, the idea of open research processes and dissemination is inherent in changing research practices; but how are the concepts related to Open Science applied to research in, and about, disciplines in the Humanities?

Potential speakers will discuss research using open humanities-related content and on topics including:

• Open information retrieval
• Collaborative research methods
• Digital publishing
• Open access
• Data curation and sharing
• Linked data/linked open data
• Social media or Web 2.0
• Open Source technology
• Research assessment

Additional details, including scheduled speakers and access information, will be made available in early 2017. Please check this site or RSVP for updates.

Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/RSVP17Symp

In conjunction with the Virtual Symposium, we are proud to once again sponsor a Student Research Award in 2017. SIG AH and SIG VIS are seeking previously unpublished research for a Master’s and a PhD Student Research Award related to the theme of Open Science in the Humanities. Full details can be found on the 2017 Student Research Award page.

We look forward to “seeing” you in April

****UPDATE – SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED (January 2017)

Linking Locally: A Technical Tour of the UNLV LOD Project

Cory Lampert & Silvia Southwick, University of Nevada Las Vegas

September 29, 2016, 2-3pm PST

Registration and access details will be available on the ASIS&T Webinars site.

Take an insider’s look at an active linked open data project from an academic library working to implement LOD transformations across digital collections data.  This presentation will cover the basics of the transformation process, the importance of data quality in machine-readable data, and a sampling of LOD visualizations acting on data created from the project.

Free and open to all. Sponsored by ASIS&T SIG AH and SIG ED.

Cory Lampert is the Head of Digital Collections at the UNLV University Libraries where she is responsible for operations and strategic planning for a dynamic department that comprises digitization facilities, several digital collections systems/technologies and grant-funded projects such as the Nevada Digital Newspaper Program.

Silvia Southwick is Digital Collections Metadata Librarian at the UNLV University Libraries.

Second Virtual Symposium on Information & Technology in the Arts & Humanities

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

1pm – 5pm ET/10am – 2pm PT

#VisitAH  —  @asist_ah

SCHEDULE AND SPEAKER BIOS

The schedule of this year’s Virtual Symposium is as follows:

10:00 – 10:20 A.M. Introductions (Jeremy McLauhlin, Krystyna Matusiak, Diane Rasmussen Pennington)
10:20 – 10:50 A.M. Nicky Agate, MLA – MLA Commons/CORE
10:50 – 11:35 A.M. Cory Lampert, UNLV – Linked data
11:35 – 12:15 P.M. Student presentations
12:15 –  1:00 P.M. Martin Calvino – Art and technology data visualization
1:00 -1:45 P.M.   Katherine Walter, Nebraska
1:45 -2:00 P.M.   Open Q&A and closing

SIGAH will provide a speaker biography, picture, and an abstract for each talk by Tuesday, May 17.

NOTE: All times are Pacific Daylight Savings Time.

Jeremy L. McLaughlin, San Jose State University, Chair-SIG AH

Krystyna Matusiak, University of Denver, Chair-SIG VIS

Diane Rasmussen Pennington, University of Strathclyde

Diane Rasmussen Pennington is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Information Science at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. She earned her MS and PhD in Information Science from the University of North Texas, and she was Assistant Professor at The University of Western Ontario. Diane has published more than 40 works and delivered over 80 presentations in the overlapping areas of information organization, social media, non-text information indexing and retrieval, and digital consumer health information.

Nicky Agate, The Modern Language Association (MLA)

Building CORE: a Social Humanities Repository

The Modern Language Association’s repository, CORE, was created in partnership with Columbia University Libraries and modeled on the libraries’ institutional repository. Like other repositories, CORE facilitates open-access distribution, discussion, and citation of the many products of humanities research, including pre- or postprints, conference presentations, data sets, and learning objects such as syllabi and slide decks. What makes CORE stand out, however, is its social facet, the fact that it is not an independent entity but an integrated part of MLA Commons, the very environment in which MLA members already connect with one another. A member can choose to share any deposited item with up to five MLA subdisciplinary groups on the Commons, which in turn triggers preference-dependent e-mail notifications to members of that group, providing the author has an immediate and self-nominated community of interest to serve as an initial audience for his or her work.

In this presentation, Nicky Agate, project manager for digital initiatives at the MLA, will discuss the process, challenges, and next steps in building and refining CORE.

Nicky Agate is project manager for digital initiatives at the Modern Language Association, where she manages MLA Commons, the MLA repository Commons Open Repository Exchange (CORE), and the nascent interdisciplinary network Humanities Commons. She holds a Ph.D. in French literature from New York University and an M.F.A. in literary translation from the University of Iowa. Together with her colleagues in the MLA’s office of scholarly communication, she facilitates and champions new and open forms of communication and collaboration in the humanities.

