Articles tagged with: Digital Scholarship Lab

  • What’s New in the DSL for Fall 2020

    Friday, September 04, 2020 | By

    DSL 2020 Workshops

    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.

    Workshops

    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.

    Contest

    Design a Visualization Banner

    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.

    Podcast

    STDS Logo

    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!

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main, Uncategorised

  • Welcome and Welcome Back!

    Friday, August 28, 2020 | By

    What's New graphic

    What’s new? We’re so glad you asked. Our team has been hard at work refining Library online services and supports to serve you. We encourage you to keep up with changes to our usual services and resources by reading our Library Services and Resources Amid COVID-19 webpage.

    If you are new to Brock – in any capacity, we invite you to peruse our Discover Your Library orientation site.

    Over the summer, Access Services staff developed and rolled out a print materials pickup service to instructors, graduate students and post doctoral researchers. Keep an eye on our website for details about the expansion of this service to additional user groups this term.

    While not brand new, we are pleased to announce the library scanning service has resumed. Open to all in the Brock community, making a request for a pdf scan of a chapter from a print book or journal article is easier than ever. Learn more about requesting a scan via Omni.

    Instructors at Brock are now able to self-upload their course reserve readings to Ares. Step-by-step instructions as well as video demonstrations are available for faculty interested in trying this out.

    When the Brock University Smart Start Team moved their programming online, we followed suit and offered our Top 10 Tips for new students. As orientation continues, all Library extra-curricular learning opportunities are posted on ExperienceBU. Among the myriad listings, we invite you to embark on your own Library Quest, take a mid-week Library Yoga break, develop your citation management competencies with Zotero, and get introduced to Vector Design for CNC.

    Brock University Library is now a member partner of HathiTrust and has signed onto its Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS). ETAS provides electronic read-only access to approximately 30% of our in-copyright print collections. In addition, over 4 million worldwide public domain items already accessible in HT. The service is available to all current Brock University faculty, students, and staff. Learn more.

    For the immediate future, the Archives & Special Collections is closed to the public. However, the staff of the Archives is still working.  Direct any questions or needs to archives@brocku.ca.  They will do their best to assist you.  You can also find many of their digitized materials in the Brock University Digital Repository.

    During the pandemic, Archives staff have been creating digital exhibits featuring some of the collections and records that we have in the Archives.  See some of the rich history that we have in our collections.

    In March, the Archives and Digital Scholarship Lab Teams started to collect stories, questions/answers, photos, videos, and other materials that chronicle the pandemic in the Niagara area.  To contribute to this project and have your experiences and thoughts preserved into the future, go to our COVID-19 in Niagara website and add your stories.

    The Digital Scholarship Lab in conjunction with the Map, Data & GIS Library invite you to learn from their expertise with their Fall Workshop Series. In addition, both the DSL and MDGL invite you to get ‘hands-on’ by plotting your hometown and entering the Data Visualization Contest.

    Our Makerspace Team invite you to take a virtual tour of their new facilities. Workshops will continue online for the fall term and their website features a new FAQ.

    Stay up-to-date by keeping an eye on the website and our social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for any changes or expansion in services as the term progresses.

    The Library Team wish you all the best for a successful start to the fall term.

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    Categories: Main

  • The Map, Data & GIS Library is celebrating and you should too!

    Tuesday, February 11, 2020 | By

    ArcGIS Pro logo with key

    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.

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main, MDGL

  • ARGH Meetings Coming to Digital Scholarship Lab in 2020

    Wednesday, December 18, 2019 | By

    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:

    January 6

    January 20

    February 3

    March 2

    March 16

    March 30

    April 13

    April 27

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Two Day Data Carpentry Event Coming to Brock

    Friday, December 06, 2019 | By

    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.

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Explore Digital Scholarship This Fall

    Friday, August 30, 2019 | By

    September is here and we are very excited to welcome everyone back to Brock University for the Fall semester! We hope you are as ready to get back to learning and doing as we are.

