digital humanities at the university of british columbia library: the royal fisk gold rush letters

+Digital Humanities at the University of British Columbia Library:

The Royal Fisk Gold Rush Letters

PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2015Vancouver, BC

Larissa RinghamDigital Projects Librarian, UBC Library

+University of British Columbia Library 15 branches

~300 staff members

4 million+ visits to branches

6.2 million+ visits to website

140,000+ questions answered

1.6 million+ loans to UBC users

13 million+ e-book and e-journal downloads

7 million+ items (print and electronic)

1.4 million+ e-books

229,000+ journal titles

45,000+ items in cIRcle

500,000+ items in digital collections

890,000+ maps, audio, video, graphic materials

+

UBC Library:Digital Initiatives

Scholarly Communications Copyright cIRcle Digitization Centre

Digitization Projects Digital Preservation Teaching and Learning

+Current projects

www.fromstonetoscreen.com

Epigraphic Squeezes Royal Fisk Gold Rush Letters

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Royal Fisk Gold Rush Letters Project The materials900 original letters from the Cariboo Gold Rush era in British Columbia, 1862-1868

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Gold Rush Letters ProjectThe background

Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF):Flexible Learning

+Gold Rush Letters Project The objectives

Provide undergraduate History students with an immersive experience in Digital Humanities

Facilitate engagement with primary documents through transcription, description and analysis

+Gold Rush Letters ProjectThe team

History Department Library

Rare Books and Special Collections Library Information Technology Library Digital Initiatives Library Technical Services

+Gold Rush Letters Project Year One (complete)

Library

Digitization and creation of digital collection with basic description at

Full text harvesting from the Wiki and metadata enhancement in the digital collection

Classroom

Student transcription and description in UBC Wiki through individual and group work

Glossary and taxonomy development

Student reflection and assessment

Project team

Transcription and project assessment workflows developed

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Gold Rush Letters ProjectThe results

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Success:

Engagement with primary sources

“The [visit to Special Collections] helped me to understand the … palpable materiality of the primary sources, their rarity and worth.”

“Because of my working with the Royal Fisk correspondence, I will not be so intimidated in trying to use these kinds of sources for my own research purposes.”

“Glimpses into 19th century life like these could be taught in a textbook or via lecture, but by learning about them through a project like this makes them much more relatable.”

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Success:

Reading handwriting and deciphering language

“At first this project seemed like it would be very easy, but it was surprising to me how varied the abilities were in the class.”

“By comparing the transcripts to the alphabet chart … as well as to the transcripts of my classmates, I got a much better sense of how to read the cursive.”

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Struggle:

Technology

The “digital” in digital humanities was the main stumbling block

+Gold Rush Letters Project Year Two (in progress)

Continuation of student transcription Textual encoding and markup

+What did we learn about doing DH in the library?

Capitalize on our skills

Identify incremental steps

Be realistic about what we can support

+Digital Humanities at UBC: Environmental Scan

Environmental scan of DH activities at UBC Environmental scan of DH centres and projects at other

institutions Develop survey for dissemination to UBC researchers,

faculty

+Environmental scan results ….

[in progress]

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Gold Rush BC Initiatives (Laura Ishiguro’s blog)http://blogs.ubc.ca/lmishiguro/2014/09/02/gold-rush-bc-initiatives/

Royal Fisk Gold Rush Letters digital collection

http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/royalfisk

larissa.ringham@ubc.ca