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