The Brock University Digital Scholarship Lab is hosting their annual data visualization contest for Brock students this month.
Students can choose from one of four datasets provided on the content website. Visualizations will be judged on comprehension, insight, and aesthetics, and the winning entry will be chosen on December 1st.
For more details, view the contest website.
The Digital Scholarship Lab and Map Data GIS Library are looking for 5 student assistants to help us run the two spaces this year. If you enjoy helping people and learning new things this might be the job for you. You can check out the posting on Workday. Questions? Please send us an email: dsl@brocku.ca
Brock University Library invites applications for a full-time contract position of Digital Scholarship Lab Coordinator.
The Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) Operations Coordinator is responsible for planning, coordinating and administering the daily operations of the Digital Scholarship Lab. The incumbent also works in collaboration with library and University colleagues to develop and implement integrated internal and external marketing communications and outreach initiatives to promote the DSL.
Apply online by August 10, 2021, 2021 at 12:01am EST.
Questions? Email tribaric@brocku.ca, Acting Head, Digital Scholarship Lab.
The Fall 2020 term is set to be a very unique experience. The Digital Scholarship Lab at Brock University is working hard to put together some great new things for you to check out.
We’ve posted a full schedule of workshops for the term. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about R, Visualizations, how GIS works, or even how to create a bibliography for your paper, we’ve got your covered. Our completed listing can be found on ExperienceBU.
We talk a lot about visualization as a cool way of presenting your findings, and we spend a good amount of time teaching people how to use visualization software, now we want to see what you can cook up. For the first time ever we are holding a design a visualization contest. If you’ve created a visualization in one of our workshops, or for some work you’re doing for a class or project, we want to see it. The winner will get a gift card and their work will be highlighted on the DSL visualization wall (once it’s safe to go back to campus of course)
Interested? Find the Full details and Submission Form on our website.
Did you know that the The Digital Scholarship Lab has a podcast? It’s called “Steering the Digital Scholarship” and it chronicles the work we’ve been doing with the lab. It features interviews with different people on campus doing digital scholarship work and features lots of nautical puns. Find more information on the Podcast Homepage or subscribe directly via RSS. We are also listed on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Be sure to check our website throughout the term. We keep adding more tutorials and resources there to help you explore and learn about digital scholarship.
Best of luck with your classes!
ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online resources are now available to the Brock University community through an enterprise login and Brock credentials. Just a few steps and you can have a world of mapping capabilities at your fingertips.
Prior to this new method, students, staff and faculty were required to contact staff of the MDGL to obtain access. Staff always responded to each request as quickly as possible but it was certainly not instant. These Esri products are not free tools, however this is just one of the many resources that the Brock University Library provides access to for its users. We hope everyone takes the opportunity to explore the world of GIS and all of its many possibilities!
Follow these simple instructions to begin using ArcGIS now!
For further assistance please contact maplib@brocku.ca.
ArcGIS Pro, Digital Scholarship Lab, MDGL
Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main, MDGL
Research often involves computational demands that exceed the resources contained within a laboratory or research institute. Some common research computing challenges include data storage, execution of large scale computational cycles, as well as access to advanced research computing (ARC) expertise. Did you know that Brock University is partnered with Compute Canada? Compute Canada deploys state-of-the-art advanced research computing (ARC) systems, storage and software solutions which helps accelerate research and innovation. Compute Canada’s vision is to “make Canada a world leader in the use of advanced computing for research, discovery and innovation.” You can access this amazing resource right here on campus!
On January 15th from 10-11 AM the Brock University Library’s Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) will be hosting an Introduction to the Compute Canada Federation research computing resources. This session provides an introduction to the ARC resources offered by the Compute Canada Federation with demonstrations of accessing the national storage infrastructure, executing programs on the national general purpose compute clusters as well as a tour of the documentation, support and training materials.
This workshop is open to everyone and is being held in the DSL, located at the front of the Rankin Family Pavilion.
To register please visit Eventbrite.
For more information please contact dsl@brocku.ca
BrockUDSL, Compute Canada, Research methods
Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main
The Ad hoc R Group Help (ARGH) Coding Club and Support Group is coming to the Digital Scholarship Lab beginning early 2020. The mission of ARGH is to facilitate a collaborative and supportive environment where students, post-docs, and faculty may develop data analysis, graphical, programming, and statistics skills together, using R. Replace statistics anxiety or code fear with inspiration and motivation to learn. Visit ARGH Coding Club for more club details.
ARGH will meet every second Monday from 12-1 pm in the Digital Scholarship Lab, located in the Rankin Family Pavilion. Some sessions will feature presenters who will demonstrate code for a graphical, statistical, or analytical problems they have mastered or are working on. Other meetings will be R help sessions for fellow researchers.
Anyone is welcome to attend meetings to get assistance with R related projects, learn from others, collaborate and network.
Drop-in’s are welcome however you can also register for meetings at ExperienceBU by following the links below:
ARGH, Digital Scholarship Lab, R, R help sessions
Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main
Coming to the Brock Digital Scholarship Lab February 2020, a two day Data Carpentry workshop!
Data Carpentry develops the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners’ existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
This course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You do not need to have previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
For more information on what will be taught and why, please see the paper “Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing“.
All the details about this event can be found on ExperienceBU.
Contact: Please email dsl@brocku.ca for more information.
Brock University Library has signed an institutional agreement that provides a 50% discount on article processing charges for Brock researchers who choose to publish with Frontiers, a major international publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals.
This discount is the latest demonstration of the Library’s strong commitment to investing in open access resources, reflecting its mission to enhance access to information and accelerate knowledge production. Recognizing that some Brock authors choose to publish in open access journals which charge APCs, these investments include:
The library also provides financial support to several open platforms such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and partnering with Scholars Portal to offer Open Journal Systems to our users for free. In addition to advancing free, immediate access to scholarly resources for all, the Library thus signals the importance of open scholarship to the Brock community and is pursuing a longer-term goal of reforming a dysfunctional scholarly publishing system.
Brock authors may claim the Frontiers APC discount during the article submission process by selecting ‘Brock University’ as institutional payer in the invoice section of the process. Frontiers will then verify authors’ eligibility with Brock University Library, and if confirmed, 50% of the APC will be paid by the Library upon acceptance. Researchers will receive an invoice from Frontiers for the remaining 50% of the article processing charge.
Questions? Contact Scholarly Communication Librarian Elizabeth Yates ~ eyates@brocku.ca
Open Access, Research, Scholarly Communication
Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main
Brock University Library will celebrate International Open Access Week on Oct. 21 with events focused on the theme of Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge. All are welcome to attend these interactive and engaging learning opportunities.
10:30 am -12 pm, Rankin Family Pavilion Room 214 — Open Access award presentation and movie screening
Join us as we announce the winner of the Brock University Award for Open Access and discover who is the university’s newest champion of open scholarship! Following the award presentation, enjoy a screening and discussion of the documentary Paywall: The Business of Scholarship – a scathing indictment of how academic publishing systems creates barriers to access and innovation. Popcorn will be provided. Facilitator: Elizabeth Yates, Liaison and Scholarly Communication Librarian.
1-2 pm, Library Classroom A (ST228) — Introduction to Data Science with Python. Case Study: SCI-Hub close to home
You’ve probably heard of Python, but have you heard of Anaconda or Jupyter? This session will present the basics of data science and visualizing results using these two platforms plus two more key ingredients: Pandas See the impact that downloading journal articles has in terms of lost revenue and impact against Open Access. Our example will look at analyzing the Niagara Region’s Sci Hub usage for 2017. Sounds interesting? No previous knowledge of coding or statistics required. All you need is your curiosity. Presenter: Tim Ribaric, Acting Head, Digital Scholarship Lab.
2-3 pm, Rankin Family Pavilion Room 214 — Equity in Open Scholarship: enacting academia’s core values
When and where to publish is often determined by our disciplinary communities. This interactive session will explore and discuss publishing’s prestige economy and its alignment with our vision for a better world. Join Giulia Forsythe, Associate Director of the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation, for this provocative conversation.
3-4 pm, Rankin Family Pavilion Room 214 — Accelerating Entrepreneurship with Open Access
Are you an entrepreneur? Have you had to find market research, articles, or other research to help you with your entrepreneurial venture? As a member of the Brock Community, you have access to library articles, data, and research that the library pays for. This is great when you are a student, but what do you do after graduation, when you don’t have library access anymore? Venture Development, Brock University Library, and the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation are leading a discussion about what challenges entrepreneurs have in finding and accessing research, and what type of research is openly available without having to have access to library-specific resources. Presenters: Giulia Forsythe, Associate Director of the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation; Linda Lowry, Liaison Librarian; Nicole Nolan, Associate University Librarian, and Cassie Price, BioLinc Co-ordinator.