    This Fall the Brock University Digital Scholarship Lab is offering a series of hands-on workshops, each of which focuses on a different tool or skill that will be beneficial to your learning experience and will also give you skills to add to your resumé.  Another bonus of attending these workshops, is that they will earn you credit towards your Campus-Wide Co-Curriculum Certificate. Each workshop is open to everyone.  Workshops included in this series are as follows:

    September 12 –  Introduction to OpenRefine

    September 18 – Introduction to R

    September 27 – Introduction to Data Visualization

    October 1 – ArcGIS Pro: the software, a flu outbreak and network analysis

    October 7 – Introduction to Python

    October 15-16 – Software Carpentry. This is a two day even that requires a small fee to attend.

    October 21 – Introduction to Data Science with Python. Case Study: Sci-Hub close to home

    October 30 – Python 2.0. Attendance to the first Python workshop is beneficial but is not required.

    November 6 – Introduction to R – Nov. 6

    November 11 – Introduction to the Command Line

    November 12 –  Intro. to Data Visualization – Nov. 12

    November 20 – Introduction to PowerBI

    November 26 – Introduction to Tableau

    To learn more about the series including dates, times and registration information, please visit ExperienceBU. For questions please contact dsl@brocku.ca

     

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • How to Draw a Pig Blindfolded

    Wednesday, June 26, 2019 | By

    Line drawings of pigs

    Have you ever wondered who Sean O’Sullivan is and why Brock University has a theatre named after him?  Have you pondered over Brock Library’s namesake James A. Gibson? Or perhaps you’ve contemplated what it takes to be a bee keeper or how to draw a pig blindfolded?

    Well if you have or even if you haven’t mused over such musings, your interest must certainly be piqued!  You’re encouraged to take a peak at some of the curiosities and treasures held in Brock’s Archives and Special Collections by accessing some exceptional new online exhibits.

    Special Collections staff have been hard at work digitizing their collection to make it more accessible to you and in partnership with the Brock Digital Scholarship Lab they have been developing intriguing online exhibits to showcase their many resources.

    By visiting these online exhibits you will learn about who Sean O’Sullivan was, see wrestling trading cards from the 1930’s, learn about Niagara’s very own Alexander Hamilton, explore the Welland Canals, and view photographs of a very young St. Catharines! You can even read a letter that the 1941 Toronto Maple Leaf’s coach Hap Day wrote to St. Catharines Mayor Charles Daley under the instruction of Conn Smythe! This list of prized content truly does not do the collection justice.

    Visit the following links to explore and experience the Brock Special Collections for yourself:

    https://exhibits.library.brocku.ca/s/sean-o-sullivan/page/introduction

    https://exhibits.library.brocku.ca/s/ArchivalApps/page/ArchivalAppsWelcome

    For more information on the Archives and Special Collections visit:  https://brocku.ca/library/collections/special-collections-archives/ or drop by the 10th floor of the Schmon Tower.

    If you are interested in how these exhibits were created using the platform Omeka S and would like to learn how you can create your own exhibit, contact the Brock Digital Scholarship Lab at: dsl@brocku.ca and visit https://brocku.ca/library/dsl/.

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • NEW ArcGIS Pro Workshop

    Thursday, June 06, 2019 | By

    ArcGIS Pro Workshop

    Interested in learning ArcGIS Pro by really digging into the software and using realistic data? This workshop, offered in partnership by the Map, Data and GIS Library and the Digital Scholarship Lab, will use a fictitious scenario about a flu outbreak in St. Catharines.  In this workshop we will geolocate each incident of the flu and determine what schools should be shut down based on their proximity to flu incidents. We will also use network analysis to calculate the nearest medical centres.  In attending this workshop, you will learn the basics of creating a visually pleasing layout and how to share your work with others.  This event is open to everyone, no previous ArcGIS experience is necessary.

    When: Thursday, June 27, 10-12 AM

    Where: Brock University, James A. Gibson Library – Classroom A (ST228)

    Register: Eventbrite

    Note: Registration for this event ends June 25th

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main, MDGL

  • Introduction to Data Science with Python. Case Study: Sci-Hub close to home

    Monday, May 27, 2019 | By

    Graphic showing logos for Brock DSL, Jupyter Notebooks, Anaconda and Sci-Hub

    At the Brock University Digital Scholarship Lab, we are not only exploring a wide variety of tools for data processing, analysis, and visualization, as well as digital pedagogy, we are also considering ways of interacting with these tools in unique ways as a method of demonstrating the vast possibilities digital scholarship offers.  In our upcoming workshop: Introduction to Data Science with Python, we will be teaching the basics of data science and visualizing results by investigating the Niagara Region’s Sci-Hub usage for 2017 through the case study: “Sci-Hub close to home”.

    The SCI-Hub database is famed for providing unrestricted access to a plethora of research papers that would normally be blocked by paywalls. In this workshop, attendees will see how quickly and easily using Anaconda and Jupyter Notebooks will enable them to analyze the Sci-Hub Download Log of 2017.  We will also be exploring two more ingredients; Pandas https://pandas.pydata.org/ and matplotlib https://matplotlib.org/.

    No previous knowledge of coding or statistics is required for this workshop. All you need is your curiosity.

    When: Monday, June 24th from 9:30 – 11:00 AM

    Where: James A. Gibson Library, Brock University, Classroom A (ST228)

    To register for this event, please visit: Eventbrite

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Main

  • Digital Exhibit Brings to Life the Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald Archival Fonds

    Thursday, May 23, 2019 | By

    Black and white portrait of Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald

    The Brock University Archives and Special Collections has again partnered with the Digital Scholarship Lab to create a digital exhibit showcasing one of their unique collections.  This particular exhibit features a guided history of the life and literature of Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald, which was developed by Shauna Ribaric, Digital Resource Assistant.

    Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1947) was raised in Rockwood, Ontario and was home schooled, unlike her brothers who attended Rockwood Academy, a boarding school owned and operated by their father William.  Eventually Wetherald attended boarding schools in both the United States and Ontario and went on to develop a real talent for writing. She was a contributing author for The Toronto Globe, writing on a variety of topics, but was also a highly respected poet. In this exhibit, Ribaric takes a very thoughtful approach to not only providing a snapshot of Wetherald’s life, but also highlights how her life influenced her writing and displays how the subject matter of Wetherald’s writing changed over time as a reflection of the changes that took place throughout her life.

    Creating a digital exhibit such as this is not a quick and easy process.  Ribaric has done a remarkable job of analyzing an entire archival collection to tell one woman’s story.  Ribaric explained the approach she took when developing her project: “I had scanned some material from this collection for the Digital Repository, but quickly found that an exhibit required a different perspective.  I did some research using some of the books in Archives and Special Collections (included in my source list) and decided to do a chronological approach to Ethelwyn’s life.  There were quite a few moments in her life that seemed to impact her writing style and I found it interesting how life influences both style and subject matter in Ethelwyn’s writing.  The items I chose had to reveal more of her life story instead of just revealing items in the collection.”

    This collection was brought to life using Omeka, a publishing platform for sharing digital collections, just one of many useful tools supported by the Digital Scholarship Lab. Ribaric and her colleagues in the Archives and Special Collections have spent quite a bit of time learning how to use this tool to share content: “It’s a great way to exhibit our diverse collections and shine a spotlight on important figures or events in our area. A completely different way for our users to experience our Archives. These kinds of exhibits enable us to reveal some of the interesting work happening in the Archives and Special Collections.  A digital exhibit can be a great way to share a glimpse of a collection, but also link the user to a finding aid that includes so much more.  Our collections also become much more accessible to the broader Niagara community who may be interested in certain historical figures/events from our area.  Digital is the direction that our users are moving and I think it’s important that we keep ourselves relevant for researchers both in the Brock community and beyond.  The digital repository has allowed us to connect with researchers internationally and I think Omeka will continue to support the effort to reach as many researchers as possible.”

    To view the Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald Fonds or other unique collections, visit the Brock Arcvhies and Special Collections located on the 10th floor of the Schmon Tower in the James A. Gibson Library. For more information visit their website.

    If you are interested in learning more about Omeka or other digital tools, please contact the Digital Scholarship Lab at dsl@brocku.ca or visit their website.

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    Categories: Digital Scholarship Lab, Featured Collections, Main

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