Category Archives: Uncategorized

DH and Being Flexible

I had hoped to actually be able to post during the Day of DH 2013, but the day quickly got busier than expected, which is normal, and new things popped up, again which is normal. While my work focuses on building and sustaining the full socio-technical needs for scholarly cyberinfrastructure, including data curation and digital libraries and digital humanities work, the parameters and borders and connections for my work have many different threads. This means things change rapidly and, even when they don’t, there’s just a lot going on. I’m not sure of a great way to explain this, so I’ll list a few things. While to list is to limit and that’s not my goal, I do want to give a sampling of activities:

There’s a whole lot more, but these are just some of the activities reflected in the 50-ish emails I sent from yesterday (in addition to in-person discussions and phone calls, and emails received without responses being sent). This is by no means comprehensive, but it gives a good sampling of some of the activities in a normal day and of the always-active pace of each day. I’ve stolen this hour to write this, but I do try to make or steal time on a regular basis to write about different happenings on my blog, so this stolen hour is also part of a normal day.

Writing blogs to share and connect information on exhibits, Gathering Storm and Testimony, and Yom HaShoah

The post below is re-posted from my blog. Part of my regular day includes sharing information that relates to my work that is of use and interest in a timely manner. The exhibits mentioned below are from on the library collections at the University of Florida, and the materials for exhibits are digitized whenever possible for access, preservation, and enabling new future uses in research, teaching, and service.


Today is Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The Curator for the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica at the UF Libraries recently curated an online exhibit, The Gathering Storm. From the first page of The Gathering Storm online exhibit:

The Gathering Storm: Jewish Life in Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1930s features items produced by or pertaining to European Jewry before the advent of the Second World War. While the subject of Jewish experience during the war has been widely explored, life for Jewish people in the period immediately before the war is less well known and demand for relevant resources is increasing. Showcased here are rare German and Yiddish newspapers and periodicals, as well as ephemeral publications such as calendars, yearbooks and other communally inspired commemorative works. The selected materials form part of a much larger hidden collection of un-cataloged works held in the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica. The Gathering Storm also serves as a prelude to the upcoming exhibition Testimony featuring primary sources relating to the Holocaust.

The Testimony Exhibit runs April 1, 2013 – June 14, 2013 in the Smathers Library Gallery, 2nd Floor. The exhibit:

Inspired by recent donations to the Isser and Rae Price Library of JudaicaTestimony showcases primary sources that bear undeniable witness to the fact of the Holocaust. Featuring the last letters from victims of the Nazi terror before they were murdered, the papers and autobiography of a concentration camp survivor, photographic evidence of the camps taken by the U.S. Signal Corps in 1945, newspapers published during the Second World War, memoirs produced by survivors and dispersed communities in the decades following, as well as unique responses to the Holocaust manifested in later works of art. Testimony documents the impact of the Holocaust on the victims and survivors, and it gives voice to the immense aftershock felt by subsequent generations.

Both exhibits are curated by Rebecca Jefferson, Curator for the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica. More about the Price Library is available online.

Plans for today: Meeting on Geospatial Tools and SobekCM Open Source Software, UF Digital Humanities Working group on Digital Pedagogy, Data Curation Group Discussion, and More

For 2013’s Day of DH (Digital Humanities), I have a fairly calm schedule with meetings and action items to-do. The planned schedule at least appears fairly calm, but seemingly calm days can easily get hectic with new conversations and opportunities.

For the first few hours of the morning, I’m catching up on email related to the Data Curation/Management Task Force and other activities. I’ll soon be off to a meeting on geospatial tools and supports within the SobekCM Digital Repository Software which is Open Source and currently being extended for a few specific grant projects. After that, there’s the regular meeting of the University of Florida Digital Humanities Working Group (UF DHWG), which will focus on Digital Pedagogy – Discussion and Recommendations from the DHWG.

For now, time to follow-up on email and prepare agendas for the day.