PhD Student Paper Award Winner – Hyerim Cho, University of Washington

Master’s Student Paper Award Winner – Louisa Trott, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Cory Lampert, University of Nevada Las Vegas

Link It: Exploring Semantic Richness in Digital Collections

This presentation provides an overview of the UNLV Linked Open Data project; demonstrating how LOD principles can be applied to CONTENTdm digital collections. Topics covered include concepts and principles guiding communities creating LOD, evolution in the role of metadata creator/LOD contributor, and key benefits to digital library researchers.

Cory Lampert is the Head of Digital Collections at the UNLV University Libraries where she is responsible for operations and strategic planning for a dynamic department that comprises digitization facilities, several digital collections systems/technologies and grant-funded projects such as the Nevada Digital Newspaper Program. Cory’s research interests are in the areas of linked open data, strategic planning for digital libraries, and mentorship of new librarians. When not working on digital libraries and metadata, she likes hiking the peaks of the Mountain West.

Martin Calvino, Scientist/Artist/Technologist

Integrating Art with Knowledge Visualization and the Pursuit of Science

This presentation will focus on my personal experience and the journey from being a graduate student in life sciences three years ago to becoming an entrepreneur and then artist. Although art has always been present as a core component of my upbringing, furiously sketching abstract drawings in any piece of paper I could, I dedicated myself to a career in life sciences, relegating any artistic activity to the category of ‘stress reliever’ and ‘hobby’ as means to distract myself from the daily pressure of academic life. The first concrete opportunity in which I integrated my artistic curiosity with science was in 2013 when writing a paper in the field of plant comparative genomics. I came to realize at the time that many of the graphs I prepared to communicate my findings had a high degree of aesthetics and artistic abstraction. I remember thinking: “Wow, this is kind of art!” and that impression stayed with me as testimony of artistic curiosity mixed with analytical thinking. When I started my own company in 2014 and decided to develop knowledge visualization software with the objective to glance a particular field of knowledge from a visual perspective, the integration of my artistic sensibility with the principles of user experience design came very handy. As I worked with developers in creating software features that involved interactive graphs and visualization diagrams, the opportunity to include artistic sensibility grew as well. Indeed, not only the software had components of ‘abstract art’ in it but also the webpage included at the time ‘digital art’ on top of the tabs that composed the pages. Such integration was well received by many colleagues in the life sciences community. From this experience I developed a love for coding and information visualization and design. I conceived a clear vision as to how one could integrate seemingly unrelated fields into a singular enterprise to address an important problem in today’s world: information overflow and our capacity to digest relevant content from it. Thus, from October 2015 I decided then to take a dedicated time to explore, reflect and re-invent myself professionally at the intersection of the aforementioned disciplines. Indeed, I started by learning to code and using my new acquired language to program computers to ‘help’ me create abstract art with the idea of gaining the necessary knowledge and skills to produce highly engaging visual content that can be used far beyond the realm of pure art with the long-term goal of integrating it with scientific activities; an artistic approximation to science.

Martin Calvino is a digital technology artist, entrepreneur and scientist. He is currently working on his first book addressing from a visual perspective the topic of social media’s cover images from user’s profiles as dedicated canvas space to create abstract art. His long-term goal is to integrate digital abstract art with science as a novel channel to communicate complex processes and discoveries to mainstream society. Prior to his artistic efforts, Martin’s entrepreneurial activity involved the creation of a novel cloud-based software tool for the visualization and retrieval of knowledge contained in digital libraries of scholarly articles. This experience developed in him a deep interest for information visualization and design. Martin holds a PhD in plant molecular genetics from Rutgers University and a Master’s degree in the same field of study from Tsukuba University. Originally from Uruguay, he enjoys reading biographies, dancing Argentine tango and drinking yerba mate. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

Katherine Walter, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Digital Humanities: An Overview and Case Study

Digital Humanities has become a focus of interest in libraries and an increasing number of positions are described as digital humanities librarians, although the responsibilities vary. The concept of digital humanities itself also varies widely depending on where you are in the world and your institutional context. This presentation describes some trends in digital humanities, briefly considers digital humanities internationally, and describes the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, http://cdrh.unl.edu, as a specific case study.

Katherine L. Walter, Professor and Chair of Digital Initiatives & Special Collections in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) Libraries, is responsible for coordinating the Archives & Special Collections, E-Text, and Scholarly Communication units. She also co-directs the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, a joint initiative of the UNL Libraries and the College of Arts & Sciences. Its faculty have tenure homes in the departments of Anthropology, Art & Art History, Classics & Religious Studies, English, History and the Libraries.

Second Virtual Symposium on Information & Technology in the Arts & Humanities

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

1pm – 5pm ET/10am – 2pm PT

#VisitAH  —  @asist_ah

Access the schedule here

Presented by The Special Interest Group for Arts and Humanities (SIG-AH) and the Special Interest Group for Visualization, Images, & Sound (SIG-VIS) of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T).

