Programming and Events

Speaker Series: Meg Stewart

Please note: this talk has been cancelled due to inclement weather, but we do hope to reschedule it in the near future.
A Fulbright Scholar Talks About Participatory GIS, the Caribbean, Google Earth and How a Fulbright Could Be in Your Future

Meg Stewart
Academic Technology Consultant and Fulbright Ambassador
Thursday, January 17 at 2:00pm

Speaker Series: Bethany Nowviskie & David McClure

Plot Your Course in Space and Time: A Look at Scholars’ Lab’s Neatline

Dr. Bethany Nowviskie
Director, Digital Research & Scholarship, U.Va. Library

David McClure
Web Applications Specialist
Scholars’ Lab
What do you get when you cross texts and archival collections with rich, interactive maps and timelines? Neatline. Join us for a demo of current Neatline projects and upcoming features and to learn why Neatline emphasizes hand-crafted visualization and “small data” in a big-data world.
Wednesday, January 30 at 3:00pm
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

GIS Workshop: Acquiring and Using US Census Data in GIS

Acquiring and Using US Census Data in GIS

The United States Census has made big changes in their surveys and in the online tools to find and use US Census datasets. Join us for a hands-on session introducing the newly redesigned American Factfinder online tool for discovery and access to free data from the US Census.
Wednesday, February 6 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, February 7, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

Speaker Series: Gretchen Gueguen

Do Digital Archivists Dream of Electronic Records? Born Digital Collections in the Small Special Collections Library

Gretchen Gueguen
Digital Archivist, Digital Curation Services
University of Virginia
The information age has ushered in the biggest changes in human communication since the rise of printed text. The dynamic and ephemeral nature of electronic communication presents stark challenges to the fundamental principles of the archival practice. Join us for a look at how the tradition of collecting and creating archives is facing this paradigm shift and how the historical record will be shaped for the future.
Wednesday, February 13 at 3:00pm
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

GIS Workshop: Defining Watersheds with Digital Elevation Data

Defining Watersheds with Digital Elevation Data

Want to know the extent of any watershed? This session will teach you the process of delineating any watershed in ArcGIS using elevation data.
Wednesday, February 13 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, February 14, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

GIS Workshop: Using Neatline

Using Neatline

Neatline is a set of plugins for Omeka developed by the Scholars’ Lab. With this tool, anyone can create beautiful, complex maps and narrative sequences from collections of archives and artifacts, and to connect maps and narratives with timelines that are more-than-usually sensitive to ambiguity and nuance. See http://neatline.org/ for more information.
Wednesday, February 20 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, February 21, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

Speaker Series: Dana Wheeles & Andrew Stauffer

Using Juxta Commons in the Classroom

The recently released Juxta Commons is a free, online re-imagination of the textual collation tool, Juxta, which was developed at U.Va. in 2006. In addition to expanding the tool’s original set of features for comparing multiple versions of the same textual work, Juxta Commons also offers new possibilities for analyzing the online content students and researchers encounter every day.

Join Andrew Stauffer, Professor of English and Director of NINES, and Project Administrator, Dana Wheeles, to learn more about how to use Juxta Commons in a classroom setting to expose the dynamic nature of Wikipedia, news websites, and other staples of online research.
Wednesday, February 27 at 4:00pm
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

GIS Workshop: Making Cartograms

Making Cartograms

A cartogram is a thematic map that uses area to represent something other than area. Imagine a map where country area represents population, or cancer rates. You will learn how to send a powerful message with this thematic technique.
Wednesday, February 27 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, February 28, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

GIS Workshop: Introduction to GDAL

Introduction to GDAL

The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library is an open source utility library for raster geospatial data formats. As a library, it presents a a large number of utilities to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. We will focus on the command line utilities.
Wednesday, March 6 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, March 7, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

GIS Workshop: Do It Yourself Aerials

Do It Yourself Aerials

We have three aerial platforms, balloon, kite and hexcopter. Come get an update from us and find out how to do your own aerial photography.
Wednesday, March 20 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, March 21, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

Speaker Series: Dr. Shawn Graham

Practical Necromancy: Simulation and Agent Based Modeling in the Humanities

Dr. Shawn Graham
Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, Department of History
Carleton University
Raising the dead presents certain difficulties, but computation suggests a way forward. In Practical Necromany, Dr. Graham discusses the use of agent based simulations to understand aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity, its perils and potentials, and how all of this fits into a worldview informed by the digital humanities.
Thursday, March 21 at 2:00pm
in Scholars’ Lab, 4th floor Alderman Library.

Digital Humanities Speaker Series: Walter Scheidel

RESCHEDULED:Redrawing the Map of the Roman World

Walter Scheidel
Dickason Professor in the Humanities
Professor of Classics and History, and
Chair, Department of Classics
Stanford University
Ancient societies were shaped by logistical constraints that are almost unimaginable to modern observers. “ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World” ( http://orbis.stanford.edu ), for the first time, allows us to understand the true cost of distance in building and maintaining a huge empire with pre-modern technology. This talk explores various ways in which this novel Digital Humanities tool changes and enriches our understanding of ancient history.
Tuesday, March 26 at 9:30am
in Scholars’ Lab, Alderman Library, 4th floor.
Reception follows
The Digital Humanities Speaker Series is co-sponsored by IATH, SHANTI, and the Scholars’ Lab.

