Digital Byte: Fall 2023 Digital Scholarship News

photo of an assortments of buttons featuring the logos of the 2023 DHRI and the Digital Scholarship Center

A warm welcome to the fall semester from the Digital Scholarship team in the Libraries! After a busy summer, we are excited to welcome everyone back to another great year. We have some highlights from this summer, updates and exciting upcoming events. 


New Digital Scholarship Libguide 

We are excited to introduce our new Digital Scholarship Libguide. If you are looking to embark on a digital adventure or are in the weeds looking for an answer, the guide contains information on many of the types of digital projects we support. 


Group photo of the DHRI 2023 cohort. Various individuals standing collectively in a group outside on campus.
Group photo of the DHRI 2023 cohort

Digital Humanities Research Institute

This August, the third biennial Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI) was a great success. Our biggest cohort ever included faculty, staff and graduate students from a wide range of disciplines across Binghamton’s campus. The five-day Institute included a morning session, lunch and afternoon session. For the first time, participants could pick between two classes each session, varying on difficulty and type of skill. Topics ranged from text analysis to mapping and website building to data visualization. 

A successful DHRI not only facilitates the sharing of digital knowledge but also helps us build a strong community of digital scholars across campus. Thank you to all the participants, instructors, advisory board members and sponsors. We appreciate your support and look forward to many more DHRIs in the future. 


Professional photograph of Amy Gay, former Assistant Head of Digital Initiatives for Digital Scholarship
Amy Gay, former Assistant Head of Digital Initiatives for Digital Scholarship

Thank you, Amy Gay

Although we are sad to see her go, we are excited to announce that Amy Gay has received a new position working at Ithaka, a nonprofit to improve global education. For the last five years, Amy has been synonymous with Digital Scholarship on campus. Hired as the first Digital Scholarship librarian at Binghamton in 2018, she helmed big digital scholarship projects in the Libraries and across campus since she arrived. Her impact over the years includes building a dedicated digital scholarship library team, guiding the development of a Digital Scholarship Center as part of the third-floor library renovation and teaching many, many people digital scholarship skills through the DHRI, workshops and one on one consultations. 

In a perfect example of leaving a place better than she found it, Amy is leaving behind a robust network of digital scholarships across campus. We are excited to build on her work and see many of her visions come to fruition in the coming years. When asked to summarize her time at Binghamton, Amy said: 

“It has been so wonderful to be part of the growth of digital scholarship at Binghamton. I loved working with the many faculty, graduate students and professional staff on their vast array of projects, co-organizing 3 digital humanities research institutes and help[ing] build our internal team at the libraries to scale our support. While I am sad to leave my team, I know that they have a foundation built and will continue to make digital scholarship at Binghamton grow. I cannot wait to see the new space open in 2025 and hope to continue working with the Binghamton digital humanities community from a different capacity.” 

Thank you so much Amy for all your contributions. The Digital Scholarship team wishes you the best of luck in your new role! 


Upcoming Events

Our fall semester is full of new and exciting events in the Digital Scholarship Center: 

Flyer for the Digital Gardening Workshop Series. Text that reads: Digital Gardening Bi-weekly workshop series. Come learn how to create and publish your own simple websites! Wednesdays 3-5pm, September 6 - December 13. Beginner friendly, critical, web design series for creating accessible websites with HTML and CSS for professional portfolios or open education materials. Limited seats: bit.ly/digitalGardening Contact: rcarpen@binghamton.edu Join to learn, create and share!
Flyer for the Digital Gardening Workshop Series
  • Digital Gardening
    Every other Wednesday, September 6 – December 13
    pilot Digital Scholarship Center SL – 209

    On every other Wednesday, September 6 through December 13, Ruth Carpenter will be leading the Digital Garden Series. This workshop series will explore how to create and publish simple websites from scratch. Interested in beginner-friendly web design using HTML and CSS for a portfolio or open education materials? This could be the place for you. Limited seats are available. For more  information or to sign up, visit bit.ly/digitalGardening
  • Text Analysis Tool Workshops
    Gale Digital Scholar Lab: 2 – 3 p.m. Tuesday, September 12
    Constellate: Mid semester

    Zoom 
    The Digital Scholarship Center will host two workshops for our new text analysis tools. These tools allow scholars with a range of skills, from total beginner to expert coder, to analyze texts in some of our most popular databases. The first workshop will be for Gale Digital Scholar 2 – 3 p.m. on September 12. The second workshop will be for Constellate, which will be announced later in the semester. To learn more about Gale Digital Scholar Lab or Constellate and to use any of these tools now, check out the login instructions on the Digital Scholarship subject guide. 
  • Wikidata Edit-a-thon for Queer History Month
    1- 5 p.m. Wednesday, October 25
    Q Center, Bartle Library South Ground 549 (LS-G549)

    The Libraries, in collaboration with Q Center, will be holding a Wikidata Edit-a-thon from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, October 25 in the Q Center. We will be adding and editing Wikidata entries for Queer books and history for Queer History Month. Be on the lookout for more information in October. 
  • Digital Project Showcase
    November

    The Digital Scholarship team will be hosting a digital project showcase in November. Start thinking about if there is a digital project you would like to share with the campus community. There will be a call out for participants by the end of September. 

Find more content on digital scholarship and feature stories about digital projects created by faculty, staff and students on Binghamton’s Campus and Libraries on the Library News blog by visiting libnews.binghamton.edu/news/tag/digital-byte/.