The Digital Humanities Committee Presents: DH Summer Symposium: Storytelling with Data”, Tuesday, June 5 – Thursday, June 7. This symposium is a collaboration between the Digital Humanities Committee, the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center and University Libraries.

Whether you are an experienced user of digital tools and techniques, or you are just beginning to incorporate them into your teaching and scholarship, the DH Summer Seminar will provide an array of tools, tips, and project ideas to stimulate you. Members of the New Jersey Digital Humanities Consortium are invited to attend the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions.

Tuesday, June 5 – Register Here
Walsh Library – Learning Studio

9:30-10 a.m. Breakfast & Welcome
10-11 a.m. DH Past Projects: Courtney Starrett and Bill Connell
University Advancement Corporation & Foundation Relations Office: Jennifer Kosakowski
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Digitized Newspapers in the Classroom and Research
12:30-1 p.m. Lunch
1-2 p.m. Exploring ICPSR Data
2:15-3 p.m. Blogging Platforms

Wednesday, June 6 – Register Here
Walsh Library – Learning Studio

9:30 – 10 a.m. Breakfast & Welcome
10 – 11:30 a.m. Clean Data makes a better story!
11:30 – 12:30 p.m. Mapping for greater understanding – Open Source Tools
12:30 – 1 p.m. Lunch
1 – 2 p.m. Mapping for greater understanding – Using PolicyMap at Seton Hall

Thursday, July 7 – Register for a Consultation Session
Walsh Library – Space154

10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Consultations with Instructional Designers and Librarians – Sign up for a 20 minute consultation session.

Session Descriptions – Tuesday, June 5

Digitized Newspapers in the Classroom and Research
Alex Leslie, a doctoral student in English Literature at Rutgers University, will lead a 90 minute workshop about working with open-access data from the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America Database of historical newspapers. The first part of the session will explore creating assignments that utilize digital resources like Chronicling America to effectively engage students with questions of how ideas circulated in print. Participants are welcome to bring any similar assignments of their own for discussion. The second part of the session will introduce several basic methods of quantitative analysis using the R programming language (including frequency over time, page location, and collocate words) in order to demonstrate how these approaches can enrich our understanding of print discourse. No coding experience necessary.

Instructor: Alex Leslie, Rutgers University

Exploring ICPSR Data
Work with datasets from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), University Libraries’ newest subscription available to students and faculty.  Explore datasets from several disciplines and determine how the data tells a good story to enhance research.   In this session, participants will learn simple visual and textual analysis with free tools like Voyant.

Instructors: Lisa DeLuca & Katie Wissel, University Libraries

Blogging Platforms
Blogging is dead; long live the blog. They’ve never really gone away, and considering the problems with today’s social media platforms that’s a good thing. Modern platforms let you create any kind of site you want: photoblogs, ecommerce sites, diaries, online magazines and research platforms. Learn a little of the history and development, different platforms, and how you can use SHU’s own blogging platforms to take back your content.

If you’d like to participate on a live test blog of your own, please complete the form at http://blogs.shu.edu/summer-series-blogging-session/. We’ll have a lightning presentation of plugins and themes for a wide range of functionality, followed by time for you to experiment with them on your own.

Examples: kottke.org, https://www.futilitycloset.com/, https://mindhacks.com/, https://www.getrevue.co/profile/5things, https://bobwp.com/, http://www.therestisnoise.com/, https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/, https://www.damninteresting.com/.

WordPress Plugins & Themes
Blogging Timeline

Instructor: Tom McGee, Teaching, Learning and Technology Center

Session Descriptions – Wednesday, June 6

Clean Data makes a better story!
Consistency, trailing spaces, capitalization, spelling, terminology. Errors in any of these can throw off your results, and even break your project. Learn how to refine your Excel skills and expand them using other tools to clean data for consistency and prepare it for analysis.  Learn how to convert *.csv files to Excel and back, make global changes with find-replace and regular expressions, and turn columns into database queries.  Bring your own data if you like.  If you do not have data, you can use datasets provided for the class. In addition to Excel, suggest you download and install Sublime Text, Code Writer (from Microsoft Store) and Open Office Calc.

Sample Data Sets

5000 articles from The Setonian
Partial final product
MPHDA Inventory – Word version
MPHDA – Sample Upload File

Recommended Apps

Sublime Text
CodeWriter
Open Office Calc (part of the Open Office suite)

Presentation Slides

Presentation Slides

Instructor: Tom McGee, Teaching, Learning and Technology Center

Mapping for greater understanding – Open Source tools for Mapping
Use open source tools to create a map to complement your research projects.  Participants are welcome to bring historical data which instructors can help clean and put into a map or data visualization.  Data will also be provided to use in class. They will also discuss current trends such as upcoming changes to the Google Maps Policy.

Instructors: Lisa DeLuca & Katie Wissel, University Libraries

Mapping for greater understanding – Using PolicyMap at Seton Hall
Learn how faculty have used PolicyMap across disciplines at Seton Hall.  This group will identify opportunities for future collaboration.  Review existing assignments used in Health Sciences, Education and Political Science.  Review new data and reports such as the Community Health Report.  This session will also give faculty an opportunity to create future assignments or create maps in PolicyMap if new to the tool.

Instructors: Lisa DeLuca & Katie Wissel, University Libraries


Digital Humanities Seed Grants:
At the end of the seminar, Seton Hall faculty members who attend at least two of the six sessions during the first two days of the seminar may apply for one of the $500 Seed Grants.  The DH Seed Grants are intended to encourage faculty to plan or pilot a project over the summer for use in their teaching and/or scholarship. Applications will be available at the seminar’s conclusion.

Sites to Follow:
Digital Humanities Blog
SHU Institutional Repository
New Jersey Digital Humanities Consortium

This event is sponsored by the Digital Humanities Committee, the Teaching, Learning & Technology Center (TLTC) and University Libraries.  The Digital Humanities initiative is made possible through funding by the Provost’s Office.