2016-2017
Demystifying Digital Scholarship
1: Introduction to Digital Scholarship
Friday September 9 / 1:00-3:00 / slide deck
This workshop introduces participants to the interdisciplinary and multi-modal sphere of digital scholarship. We’ll explore digital scholarship through concrete project examples and we’ll discuss the many facets of digital scholarly research and dissemination. Instructor: Andrea Zeffiro
2: DH Techniques
Friday September 30 / 10:00-12:00
Visiting scholar, Micki Kaufman will lead a research methods workshop exploring a few of the many techniques and tools employed in DH research. The workshop is followed by Kaufman’s talk, “Everything on Paper Will be Used Against Me: Quantifying Kissinger” on September 30 at 2:30 at the Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship.
3: Open Everything
Thursday October 20 / slide deck
Open access, open source, open data, open science. The call for opening up scholarly research has been around for over a decade and shows signs of reaching a tipping point. We’ll define these concepts precisely and cover ways to meet various mandates and practices emerging from funding agencies and institutions. Not least, we will explore how openness can directly benefit an individual researcher. Instructor: Dale Askey
4: The Command Line
Thursday November 3 / slide deck
This workshop will introduce the possibilities of the command-line both for single commands and as a tool to be utilized within more complex programs and scripts. No previous experience required. Instructors: John Fink, Matthew Davis and Matt McCollow
5: Visualization
Thursday, November 17 / slide deck
This workshop will have two elements. First, it will briefly introduce some tools and techniques for physically modelling material objects digitally. Second, it will introduce some possibilities for refining existing data in order to create visually useful charts and graphs, as well as discuss ways in which visualizations should be critiqued. No previous experience required. Instructor: Matthew Davis
6: Knowledge Exchange
Friday January 13 / 2:00 to 4:00 / slide deck
Please join us for our sixth installment of the Demystifying Digital Scholarship series, as we explore Knowledge Exchange (KE). In this workshop we will look at why and how to make your research more accessible and relevant. We will introduce KE tools and activities, including: accessible summaries, knowledge synthesis, social media, collaboration, open data and open access. McMaster KE specialists will help you develop a Knowledge Exchange Plan that will make your grant application more competitive and help you turn your research into action. Instructors: Ailsa Fullwood, Gabriela Mircea, Grace Pollock
7: Building datasets with social media
Friday January 27 / 1:00 to 3:00
This workshop will introduce participants to datasets, tools, and applications related to social media research. No prior experience with datasets is required. Please bring a laptop. Instructors: John Fink and Matthew Davis
8: GIS
Friday February 10 / 1:30-4:00 / slide deck
For many digital scholarship researchers, being able to investigate and visualize the spatial nature of their information provides them with important insights and dissemination opportunities. In this introductory workshop, participants will work with open source software to learn about Geographic Information Systems (GIS), geospatial data and map design principles— fundamental skills and knowledge that can be applied to their own research. This workshop will be held in the Wong e-Classroom, Mills L107. Instructor: Jay Brodeur
9: Unusual Resistances
Monday March 6 / 1:00 to 5:00
This workshop examines the property of electrical resistance. All electrical circuits have resistance and anything can be a resistor (though some things are better). In other words,resistance is necessary and everywhere. In this class you will consider how everyday items might be inserted in electronic circuits in unique ways to change the circuit behaviour. You will build a sound oscillator around a 555 timer chip, with standard parts. We will then find non-standard unusual resistances and add them in. Along the way you will be introduced to some specialized electronic test equipment: the digital multimeter. No prior experience with electronics or mathematics is necessary. Hosted by visiting artist Peter Flemming.
10: TEI
Thursday March 9 / slide deck
This workshop will introduce the basics of the Text Encoding Initiative’s XML-based schema for digitally encoding literary and linguistic texts. Beginning with the online archive as an example of one (but not the only) way that TEI can be useful to a scholar, it will then discuss the basic format of a TEI document and the associated Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XPath formats. It will also consider different methods for encoding manuscripts and printed works before concluding with hands-on work in encoding texts provided by the workshop participants. Instructor: Matthew Davis
11: 3D Printing
Friday March 24 / 10:30 to 12:30
Contrary to some overly optimistic reports, 3D printers are touchy and quirky machines, more prone to failure than fun. In this session we will show the basics of creating a print job, getting it to the printer, and avoiding the most common pitfalls. Instructors: Dale Askey and John Fink
12: Digital History and Web Scraping
Wednesday April 19 / 10:00 to 12:00 / https://ianmilligan.ca/mcmaster/
There are so many exciting sources online – but how to find them? This workshop takes attendees through the process of finding sources online, both based on the Web as well as in social media, before briefly discussing various ways to preserve and analyze this material. Most of the class can be done in the web browser, as we explore various source repositories and several web-browser based tools (notably import.io, webrecorder.io), repositories (from Zenodo.org to GitHub.org), the Doc Now web tool for Twitter collection, and analysis tools. Lead by Ian Milligan, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Waterloo. Participants are asked to bring a laptop, if possible.