- Flyer: Digital Frontiers
- This flyer was created for the 2012 Digital Frontiers Conference and THATCamp. The flyer includes information about the keynote speaker, details about THATCamp, and information on proposal submissions. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc111022/
- Lettermark: Digital Frontiers
- This color lettermark was created for Digital Frontiers. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc110996/
- Logo: Digital Frontiers
- This color logo was created for Digital Frontiers. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc110997/
- Digital Archives: Where is the community in History?
- This presentation discusses digital archives and looks at the history community's presence in digital archives. The purpose of digitizing cultural heritage collections is often presented in terms of preservation or distribution. Concerns center around how to best ensure the sustainability of materials or how to enable user interactivity. However, especially within the field of history, there is a push to think in terms of how to create community through the narratives the authors produce. The authors orientation is shifting from author-centered to reader-centered, and how the authors construct knowledge is becoming increasingly social and democratic. This can be explained as part of a greater cultural shift where, "until recently, public memory was constructed and disseminated for the people but not by the people." This presentation explores such issues through the examination of three digital archives: 1) The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War site (http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/). 2) The Virtual Vietnam Archive (http://911digitalarchive.org). After a brief description of each project, a critique is provided covering the four aspects of: motives, preservation, interactivity and barriers. While all three digital archives place a focus on personal narratives and deal with the complexities of conflict intimately, none of the projects manage to create the vibrant virtual community one might hope for or expect. This discovery indicates that there is more discussion needed about what purposes digital history resources might serve. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc122180/
- Digital Rights, Media and Practice: The Right to Bear Arms in the Information Age
- This presentation discusses digital rights, media and practice. On the streets and in social media Occupy Wall Street captured the imagination of the United States and exposed tensions between the NYPD's policies of surveillance and our basic freedoms. It gave us an example of the deep power of voice residing in digital culture and the problems that arise when this voice is met with heavy governmental restrictions, many of them the result of preemptive information policies. As a photographer who has experienced deep transformations in her own practice because of digital technology, the author is curious of the ways in which digital photography is transforming and reflective of culture. The power of an image making populace can transform the balance of the status quo. In a context of power, mobility and changing landscapes, a new set of tools is enabling and exposing tensions of culture and rights. This presentation will explore the smart phone as a daily tool and an information weapon whose protection could be considered under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Right to Bear Arms. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc130198/
- The Handbook of Texas: Past and Future
- This presentation discusses the Handbook of Texas. A program of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), the 'Handbook of Texas Online' is a multidisciplinary digital encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture. It comprises more than 27,000 articles on people, places, events, historical themes, institutions, and a host of other topic categories. It began with TSHA Director Eugene C. Barker, who had proposed a biographical dictionary project in 1932. Historian Walter Prescott Webb became director in 1936 and enhanced Barker's idea to encompass "a combination dictionary, biography and encyclopedia." The first edition of the 'Handbook of Texas' appeared in 1952. A third volume supplement was published in 1977. Not long after the publication of the supplement, the board and staff undertook an even more ambitious idea, a new completely revised edition. In the July 1996 the 'New Handbook of Texas' was published in six volumes. Less than three years later, the Association officially released 'The Handbook of Texas Online' on February 15, 1999, offering it free to the public. Today 3 million individuals come to the TSHA website for a total of around 4 million visits and 10 million page views in the course of the year. The central challenge before the TSHA is to seize the unprecedented opportunities of the 'Handbook' in the digital age in order to reshape how history will be accessed, disseminated, understood, and preserved in the twenty-first century. This presentation describes how the TSHA is facing the challenges along with its plans to realize the opportunities. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc111284/
- If We Are Doing It in New Jersey, You Can Do It in Your State!
- This presentation discusses creating digital collections by tapping into local resources. The Kean University Library has created or will soon create three digital collections focused on New Jersey. The New Jersey Public Policy Collection contains documents on New Jersey public policy issues created by non-profit organizations. The Kean University New Jersey History Project using tools provided by the HathiTrust Digital Library to create a keyword searchable collection within the HathiTrust Digital Library of the full text of documents on the history of the state of New Jersey. The soon-to-be-created Union County History Collection will contain finding aids and digitized primary materials available in Union County, New Jersey public Libraries to facilitate the study of Union County History. All of these collections take advantage of resources readily available to libraries in other states and can be duplicated in those other states. This presentation will discuss the issues involved in creating those collections, the way in which support was gained to obtain resources to put into those collections, and the manner in which those collections have been publicized. At the end of the presentation, attendees should be able to take the lessons the Kean University Library learned to create equivalent collections in their own states. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc110999/
- The Impact of Digitizing Resources: Content Partner and User Perspectives
- This presentation discusses the impact of digitizing resources. The Portal to Texas History℠ is a gateway to humanities collections within the digital library of the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries. The Portal provides access to more than 190,000 digital objects, comprising over 2.6 million image files. The range of primary source materials includes maps, books, manuscripts, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and letters from the unique collections of Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, genealogical societies, and private families. The Portal was launched in 2003 with collections from five content partners and currently includes materials from more than 190 partners. While increasing numbers of partners and assets are signs that making digitized resources Web-acessible is a desirable thing, digital libraries are increasingly expected to identify the impacts that have resulted from digitizing assets. In 2012, UNT Libraries began to investigate the impact of digitizing assets on two of the Portal's key stakeholder groups: content partner and users. An environmental scan identified seven possible impact categories: cultural, economic, educational, environmental, operational, political, and social. These categories served as the framework for data collection activities, which included five key informant interviews with content providers and surveys of both content partners (N = 58) and users (N = 314). Additionally, the Portal's historical log of user-submitted comments (N = 3,355) provided a rich source of data from users' perspectives. The seven impact categories proved a robust framework for data analysis and the findings were organized accordingly. This presentation will report the differential impacts discovered for the Portal's content partners and users. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc111277/
- [Controlled Vocabulary Graphic]
- This graphic expresses kinds of controlled vocabularies as a continuum of least to most complex and illustrates how different vocabularies are related; it includes notes describing the image on a separate page. The slide was used as a visual aid at a workshop during THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) as part of the Digital Frontiers conference at UNT Libraries. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc111289/