Digital Library Center Blog | UF

“Digital Platforms and the Future of Books”
January 20 & 21, UF, Smathers Library, Room 1A

As cultural and intellectual discourse becomes digitized at an ever-accelerating rate, what will become of books? According to several prominent literary theorists, the decline of print culture — “the civilization of the book” — makes us acutely aware of different kinds of writing that fit hand in glove with broadened notions of textuality. Contemporary scholarship across the humanities continues to interrogate the vitality of books in the twenty-first century. For instance, how have books shaped our conventional notions of authorship and commonplace reading practices? Looking ahead, how might the book serve as an interface metaphor for electronic textuality? Keen to digital platforms, the speakers featured in this symposium variously maintain that the book will play substantial roles in the development of reading and writing publics in an era of social media, digital scholarship, and networked communication.

Symposium Schedule

DAY 1 (Friday 1/20/12)
3:50—4:00 Opening Remarks
4:00—5:15 Elizabeth Swanstrom (Florida Atlantic University) – Title & Respondent TBD
5:15—5:30 Break
5:30—6:45 David Blakesley (Clemson University) “The Beginning of Books?” – Respondent: Laurie Taylor (UF Digital Humanities Librarian)
7:00—9:00 Reception

DAY 2 (Saturday 1/21/12)
9:30—10:00 Coffee
10:00—11:15 Roundtable Discussion (Blakesley, Bolter, Harpold, Stein, Swanstrom, Taylor, Ulmer)
11:15—11:30 Break
11:30—12:45 Jay Bolter (Georgia Institute of Technology) “The End of Books?” – Respondent: Gregory Ulmer (UF English)
12:45 — 1:45 Lunch
2:00 — 3:15 Bob Stein (Institute for the Future of the Book) Title TBD – Respondent: Terry Harpold (UF English)

This event is being organized by the UF Digital Assembly with generous co-sponsership from the University Libraries, the Graduate Film Studies Group, and ImageText. All inquiries about the event can be directed to John Tinnell.

For more information on the featured speakers, please visit each of their websites listed below:

The 2012 Digital Assembly Symposium “Digital Platforms and the Transformation of Intellectual Discourse” will be held 1/20-1/21/2012 at UF.

Featured speakers will include David Blakesley (Campbell Chair in Technical Communication and Professor of English, Clemson University; Founder & Publisher, Parlor Press), Jay Bolter (Wesley Chair of New Media, Georgia Institute of Technology), Bob Stein (Founder & Director, Institute for the Future of the Book), and Elizabeth Swanstrom (Assistant Professor of English, Florida Atlantic University). More details will be forthcoming from the Department of English.

The “Writing the Digital Humanities” a conference is by graduate students in Laurie Gries’s current seminar and will be held 12/8/2011 from 1-6pm in Pugh Hall 210.

Details: The Digital Humanities is an emergent field of study currently being “written” by scholars across the humanities. This conference highlights innovative scholarship being produced by graduate students in the Department of English, who are working at the intersections of computing and media studies, children’s literature, writing studies, queer studies, creative writing, and ecocritism. All panel presentations will take place in Pugh Hall 210.

• 1 PM, Opening remarks by Laurie Gries
• 1:15 PM, Panel A, “Interfaced Materialities.” Caroline Stone, Sean Printz, and Joan Shaffer.
• 2:25 PM, Panel B, “Embedded Agents.” Kyle Bohunicky, Casey Wilson, and Melissa Bianchi.
• 4:00 PM, Panel C, “Envisioning Practice: Digital Media, Pedagogy, and the Creative Process.” Rebecca Evanhoe, John Tinnell,and Sam Hamilton.
• 5:10 PM, Panel D, “You Can’t Go Home Again: Queered Utopias in Digital Humanities.” Jordan Youngblood and Joseph Weakland.

Freedman Center Colloquium: Building a Culture for Digital Scholarship

November 7^th and 8^th, , 2011
Kelvin Smith Library
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland,  Ohio

The Colloquium will provide an overview of:

• the nature and state of digital scholarship
• the support and infrastructure necessary to ensure faculty and student success
• the changes in the academic culture that are essential for digital scholarship to thrive
• new forms of scholarly communication underway or essential to exploit the advantages of digital scholarship.

