In my own research for my dissertation, I visited approximately 60 libraries around the country ranging from the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, to the Historic New Orleans Collection, to more regional, smaller libraries such as the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society library in Honolulu and the Delaware Historical Society.  Every library had a different policy regarding the use of digital media for research purposes, particularly regarding the use of cameras and laptop computers in reading rooms.  Most libraries were friendly towards the use of these research materials, but many libraries and/or librarians viewed them with ire and scorn.  In almost every instance, those that allowed the use of such materials limited the number of images to be photographed and/or required a signed form specifying that none of these images could be circulated.  Although I was grateful for their permission, I have tens of thousands of images and other similar materials that I can neither use for my own publications nor share among my colleagues and other interested parties.

My proposal session consists of two parts: 1) sharing my own experiences and thoughts about digital research, and 2)  hearing feedback from others who have done similar research.  Finally, we would discuss if or how libraries are dealing with this issue and what is being done (if anything) to bring about a more uniform treatment of digital research.

Databases are my friends. Every application that I use and care about has a database built into it somewhere: digital audio workstation, video editor, address book, calendar, to-do list (don’t forget online shopping…). Important research is predicated on the analysis of databases. Increasingly, many of my favorite works of art are driven by databases. I’m inspired by civic hacking projects made possible by the open data movement.

So why is it such a pain to create and work with databases? How come we still reach for a spreadsheet when we know darn well a database would be better? Would the world be a better place if everyone databased? Has the NSA made database a dirty word? What tools do we need to make databasing more like sledding?

Come share your love/hate experiences with databases. Teach us about your favorite tools for making life with databases more fulfilling. Let’s imagine together what will replace databases as we know them.

Omeka.net is a web-publishing platform that allows anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website to display collections and build digital exhibitions (“About,” Omeka.net).

In this workshop for THATCampers with no previous experience with Omeka, we will:

• talk about use cases for Omeka
• look at some Omeka projects
• describe the difference between omeka.net site and running your own instance of Omeka
• talk about plug-ins
• add items to an archive
• assign metadata

If there is interest, following this workshop will be a session dedicated to running your own instance of Omeka through Amazon Web Services (which is free for a year). If you are interested in this, please see my session proposal which has information about what you will need to participate.

If you are interested in creating an Omeka.net site, please sign up for and activate a Basic (free) Omeka.net account before you arrive. You might also bring a laptop with some practice files to upload to your new Omeka.net site!

I’m interested in discussing how Library Science’s bibliographic theories intersect with the Humanities’ conception of creative works. In particular I would like to examine Library Science’s FRBR concept in this light.

FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) is a conceptual framework that has had a large impact within the Library and Information Sciences world, particularly in how bibliographic entities are conceived within a catalog system. Among other things, FRBR proposes a system of four inter-related abstraction that are designed to describe different parts of a creative endeavor’s whole. Work describes the creative idea behind a bibliographic entity, Expression describes the specific artistic form that realizes the work, Manifestation describes the physical form that that expression takes (a specific edition of a book), and Item describes one single instance of a manifestation (the particular book that you have in your hand).

For example: Shakespeare conceives of a Work he will call King Lear. He writes a manuscript of this work for performance. This is one Expression. Shakespeare’s original manuscript is, of course, lost, and our modern text derives from the text of the First and Second Quartos and the First Folio. As the versions in the quartos and the folio are significantly different, they too represent different Expressions of the same work. The version created by conflating these two versions would be yet another Expression. The Norton Critical Edition of the play would represent one Manifestation of it. And then, the specific copy of the Norton Critical Edition that sits on your bookshelf, and that you’ve marked up and spilled coffee on, is one particular Item.

As you can imagine, these concepts can become fairly muddled, and often create significant questions about any particular bibliographic entity (especially when dealing with something that has as much of history as King Lear): Does the Norton Critical Edition represent a whole new Expression considering the editor primarily uses the Folio text, while also integrating passages from Quarto I? Yes, it probably does. What about the critical material that accompanies the text, do those have their own Works and Expressions? Yes… well… possibly?

How do library systems built around these ideas work with scholars’ expectations for information retrieval systems? How extensive should these systems be? Could systems built around these concepts impose too rigid of a structure on the critical history of a creative work?

FRBR is a rather large and unwieldy topic within Library Science, and it would be unreasonable to expect a tremendously in-depth discussion about it within the context of THATcamp, but I believe thinking about it within the concept of humanities could yield an interesting discussion.

Wikipedia has a somewhat comprehensible explanation on the concept of FRBR and, as usual, is a good place to get a broader picture of it.

The question I would like to mull over with you is how can we use social networking and data gathering techniques to determine what are the practical virtues of a discipline? I am curious about this because of the resurgence of virtue ethics as an alternative to rule-based and consequence-based systems of ethics that we all have received almost by default from the 18th and 19th centuries. The virtues are those things at which we desire to be excellent and help us fulfill our chosen purpose. Developing a virtue ethics approach gives us a new way of solving ethical dilemmas based on fulfillment of purpose rather than adhering to rules or trying to predict outcomes. Introspection can reveal one’s own chosen virtues, but finding out a group’s virtues takes a great deal more cleverness and inventiveness, and if you are willing I would love to borrow yours for a while.

I’d like to have a brainstorming session about how to build a network of collaborators for digital work on a particular campus or in a particular area. What kinds of skills and interests might you seek out and where within various institutions might you find these skills? What are some of the most useful ways to maintain relationships with these folks during and after the life of a project? How can you go about getting institutional support for these projects? I’ve had some experience building community around digital humanities this year but I’d love to think about how different models could work at different types of institutions too.