Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Humanities Grant Proposal Review Opportunity, Fall 2011
UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Grant Proposal Review Opportunity

Faculty members in the humanities are invited to submit complete draft proposals (minus reference letters) by December 16^th for single-blind review by three UF referees with experience serving on grant review panels at the national level. Feedback will be returned by February 5^th, to enable revision and submission of proposals for spring 2012 deadlines. This opportunity is limited to 15 faculty members; in the case of over-subscription, preference will be given to those who did not participate in the Spring/Summer 2011 opportunity.

To participate, please RSVP by Dec. 9^th to Sophia Acord (skacord@ufl.edu)

Humanities Grant Support and Databases

The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere grants resource pages have been reorganized and revamped, with new information on UF grant-writing resources, digital humanities, public humanities, and many more listings for internal and external funding opportunities for graduate students and faculty.

These activities are made possible with support from the CLAS Dean’s Office and the UF Office of Research.

The University of Virginia Libraries has announced the launch of “Spatial Humanities,” a community-driven resource for place-based digital scholarship:

http://spatial.scholarslab.org/

The site was developed in response to needs identified by faculty and the site includes:

• an evolving, crowdsourced catalog of research resources, projects, and organizations
• a set of framing essays on the spatial turn across the disciplines by Dr. Jo Guldi of the Harvard Society of Fellows
• GIS-related feeds from Q&A sites and other forms of social media
• a peer-reviewed, occasional publication for step-by-step tutorials in spatial tools and methods

UVa is inviting everyone to participate:

• use Zotero to freely upload research citations, projects, and links to groups
• contribute your own tutorials and helpsheets in “Step By Step” format for peer review and formal publication
• adopt the #geoinst hashtag on Twitter and Delicious
• ask related questions and offer help on DH Answers or the GIS Stack Exchange
• post commentary on the essays

This looks like another great resource for all scholars.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is doing training on the dLOC Toolkit in Jamaica. Brooke Wooldridge (dLOC/FIU), Mark Sullivan (UF), and Lee Dotson (UCF) are all enjoying spending time in Jamaica and soon the world will benefit from even greater access to more materials.

See materials from all of the partners on dLOC now and check back frequently to see the many new items loading daily!

Learn what the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) has to offer, and how to fully explore the broad range of resources available. We’ll cover the basics of UFDC: searching, advanced searching (including by collection and subcollection), viewing results, and saving images. We will also cover tips and tricks:

• collections that may be of particular interest or for use in teaching
• browsing options
• using the email contact forms for help
• and using the citation on items to find the permanent URL

The majority of the time will be spent learning about the wonderful resources available in UFDC and we’ll spend time on three of the largest collections: the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, the Baldwin Historical Children’s Literature Digital Collection, and the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Virtual Trainers: Laurie Taylor and Missy Shoop, University of Florida Libraries
Date: Thursday, February 19
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 am
Cost: Free
Location: On your DESKTOP via NEFLIN Web Conferencing

(The above news was also posted on NEFLIN’s Blog!)

The UF Digital Collections (UFDC) have grown so dramatically that we critically need more resources to both promote and explain the many materials and their use. As of November 1, UFDC includes over 2.79 million pages. This means we’ve added 1.79 million pages in 13 months. Our existing training materials, tutorials, and help pages haven’t been able to keep up with the variety and quantity of materials, nor with documenting and explaining the other technical improvements we’ve implemented.

We’re working on making online tutorials that will explain the basics of using UFDC and that will highlight a few of the largest collections. While we’re actively working on these, we have far too many materials to cover in the near future so I’m also on the lookout for any existing training or contextual materials from other digital collections that could support UFDC. I found a great online tutorial on the Sanborn Maps from the Colorado Library Consortium.

UFDC includes the Sanborn Fire Insurances Maps of Florida Digital Collection and, while the Colorado Library Consortium’s tutorial is clearly focused on Colorado’s maps, the background it provides on what the Sanborn maps are and why people would use them applies equally well for any Sanborn Map Digital Collection.While this first screencast from the Colorado Library Consortium is wonderful for the history of the Sanborn Maps, we still  need to develop our own tutorial for how to use our Sanborn Map Digital Collection. While we have a great deal of work ahead of us developing this and other tutorials, it’s still wonderful to be able to find wonderful resources already available.

Check out UFDC’s Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Florida for Florida’s Sanborn Maps and the Accidental Map Librarian Workshops, a wiki with many resources that explain the fascinating history of the Sanborn maps for all of the many Sanborn Map Digital Collections. Hopefully as we develop resources for UFDC, we’ll also be able to share resources as wonderful as those from the Accidental Map Librarian Workshops that will benefit digital collections!