SIG AH and SIG VIS are pleased to announce the dates for the Second Virtual Symposium on Information & Technology in the Arts & Humanities. The theme for 2016 is Connecting the arts and humanities through technology – data, images, and sound. Within this theme, topics for the Symposium schedule may include:

• Linked data in the arts and cultural heritage
• Non-text digital collections
• Visualization projects
• Open Access in the humanities
• Research data management
• Multimedia information retrieval
• Data curation in visual studies

Like the 2015 Symposium, we will feature speakers from academia and industry, libraries, research institutions, and other organizations.

The Symposium schedule is now live and includes:

• Nicky Agate, The Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Katherine Walter, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
• Martin Calvino, Scientist/Artist/Technologist
• Cory Lampert, University of Nevada Las Vegas

The Symposium will also showcase student research with the winners from the SIG Student Research Paper Awards presenting. Full details for the Award and the Call for Student Papers can be found at: http://bit.ly/2016CfSP

ACCESS DETAILS: Thanks to the San Jose State University ASIST Student Chapter, the Symposium will once again be held via Blackboard Collaborate. We suggest the use of a headset rather than computer-only audio; you can also use a phone.

Participant link for the room:

https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2011274&password=D.1B17CB9B6A74D50271A0A9B935AC84 

If you plan to join us, please let us know by filling out the Form at http://goo.gl/forms/v5ivNJDhkD

Technology and Publishing: The Work of Scholarship in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility

Dr. Martin Paul Eve, Open Library of Humanities/Birkbeck, University of London

September 21, 2016 at 11am-12:15pm EDT/8-9:15am Pacific Time

Chroniclers of the open-access movement such as Peter Suber have noted that the open, online dissemination of scholarly and research material is reliant upon digital reproduction. Indeed, prior to our present age, notes Suber, all forms of non-rivalrous objects, such as knowledge, were tied to rivalrous modes of communication, such as paper. Yet, is the digital age so different from the “Age of Mechanical Reproduction” noted by Walter Benjamin early in the twentieth century? Why should new technological mutations drive the ways in which humanities scholars disseminate their work? And is there a danger, we might ask, in letting technological fetishism act as determiners of humanities scholarship? In this talk, Professor Martin Paul Eve will address these matters, which are formative elements of the terrain on which scholarship in the twenty-first century will emerge.

Dr. Martin Paul Eve is Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London and Academic Project Director for the Open Library of Humanities. He is the author of three books: Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (Palgrave, 2014); Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Password: A Cultural History (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016) and many journal articles. A strong advocate for open access to scholarly material, Martin has given evidence to the UK House of Commons Select Committee Inquiry into Open Access; served on the Jisc OAPEN-UK Advisory Board, the Jisc National Monograph Strategy Group, and the Jisc Scholarly Communications Advisory Board; been a member of the HEFCE Open Access Monographs Expert Reference Group; and is a member of the SCONUL Strategy Group on Academic Content and Communications. Martin is also a qualified computer programmer (Microsoft Professional in C# and the .NET Framework) and is the author of the digital publishing tools meTypeset and CaSSius.

Join us for a SIG AH Webinar on September 9, 2015, 1:00 p.m. EDT:

Cracking the Internet: A Science Historian’s Experience Using the Web to Conduct Research, Communicate Findings, and Connect with Colleagues

Speaker: Gabriel Finkelstein, PhD, University of Colorado, Denver

Webinar sponsored by: SIG AH

SIG AH is excited to welcome our special guest, Dr. Gabriel Finkelstein from the University of Colorado, Denver for a webinar exploring scholarly communications and social media from the perspective of a science historian. The promise of digital content, research technology, and social media platforms is not experienced the same for researchers in all academic disciplines. Dr. Finkelstein will discuss how the internet has changed the way an historian of science conducts his research, publishes his findings, advertises his contributions, connects with colleagues, and keeps his boss happy.

Several key themes will be explored, including disciplinary differences in the research and publishing process, discovery platforms, archival research and print versus electronic content, and the role of social media and “impact” in decisions related to publishing and promotion. The unique perspective of a science historian will be of interest to individuals and institutions carrying out or supporting multidisciplinary research programs, as well as researchers focused on the development of digital knowledge resources, discovery platforms, and scholarly communications (book and journal publishing) in the humanities.

Speaker:
Gabriel Finkelstein is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver, where he teaches the history of modern Germany, Europe, science, exploration, and war. His biography of Emil du Bois-Reymond, the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century, received an Honorable Mention for History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the 2013 PROSE Awards, was shortlisted for the 2014 John Pickstone Prize (awarded every two years by the British Society for the History of Science “to the best scholarly book in the history of science”), and was named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as one of the Best Books of 2014.

The Virtual Proceedings are also gathered in the ScholarWorks repository at http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sjsuasist/.

Virtual Symposium on Information & Technology in the Arts & Humanities

The Special Interest Group for Arts and Humanities (SIG AH) and the Special Interest Group for Visualization, Images, & Sound (SIG VIS) of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) announced a joint and free Symposium exploring the influence of information and technology in the arts and humanities.  The Symposium brought together professional speakers and finalists from our student research paper competition to examine a variety of topics. Themes included: