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  • Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Experimenting, Tutorials & Tigers

    Friday, April 05, 2019 | By

    Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Experimenting, Tutorials & Tigers

    Hello again, dear readers!

    As I’ve mentioned probably a million times in this series, the DSL is a new initiative at Brock, so it can be hard to figure out our “brand” and decide what does and doesn’t work for us. Because of this, a lot of the projects I’ve been working on as a DSL intern have been experimental. This week, I thought I’d talk about all of the experimentation I’ve done in the last few weeks as well as the process of sharing my ideas with other members of the Brock community.

    I’ve done a lot of work with data visualization since I started working in the DSL – they don’t call me Mizz Vizz for nothing! Experimentation is a big part of data visualization – there are lots of ways to visualize data (line graphs, pie charts, some programs even let you plot your data on a map!) and it’s fun to play around and see all of the options that work for your data and tell your data story. There are also lots of visualization programs out there, each one with different methods of creating data visuals. When I hit a wall with one program, I’ll experiment with others – it’s been a lifesaver on several different occasions!

    Another thing we’ve been experimenting with in the DSL is video tutorials. Our winter workshop series has been a huge success, and it’s been really cool to see everyone coming out to learn and support us! One thing we’ve learned through our workshops is that there are lots of ways to learn and consume information other than in-person instruction sessions. We’ve already created some online step-by-step tutorials that members of the Brock community can follow, and we’ve been experimenting recently with the idea of video tutorials as well. I’ve been playing around with some screen recording programs to create some prototype videos for one of the programs we offer support for in the DSL. It’s been fun to come up with ideas for videos and pass them around to the other DSL staff for feedback and suggestions. We’re still not completely sure if we’ll expand the video tutorials to other programs, but it’s been a cool part of planning ahead for the future!

    Speaking of the future and planning ahead, we did a lot of fantasizing on the podcast this week and managed to have in depth conversations about a future world in which there are #NoPockets, and then somehow relate that to my fear of tigers. Irrational fears were briefly mentioned as well, but I think my aversion to tigers is perfectly rational! If anything, I think avoiding jungle cats with large claws and sharp teeth is a perfect example of planning ahead and keeping the future in mind – though I’m hoping I won’t have to encounter any tigers in the DSL.

    My blog series is posted bi-weekly, so be sure to check back on April 19th for the final installment of my internship journey!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Join our team as Associate University Librarian

    Tuesday, March 26, 2019 | By

    Spring blooms and the Brock University Schmon Tower

    The Brock University Library invites nominations and applications for the position of Associate University Librarian (AUL).  The portfolio of this position includes Academic Services and Student Success.

    We are at an exiting time in our organization, examining the structures, processes, and service models that best align with the Library’s and the University’s strategic plans.

    If you are comfortable working in an evolutionary environment with a broad understanding of the strategic directions of academic libraries, this could be the leadership opportunity you are looking for.

    Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply. Applications will be accepted until Monday, April 15 at 12:01 am.

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    Categories: Main

  • Kaleidoscope of French, German, Hispanic & Latin American and Italian Cultures

    Tuesday, March 26, 2019 | By

    Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures display pic

    The Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures has mounted a display in the Learning Commons and Thistle hallway showcasing various aspects of French, German, Hispanic & Latin American and Italian Cultures.

    Come to view the intriguing assortment of items on display and win a prize by successfully answering a skill-testing question each week.

    Each weekly question can be found on the MLLC website. Please send your responses to: dbielicki@brocku.ca

    Event: Kaleidoscope of French, German, Hispanic & Latin American and Italian Cultures
    Place: Display cases in the Library Commons and Thistle corridor
    Date:  Monday, March 25 to Friday, April 5

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    Categories: Featured Collections, Main

  • Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Progress, Limitations, and Spur of the Moment Decorating

    Friday, March 22, 2019 | By

    DSL Intern with decorated desk

    Hello again, dear readers!

    I often find myself thinking about how fortunate I am to be where I’m at in my life and to have been offered as many opportunities as I have. I often catch myself thinking “wow, I can’t believe my luck that I’ve made it this far”, but a lot of the successes I’ve had so far in my career have also been the result of hard work. My placement here at Brock has been a nice combination of both; I worked hard to get here, but I’ve also been incredibly lucky to have such amazing colleagues and supervisors who have helped me succeed in this position. I won’t get too sentimental here (I’m saving that for my last post), but I wanted to use this post to talk about my own progress as a future librarian, as well as the progress I’ve made in the DSL.

    To start off our conversation about progress, let’s talk about limitations! Or rather, the podcast I “captained” in which we talked about limitations. I’ve mentioned this before in other posts, but I’ve really enjoyed participating in these podcasts. Facilitating the conversation was a new experience for me, and I planned a lot of talking points due to my tendency to talk fast when I’m nervous. Because there were so many talking points, however, the conversation ended up being quite lengthy. Make no mistake, I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s thoughts and having a productive conversation, but there was a lot that we didn’t get to talk about! One extra thing I want to say on the topic is that if there’s anything I learned from our conversation, it’s that limitations are a big part of making progress. Progress is about acknowledging limitations and things that go wrong, and moving forward to avoid them and learn from the experience. We also didn’t get to talk about one of the most significant limitations in the DSL – our vagrancy! The DSL’s current lack of a space was initially seen as a limitation, but we’ve moved past it by continuing to offer workshops and digital scholarship opportunities to the rest of the Brock community.

    Speaking of workshops, I’ve been working on my presentation skills and trying to overcome my fast-talking tendencies. I think I’ve definitely taken some big steps forward in this area, but I’m still working on it! That’s another thing about progress – it’s a gradual thing. I’ve always lived my life by the phrase “progress, not perfection”, because progress is a much more realistic goal. I like that I can look back to the person I was when I started this placement almost three months ago and be proud of how far I’ve come, rather than beat myself up because I’m still not the best presenter in the world. I’ve learned a lot about myself as a professional since starting here at Brock, and I’m grateful for the learning opportunities I’ve been given in the DSL that will allow me to continue to progress as a librarian, and also as a person.

    Finally, I’ll address a more light-hearted progression. Because this placement is only four months long, I was initially hesitant to decorate my office. Some of the librarians here at Brock have really gone all out with posters, toys, and furniture and I’m super jealous! I had originally planned to just settle for some cute knick-knacks on my desk, like the mug I mentioned in my last post. However, when I was tasked with disassembling the DSL’s display in the library, I couldn’t help but use some of the display pieces to jazz up my office a little bit. I know it’ll eventually have to come down for another DSL display in the near future, but for now it’s a fun way to show off how much I’ve learned here at Brock!

    My blog series is posted bi-weekly, so be sure to check back on April 5th for more on my internship journey!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Lunch and Learn WORKSHOP ALERT: Best Practices for Protecting your Research Data

    Thursday, March 21, 2019 | By

    Scholarly Communication Brown Bag Workshop Series

    The Brock University Library’s Scholarly Communication Working Group has partnered with the Digital Scholarship Lab to offer a series of four Brown Bag Workshops. Two workshops have already been held and were a great success.  The next workshop will be held on April 4th between 1-2 p.m. in Classroom B (ST230) and attendees are encouraged to bring their lunch and engage in a conversation about best practices for protecting research data.

    Canada’s Tri-Agencies (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC) are currently working to define their expectations of how grant recipients will preserve and possibly share their data, but there’s no need to await their decisions to consider how best to prepare and preserve your data for the short and long term. Whether or not you expect (or are required) to share data with others, your research may be at risk if your data isn’t protected. Learn about the resources and expertise available to help you comply with funders’ (likely) data management policies and the factors all researchers should consider when collecting, creating, using, and reusing data.  With Data/Liaison Librarian Heather Whipple.

    To register for this event please visit ExperienceBU.

     

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Research, Teaching, and Getting Mugged

    Friday, March 08, 2019 | By

    Mizz Vizz Mug

    Hello again, dear readers!

    In my last entry, I talked a little bit about some of the similarities between my school life and my work life, and I thought I’d stick with the same theme for this week. I’ve already talked about how I’ve written a lot of essays in my time as a student and how my essay writing experience has helped me in my work here at Brock. A significant part of essay writing is the research process – finding sources that support your argument, and keeping track of your citations so that when the time comes you can make connections between your thoughts on your topic, and the thoughts of others. I’ve been researching certain topics all throughout my placement here at Brock, but the last few weeks in particular have been very research heavy.

    I was recently asked to join a subgroup to support an ongoing library initiative at Brock. We call ourselves “search wizards” (finally – my dreams of being Hermione Granger have come true!), and our job is to scour the web and the library for sources relating to a certain topic. My role in this group was to do some research on the internet and find blog posts, opinion pieces, and social media posts related to our topic. I read blogs from time to time and I’m certainly no stranger to social media, but I had never used either of these sources in an academic way. My fields of study usually require scholarly papers and studies to support essay arguments, meaning that unless you can make a really strong argument for a Twitter feed being educational, most professors won’t let you rely on it to prove a point. Getting to take points from wherever I wanted was a nice change of pace for me. The experience was a nice mix of not feeling any pressure to get a high grade, while also feeling like I was contributing to something important.

    I’ve also been doing some research into data visualization for the DSL – living up to my Mizz Vizz nickname! When the DSL space is finished, there are plans for a big visualization wall to display data visualizations from across the web and other public visualization platforms. In my time as the DSL’s resident visualization expert, I’ve found that there’s a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to data visualization. People often think of visualization as just creating graphs, and don’t understand what the need would be for advanced visualization programs when you can easily create graphs in Excel. My hope for the visualization wall in the DSL space is that people will see that visualization is so much more than graphs – it can involve maps, webs, charts, and so much more! It’s been pretty cool for me to see what kind of advanced visualizations are out there, and I’m excited to be able to share my findings with the larger Brock community.

    In the midst of all this research, I also had to focus on teaching my first workshops as a DSL intern! It felt good to take my knowledge and experience with giving presentations (as well as my tendency to talk fast when I’m nervous) and apply it in a real-world situation. I’m happy with my progress so far, and look forward to teaching two more workshops before I head back to Western at the end of April.

    Finally – I leave you with the above photos. My colleagues in the DSL managed to keep my new mug a secret from me for quite some time, and it was such a nice surprise! I think they’ve captured my essence pretty well, I’m content to do just about anything as long as I have a book with me!

    My blog series is posted bi-weekly, so be sure to check back on March 22nd for more on my internship journey!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • New Library Service – Support for Sharing Your Work

    Friday, March 01, 2019 | By

    Sharing research openly is the best way to enhance your impact as a scholar: openly accessible articles are easier to find – and get cited more often.

    The Library is expanding its suite of services supporting open access for Brock researchers with a new service called Support for Sharing your Work.   The service assists researchers in sharing their articles via the Brock Digital Repository, which provides free, immediate access to readers while also allowing Brock scholars to track downloads and views of their articles.

    To use the service, authors can complete a short form and attach a copy of the article they would like to share. Library staff will review the documents for compliance with publisher copyright policies and then make them accessible to the public by depositing them in the Brock Digital Repository. Articles in the repository are highly visible: they are disseminated around the globe via Google Scholar and several repository directories and are also indexed in SuperSearch, the Library Search engine.

    Each article is assigned a unique persistent identifier, making it easier for researchers to share their work with others and to track how often their articles are being viewed and downloaded.

    Questions? Contact Tim Ribaric, Acting Head, Digital Scholarship Lab, at tribaric@brocku.ca

    Categories: Main

  • Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Whoaaaa, we’re halfway there…

    Friday, February 22, 2019 | By

    A Day in the Life of a DSL Intern Blog

    Hello again, dear readers!

    Can you believe this series is halfway done? I know they say time flies when you’re having fun, but I didn’t realize it would go this fast! I sometimes find myself wondering how I’ll adjust from work mode here at Brock to school mode when I go back to Western; but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the two environments are actually quite similar.

    As a former English major, my undergraduate career consisted mostly of writing essays. I’ve always liked writing, and I like to think of myself as a pretty good writer (I suppose you, dear reader, can be the judge of that). I realized when I started grad school that this trait would come in handy, as most of my assignments have consisted of lengthy reports and essays. What I didn’t realize, however, was that I would still be doing so much writing in the workplace. This blog series has been a great way for me to write creatively, but I’ve had loads of other writing projects as well!

    First, we have to talk about workshops. I’ve mentioned in previous entries that I’ll be hosting my own workshops on OpenRefine and PowerBI, as well as one on Zotero later in March. Fortunately for me, the Zotero workshop I’ll be running is one that’s been run before, meaning I’ll have notes from past presenters to guide me through the process. For the other two workshops, I’ve had to start from scratch and write my own tutorials and notes. Usually when I give a presentation, I write little notes to myself so I remember what to say, but I’ve never written a presentation with the intention of having others follow along. I found the hardest part was making sure my notes make sense objectively, rather than just to me. I also consider myself a pretty detail-oriented person, so I found it challenging to decide which details were necessary to include in a tutorial and which ones I could leave out. My first workshop is a week away, so we’ll see how my tutorials work in practice!

    I’ve also been given the job of planning the next episode of the DSL’s weekly podcast. This has definitely been the most challenging writing project I’ve had so far. I’ve really enjoyed participating in the podcast, but being in charge of the conversation is definitely uncharted territory. I think part of the reason podcast planning has been more challenging is because there’s no way to plan a conversation, you can only write points and let the conversation flow as it does. Currently, my biggest challenge is deciding on a fun question to ask the group to get the conversation going. I’ve learned that being thought provoking and light hearted at the same time is harder than I thought it would be, but I’m confident that I’ll get there.

    In addition to all of these projects, I’ve been taking manual notes on just about everything that happens here at Brock. This includes notes in meetings, notes from workshops, and notes in interviews when I reach out to other schools as part of the repository project I mentioned in my last entry. Writing things down has always been my preferred way of remembering things, and I’ve always thought that the best part of writing things down is getting the chance to go back and read things that you wrote in the past. I do this all the time with old essays from my undergrad and journal entries from years ago. One day in the future I’ll probably do the same with this blog series (hi, future Erin! Do we have flying cars yet?), but for now I’m happy to make the most of the second half of this series and all of the writing projects that come my way!

    My blog series is posted bi-weekly, so make sure to check back on March 8th for more on my internship journey!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • New Scholarly Communication Workshop Series

    Wednesday, February 13, 2019 | By

    Brown Bag Workshop Series. Scholarly Communication Tips for managing, publishing and sharing your scholarship

    The Brock Library Scholarly Communication Working Group in partnership with the Digital Scholarship Lab have developed an engaging lunchtime learning series. The goal of this series is to provide you with tips for managing, publishing and sharing your scholarship. We invite you to bring your lunch and join us for some interesting content and great conversation.

    All workshops are being held on the dates below, from 1-2 p.m. in Classroom B (ST230).

    For further information on each workshop, follow the links provided:

    Space is limited so sign-up soon!

    Questions? Email: dsl@brocku.ca

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • A Day in the Life of a DSL Intern: Collaboration, Open Access and Quentin Tarantino

    Friday, February 08, 2019 | By

    Erin - DSL Intern in front of Computer showing data visualizations

    Hello again, dear readers!

    I don’t know about you, but I love being busy. Don’t get me wrong, vacations are nice and there’s nothing like the feeling of taking it easy after finishing a big project or writing a monster essay, but I like to always have something to work on, and I’m always willing to take on new projects and tasks to prevent lulls in my day. Because of this, Brock has been a great place for me to work because there’s always a project to work on, a program/technology to learn, or a person to contact in the hopes of collaboration. Speaking of which, collaboration was the theme of the DSL’s podcast this week (listen here if you haven’t yet!), and as I participated in the group’s conversation about working with others and taking advantage of their knowledge to better your own, I started to think about all of the collaborating I’ve done in the last few weeks and how much I’ve been able to learn and grow through collaborative work.

    One of the first new projects I took on recently was learning how to use Open Journal Systems – an open access journal management and publishing system. As a (future) librarian, open access is a cause that’s very near and dear to my heart, and I know this is true for the DSL as well. As members of a public research institution, Brock students have access to all kinds of databases and programs to conduct research and complete assignments. What students often don’t realize is that these databases and programs can be very expensive to purchase and maintain, meaning people outside of Brock and other research institutions typically don’t have access to the same resources they do. This is why open access is so important – it combines the sophisticated and respected technologies, databases, and journals needed to conduct and report important research while still being accessible to everyone regardless of their academic affiliations (or lack thereof). Brock’s undergraduate history department publishes The General through OJS and whenever new student editors are hired, they need to be taught how to request revisions and approve articles for publishing – that’s where I come in!

