Student pathways to success are greatly influenced by access to required technologies. Consequently in 2022, the Libraries redoubled their commitment to technology lending and added the pilot Digital Scholarship Center (pDSC) at the Science Library. The pDSC hosts technologies used to process audio, visual and video files and accommodates small groups of scholars for presentations and collaborations. Digital scholarship is so much more than using a computer to search and find. Achieving excellence in digital scholarship requires expertise in computing, data analysis and interpretation as well as primary or secondary research.
Photo by J. Cohen
A fascinating example of digital scholarship was shared recently by Ruth Carpenter, Digital Scholarship Librarian and Bridget Whearty, Associate Professor English and Medieval Studies at the official launch of the Science Library’s pDSC. Carpenter and Whearty used a relatively common software to uncover hand scrawled edits to the pronouns within a medieval manuscript. By selecting tones of ink color, they were able to identify specific textual edits that changed the narrative. Read about their thrilling discovery here: https://orb.binghamton.edu/librarian_fac/66/
Another example of digital scholarship involves exploring digital storytelling. Binghamton’s Shruti Jain, a PhD student in English, and Le Li, a doctoral student in the Translation Research and Instruction Program have developed a podcast called Immigrants Wake America. Thanks in part to a Humanities New York grant, they are in the process of recording the second season of their audio series which is featured within the Tenement Museum New York’s national digital project entitled: Your Story Our Story. Learn more about that project here: https://www.immigrantswakeamerica.com/