GIS Workshop: Introduction to Quantum GIS

Introduction to Quantum GIS

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is an open source, multi-platform GIS. While not nearly as powerful as ArcGIS, the 80/20 rule applies. Probably 80% of the things most users want to do with GIS can be done with QGIS. The session will introduce the interface and participants will make some nice maps. Learn more about QGIS at http://www.qgis.org .
Wednesday, March 27 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Campbell Hall, Room 105
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, March 28, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Alderman Library, Room 421)

Graduate Fellows Forum: Joanna Swafford

Graduate Fellows Forum: Joanna Swafford

*Please note venue change!*
Although sound studies and interdisciplinary music and poetry scholarship have increased over the last decade, scholars have not had the digital tools necessary to make their auditory arguments accessible to a wider audience. This talk will present two tools built by Scholars’ Lab Fellow Joanna Swafford that will help change that: Songs of the Victorians, an archive and analysis of parlor and art song settings of Victorian poems, and Augmented Notes, a tool that will let scholars build their own interdisciplinary websites like Songs of the Victorians. Lunch will be provided.
Wednesday, April 3 at Noon
in Clemons Library, Room 407.

GIS Workshop: Advanced Techniques with Quantum GIS

Advanced Techniques with Quantum GIS

One of QGIS’s strengths is its ability to pull in various streaming open standard data services. We will pull some data in from a remote location and do some spatial analysis.
Wednesday, April 3 4:00pm – 5:00pm
in Scholars’ Lab Seminar Room, Alderman Library, Room 423
(This workshop repeats on Thursday, April 4, from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Scholars’ Lab Seminar Room, Alderman Library, Room 423)

Praxis Fellows Program Informal Info Session

Praxis Fellows Program Informal Info Session

Advanced graduate students interested in applying for our popular Praxis fellows program ( www.scholarslab.org/announcements/seeking-praxis-program-fellows ) are invited to join us to learn about the program and the Scholars’ Lab from our faculty & staff and from past & current Praxis Fellows. Please RSVP to ej9k (at) virginia.edu by noon on Monday, April 8.

Monday, April 8 at 4:00 p.m.
in the Scholars’ Lab, Alderman Library, 4th Floor

Digital Humanities Speaker Series: Alan Liu

The History of Thought as Networked Community: The RoSE Prototype

Alan Liu
Professor, Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
and Rama Hoetzlein (Project Scientist)
What if bibliographies of past authors and works could be modeled as a dynamic, evolving society linked to today’s scholars and students? And what if visualizations could help us actively “storyboard” intellectual movements and not just spectate them? Alan Liu and Rama Hoetzlein present the conceptual framework and some of the discoveries and challenges of the RoSE Research-oriented Social Environment (in beta at the conclusion of a NEH Digital Humanities Start-up grant).
Tuesday, April 16 at 3:00pm
in Harrison Small Auditorium.
Reception follows
The Digital Humanities Speaker Series is co-sponsored by IATH, SHANTI, and the Scholars’ Lab.

Speaker Series: Dr. Alan Liu

4Humanities: Values, Strategies, Technologies for Humanities Advocacy in the Digital Age

Alan Liu will present an informal talk exploring such issues as assessing values and narrative frames for communicating the worth of the humanities. He will also brainstorm next-generation methods for using digital/networked technologies to create material for public view of scholars’ normal research and teaching work.
Alan Liu
Professor, Department of English
UC Santa Barbara
Wednesday, April 17 at 3:00pm
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

Graduate Fellows Forum: David Flaherty

Mapping the British Vision of Empire in 1731

The British Board of Trade, a bureaucratic body responsible for overseeing the 18th-century Atlantic colonies, had a broad geographic vision of the British Atlantic based on their extensive communication with colonies from Newfoundland to Honduras. David Flaherty’s project maps the Board’s correspondence for a single year, showing which points on the map it received information about and where those letters came from, in an attempt to illustrate that vision.
Lunch will be served.
Thursday, April 25 at Noon
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

Graduate Fellows Forum: Lydia Rodríguez

The Time Has Come: Ethnography, Gesture Research, and Digital Technology

In this presentation Lydia Rodríguez analyzes the relationship among linguistic, conceptual, and cultural notions of time through ethnographic observation of spoken interactions in Chol, a Maya language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico, describing how the concept of time is depicted by spontaneous gestures in conversational exchanges. She also discusses the role that digital technology has played in collection and analysis of her data.
Lunch will be served.
Thursday, May 9 at Noon
in Alderman Library, Room 421.

Reunions GIS Workshop

Mapping Yourself

Curious about GPS, Google mapping, and how you can be part of the fun? Join Chris Gist and Kelly Johnston of the U.Va. Scholars’ Lab for an introduction to the magic of GPS and Google mapping. You will leave with the tools to communicate with satellites 12,000 miles overhead, make your own maps, and selectively share your cartographic masterpieces with the world.
Friday, June 7 at 11:00am
in Alderman Library, Room 421

Speaker Series Brown Bag: Dr. James Smithies

The UC CEISMIC Digital Archive: Co-ordinating Libraries, Museums, Archives, Individuals and Government Agencies in a Disaster Management Context

Smithies’ talk will describe the current state of the CEISMIC digital archive, created to preserve the content being produced as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes that devastated the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, and will explain how Paul Millar and James Smithies used methods inspired by the digital humanities community to achieve their goals for the project.
Drinks and cookies provided. Please bring your lunch!
James Smithies
Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Monday, July 22 at Noon
in the Scholars’ Lab, Alderman Library, 4th Floor.

Digital Research & Scholarship in the Library

The Scholars’ Lab caters to the research, digitization, and online editing needs of faculty and students in the humanities and social sciences. Staffed with friendly, expert consultants from U.Va. Library’s Digital Research and Scholarship unit and ITS’s Research Computing Support Group, the Scholars’ Lab can take your digital scholarship to the next level.

The Scholars’ Lab is a place where you can explore digital resources, get expert help, and collaborate in innovative digital research projects. We also host exciting events, such as workshops, talks, and roundtables, and we sponsor a graduate student fellowship in digital humanities, as well as the Praxis Program which realigns graduate methodological training with the demands of the humanities in the digital age.