Complete program information is available at http://library.case.edu/ksl/colloquium/

The keynote speakers are:

Dr. Laura Mandell, Professor of English and Associate Director of NINES, co-director of 18thConnect, and the director of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, Texas A & M University

Stephen Chapman, Project Manager, Harvard Law School Library, Digital Lab

Dr. Amy Friedlander, Senior Advisor in the Office of the Assistant Director of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences at the US National Science Foundation

Dr. Neni Panourgia, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, and affiliated faculty at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Culture, and the Harriman Institute

We encourage you to register at http://library.case.edu/ksl/colloquium/registration/

THATCamp Publishing 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011 (preceding 2011 DLF Forum)
Hyatt Regency Baltimore

Please join us for the first ever unconference dedicated to new models for publishing!  THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) Publishing 2011 will be held Sunday, October 30, 2011, just before the 2011 Digital Library Federation Forum.

New structures, tools, and services for scholarly publishing require new discussion venues and the development of new communities to nurture these discussions.  THATCamp Publishing represents just such an experiment in community development. By creating a meeting place that brings together colleagues from libraries, publishing, museums, archives, and digital humanities centers, we hope to stimulate blue-sky thinking and pragmatic skill sharing in support of new forms of scholarly communication. To this end, the unconference is open to publishers, librarians, faculty and student scholars, archivists, museum professionals, interested amateurs, technologists, administrators, and funders from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors — any and all who want to advance scholarly publishing in and for a digital age.

For more information and to register, see http://publishing2011.thatcamp.org/ .

News:

Caribbean Region of the International Resource Network presents “Preserving Our Stories – Caribbean LGBT Histories & Activism” Launch & Discussion The Digital Archive Collection of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement 21 June, 2011 at 6PM (USA Eastern Standard Time)

Panelists include: Larry Chang (co-founder of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement and Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays – JFLAG) & Thomas Glave (award-winning author and co-founder of JFLAG); along with co-chairs of the Caribbean IRN Board: Angelique V. Nixon (scholar, writer, community worker) & Rosamond S. King (writer, scholar, artist)

Also featuring the short documentary “Sisters without Misters” by Cynthia Cheeseman http://bandwagonist.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/sisters-without-misters/

The digital archive is hosted by the Digital Library of the Caribbean at: http://dloc.com/icirngfm.

The event will be based at Brooklyn College,Woody Tanger Auditorium in the Library, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210.

Questions can be posed by emailing to caribbeanirn@gmail.com

The Caribbean IRN Board is looking forward to this important digital launch and discussion of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement Archive! Help us spread the word to folks in the region especially and/or anyone you know who is interested in these histories and activism. The Caribbean IRN is a resource for people and organizations inside and outside the region whose work focuses on issues related to diverse genders and sexualities in the Caribbean.

Please visit our website for more information about our work: http://www.irnweb.org/ en/about/region/caribbean. The International Resource Network is supported by the Ford Foundation and housed at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York.

The digitization of this archive was made possible through a City University of New York Diversity Grant.

Special thanks to Stephanie Harvey, who organized and digitized the archive, to Marianne LaBatto, and the entire Brooklyn College Division of Archives & Special Collections. This event was made possible through a City University of New York Diversity Grant, with additional support from the Brooklyn College Department of Africana Studies and the Brooklyn College Division of Academic Information Technologies.

Please note: this event has already taken place, but I will update with comments (or others, please do) if I find the video of the event online. Despite my tardiness in posting, I still wanted to share this to promote the important work being done.

Conference News:
HUMANITIES (DOT) NET: CURRENTS IN THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES, the first joint conference of centerNet and CHCI will be taking place on June 15 at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute.

The conference will feature plenary speakers John Unsworth (Illinois) and Brian Cantwell Smith (Toronto), panels on Digital Disciplines and Digital Publics, a roundtable discussion on the role of funders and programs that go beyond the academy, and opportunities for discussion. A small registration fee of $25US will cover the direct costs. Schedule information can be found via the CHCI website, http://chcinetwork.org.

In addition, CHCI invites all centerNet members to join their international membership group for their 2011 Annual Meeting, Cities Humanities Archives, on 13-14 June 2011, at the same location. Registration for the CHCI Annual Meeting is $75US per organization plus a $40US fee for the Meeting dinner on the evening of Monday 13 June. The $25US registration fee for the CHCI/centerNet meeting is waived for anyone attending the CHCI meeting.

Complete information on both programs can be found at the CHCI website, http://chcinetwork.org, including travel and lodging information, and an online registration form.

The 2011 Digital Government (dg.o) conference will be in Washington, DC June 12-15, 2011 at the University of Maryland College Park.  The conference sounds very interesting for those working in any area of digital government, including libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage and educational institutions. More information is available on the conference website: http://dgo2011.dgsna.org/

While I’ll miss this one, lots of folks from Florida will be attending. Bobby Parker (from UF) is on the conference planning committee and this should be a great conference for everyone working on ETDs.