    Collaborating with these members of the undergraduate history department to teach them how to use an open access software was a great learning experience. They learned how to use a system that will allow their journal to be accessible to everyone (a very cool opportunity for undergrad students – I had to do my best to hide my envy), and I learned how to effectively break down a new and foreign system into easy, teachable steps. I think this process will definitely come in handy when I start running some DSL workshops!

    Speaking of running workshops, I mentioned in my previous entry that I’ve been doing a lot of work with visualizing data in PowerBI so that I can teach a workshop on this particular program. Last week, I got my first collaborative visualization opportunity in the form of a dataset about a hockey tournament from Brock’s Centre for Sport Capacity. I won’t go into too much detail about this super-secret mission (known around the DSL as “Operation Hoops”), but I’ve really enjoyed working with the other people in this project to visualize their data in a user-friendly way through PowerBI. I’ve also been attending all of the workshops offered by the DSL and learning a lot. Since my last entry, I’ve learned the basics of the Command Line Interface, the Python programming language, and ArcGIS pro – a program that allows users to map data to help answer questions. I didn’t know a lot about programming languages going into these workshops, but I had a ton of fun learning. It all became clearer to me when I learned how to use Command Line to show how many times each of the main characters in Little Women are mentioned throughout the book. I thought this was a really cool way to show how the technology is applicable to the humanities, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the data from the Agatha Christie study I mentioned in my previous entry. These workshops have given me more insight into what digital scholarship truly is – the opportunity to “collaborate” with technology in order to make some really interesting discoveries. In just over a month at Brock, I’ve been lucky enough to explore some pretty cool technologies, and collaborate with some pretty cool people.

    In my university experience, I’ve participated in more group projects than I can count. One of my grad school professors liked to encourage as much group work as possible, insisting that group projects are good practice for the real world. Now, as a (temporary) member of the real world, I can confirm that this is true. The only difference is that in the real world, they’re called working groups. There are lots of working groups here at Brock, all of them working towards various initiatives to ensure that every student has the best library experience possible. As part of my placement, I’ve been involved with a working group whose goal is to improve Brock’s institutional repository. There’s a lot of amazing research being done at Brock, and it is essential for researchers to be able to publish their findings to a reliable, user friendly platform. Meeting with the other members of this group felt a lot like a group project at school – goals and best approaches were discussed, the work load was divvied up, and roles were assigned. My role was to reach out to librarians at other schools to get a sense of how their repository platforms perform and how their users interact with it. Interviewing complete strangers over the phone was a new (and I’ll admit, slightly nerve wracking) experience for me. The last (and first ever) phone interview I did was when I interviewed for this placement four months ago. But, as with any group project, I did my part and I learned along the way. I’m officially two for two on phone interviews! Our work is far from over, but I can say that participating in this working group has been a great exercise in collaboration so far, because I’ve learned how to collaborate effectively with people both inside and outside of my workplace in order to achieve a goal.

    I know that by this point you’re probably thinking, “gosh Erin, it sounds like all you do is work super hard! Don’t you have any fun at Brock?”, and to that I say of course! The work I do requires a lot of data analysis, so a big part of my job involves finding data to work with. Since my last entry, I’ve played around with data about the contestants on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (who wins, who goes home, who gets the coveted first impression rose) and The Avengers (names, aliases, how many times they’ve died and come back to life). My favourite dataset to work with though was one that kept track of every curse word and death in each of seven Quentin Tarantino films – and how long into the movie these curse words and deaths occur. His movies are a little gratuitous for my taste, but even I have to admit that there’s something very amusing about constructing a graph full of curse words. It was a learning experience as well, as I can definitively answer which of his films is the most profane (Pulp Fiction, with a whopping 469 curse words) and which was the most graphic (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, with 63 on-screen deaths). Who says data can’t be fun?

    My blog series is posted bi-weekly, so be sure to check back on February 22nd for more on my internship journey!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

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