Conference Announcement

The USETDA 2011 Conference Planning Committee is pleased to announce registration is now open at the ultra-low rate of $95.    USETDA 2011 will be held at the Holiday Inn – Walt Disney World® Resort in Orlando, Florida on May 18-20, 2011 – discount lodging is now available for only $95 per night.  Additionally, you may join USETDA while registering for the conference at a 50% discount ($25 for individuals or $50 per institution) during our introductory offer.  Membership benefits include exclusive members-only access to USETDA communications (listserv, newsletters and special promotions), professional and community resources and networking opportunities, as well as discounts to future USETDA events.  The early bird discount registration rate will only be available through April 18, 2011.  Don’t miss out on this low-cost high-impact learning and networking opportunity – join USETDA and register for the conference today!

Call for Proposals Reminder: Submit your session proposals for the USETDA 2011 Conference.  Proposals will be accepted through February 28, 2011.  Notification of acceptance to present will be sent mid-March.  Share your knowledge and expertise with colleagues throughout the nation.  See the Conference Proposal page for session tracks and submission information.

More about the Conference.

USETDA 2011: The Magic of ETDs. Where Creative Minds Meet*

Take your Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) Program to the next level this May!

USETDA 2011 is for ETD professionals from graduate schools, libraries, academic computing and others who work with ETDs. Our goal is to offer relevant, practice-oriented content to support ETD productivity improvement, ETD professionals, advance ETD operations, and encourage the formation of state-wide ETD associations in the United States.

Searching for innovative new ways to engage your students? Looking to increase efficiency by making technology work for you? Participants will have opportunity to share, network and learn by submitting proposals for presentations, gain in-depth instruction on ETDs in the pre-conference workshops, select from 24 exciting break-out sessions, attend keynote presentations, participate in discussion groups, and engage in evening networking events.

Presentation topics will include:

• sharing ideas and techniques to improve ETD operations
• utilizing new and innovative tools and practices
• enhancing knowledge of copyright and open access
• gaining awareness of new/existing ETD initiatives
• enhancing the ETD profession
• designing, delivering and assessing effective educational experiences for students and or staff
• using ETD research to enhance practice
• For further details visit the draft conference program

USETDA 2011 is a fantastic, low-cost, high-impact learning and networking opportunity for you to interact with your colleagues and share best practices in the field of ETDs.

Make plans now to experience the magic of ETDs in 2011 in the Magic Kingdom! Visit usetda.org for conference updates.

Organized by the USETDA 2011 Conference Planning Committee,

Angela McCutcheon
mccutcha@ohio.edu

John Hagen
Jhagen2@wvu.edu

Laura Hammons
lhammons@tamu.edu

Robert Parker
robpark@ufl.edu

___________

*Used with permission of the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc.

USETDA
http://www.usetda.org/

Announcement Below:

The HASTAC 2011 International Conference has been rescheduled. It will now be held December 2-3, 2011.

Our HASTAC network at the University of Michigan, led by our Steering Committee member Daniel Herwitz, and with regional assistance from SC member Julie Klein (Wayne State), has been meeting to plan for next year’s HASTAC International Conference. It’s still a year away but they have confirmed a date so you can mark your calendars: December 2-3, 2011. This conference promises to be bold, wide-ranging, and urgent. You won’t want to miss it!

The event will be held in the North Quadrangle at University of Michigan, a new center of digitally and technologically-driven units at UM, from Screen Arts and Cultures to the School of Information, including living-learning dorms, classrooms, interactive meeting areas, and other innovative spaces. The theme, Digital Scholarly Communication, will unfold in its most expansive version, as a collaboration of various departments, the Sweetland Writing Center, the Library, and the newly inaugurated digital press (hosted at the Library), including DigitalCulture Books (and the HASTAC first-publication prize too). The conference will feature many north-south international projects (such as the Law and Slavery project), with a focus on issues of changes in language and thinking in the internet-bred generation, issues around innovation in the Ph.D. and graduate education more generally, issues of equality, inequality, access (globally and nationally), circulation, and representation, all of the broadest and most incisive issues of scholarly communication (moral, social, legal, conceptual, and international in scope).  NEH Chariman Jim Leach will speak on Dec. 2nd.

In the coming months, we will be hearing much more about this conference, but we wanted to share this breaking news with you now. Enormous thanks to all of those at the University of Michigan who are already thinking ahead to make this our best HASTAC conference ever. We’ll all be hearing  more over the months ahead. Stay tuned!