ULS/School of Computing and Information Digital Scholarship Workshop & Lecture Series

2017 Speaker Schedule

Fall 2017 Speaker Schedule

Friday, September 8, 2017

Introduction to Tableau Public

Presented by Boris Michev, Liaison Librarian, Social Sciences, Maps & Urban Studies, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Digital Scholarship Commons, G-49, Hillman Library

Tableau Public is a free data visualization tool. It requires no plug-ins and no API. You can create interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables from virtually any data. The tool includes a free desktop product that you can download and use to publish interactive data visualizations to the web. You need to create an account (free) in order to be able to download Tableau and save your work. Laptops are required.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Introduction to Network Analysis and Visualization

Presented by Ryan Horne, Digital World History Postdoctoral Fellow, World History Center

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Networks -- graphs that relate elements (nodes) with properties (edges) -- have applications in many disciplines, from business to biology, from physics to literary studies; social network analysis is one high-profile application. This workshop will introduce the basics of working with networks, including some of common methods of analysis and tools for visualization.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Basic Python Through Jupyter

Presented by Barry Moore, Assistant Research Professor, Center for Research Computing

10:00 a.m. – Noon
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Python is an interpreted programming language that is very easy for beginners to learn. Additionally, many tools already exist which allow you to do complicated tasks concisely and effectively. In this workshop participants will use Jupyter Hub, an interactive interpreter, to run Python code on the Center for Research Computing resources. Participants will learn basic Python syntax and powerful packages to explore their data through guided examples.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Documenting Reproducible Research with Jupyter Notebooks

Presented by Matt Burton, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

This workshop will introduce Jupyter Notebooks, a platform for interactive computational research and data science. Jupyter Notebooks interweave code, data, and prose into an executable "notebook" that can be published or shared. Jupyter Notebooks are also a powerful tool for teaching programming, data science, and computational literacy. This workshop introduces participants to the Jupyter project (https://jupyter.org/), how to author Notebooks, and how to publish and share them on Github.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Creating Timelines with TimelinesJS

Presented by Clare Withers, Liaison Librarian, University Library System

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Timeline JS is an easy-to-use, open-source, adaptable tool for creating interactive timelines. Designed by Northwestern University Knight Lab, Timeline JS lets you use media from lots of sources, including Flickr, YouTube, GoogleMaps, Wikipedia, and Twitter. Come see examples of TimelineJS in action and get started with your own project! This session is the first of three workshops on Knight Lab tools.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Securing your Information: Privacy and Encryption Online

Presented by Sarah Hackney, Doctoral Student, School of Information Sciences

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Thinking about protecting your information through privacy and encryption tools is important for individual data, academic research, and for the continued freedom of expression in online communities. This workshop will discuss some tools and first steps that individuals can take to protect themselves online, as well as ways that the library can support the data privacy of its patrons and their research data. No previous experience with encryption or security tools is required.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Creating Visual Narratives with StoryMapJS

Presented by Nora Mattern, Postdoctoral researcher, University Library System, and Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

StoryMapJS is a free, user-friendly tool for creating visual stories using a map or large image to trace events and their locations. Participants will see examples of StoryMapJS in action and have hands on time for experimentation with their own narratives. This is the second session in the 3-part series overviewing tools by Northwestern University’s Knight Lab.

Friday, October 13, 2017

What is Your h-index and Other Measures of Academic Impact

Presented by Berenika Webster, Coordinator of Strategic Assessment, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

This practical workshop is designed to familiarize participants with quantitative indicators of research impact. Citation counts presented in context can provide a wealth of information about the academic impact of research publications which can be used in job applications, promotion documents or grant applications.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Finding and Evaluating Spatial Data

Presented by Jessica Benner (PhD LIS ’17)

10:00 a.m. – Noon
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Spatial data are data that include location information (usually a set of geographic coordinates) in addition to a set of attributes that describe phenomena at that location. Spatial data is generated by governmental agencies, private companies, academics, and the crowd. In fact, many people interact with and use spatial data to solve problems of biodiversity, or natural resource extraction, and to understand demographics, land use patterns, or historical trends, among many other projects. In the first half of the workshop, you will learn about spatial data infrastructure initiatives, geospatial data clearinghouses, and the differences between raster and vector spatial data. In the second half, we will practice evaluating some spatial datasets in relation to a specific research project that requires spatial data.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Introduction to Social Explorer

Presented by Boris Michev, Liaison Librarian, Social Sciences, Maps & Urban Studies, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Online research tool designed to provide quick and easy access to modern and historical census data and demographic information. Access current and historical demographic data, create reports and download data in convenient formats. Create maps and reports to help visually analyze and understand demography and social change throughout history. Site currently includes data from the entire US Census from 1790 to 2010, the 5-year, 3-year, and 1-year estimates from the American Community Survey to 2011, the Religious Congregations and Membership Study from 1980 to 2010.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Illustrating Change with JuxtaposeJS

Presented by Nora Mattern, Postdoctoral researcher, University Library System, and Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
G-49. Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

JuxtaposeJS is a tool that allows users to illustrate change by contrasting two pieces of media. Tell “before and after” stories with this simple to use tool. The session will include work time with JuxtaposeJS, part of the Knight Lab’s suite of storytelling tools. This is the final session in a 3-part series overviewing the Knight Lab tools and participants can get assistance with TimelineJS and StoryMapJS during the work time as well.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Bibliometrics, Altmetrics, and Social Networks to Support Your Research Career Development

Presented by Berenika Webster, Coordinator of Strategic Assessment, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

This session is designed to provide early to mid-career researchers with an introduction to tools and tips on how to present impact of research outputs. The session will introduce new tools designed to help researchers manage their scholarly visibility and reputation and approaches to presenting impact of research outputs using citations and other quantitative measures of impact. We will discuss indicators of impact such as the h-index, the impact factor and normalized citation counts for use by individual researchers who want to use quantitative measures to demonstrate impact of their publications. This workshop is designed for early and mid-career researchers interested in understanding how they can use bibliometric indicators to measure the impact of their published outputs.

Friday, November 3, 2017

Creating Online Digital Collections with Omeka

Presented by Nora Mattern, Postdoctoral researcher, University Library System, and Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information; Arif Jamal, Liaison Librarian, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

This workshop will introduce participants to Omeka.net, a free, web-based tool that can be used to organize, describe, tell stories with, and share digital collections. Through hands-on exercises, we will navigate and explore the capabilities of Omeka.net. We encourage you to bring your own digital materials to play with during the session and to learn how you might curate them with Omeka!

Friday, November 10, 2017

Thinking Through Digital Humanities Projects: Labor, Community, and Networks

Presented by Kate Joranson, Head, Frick Fine Arts Library, University Library System; Robin Kear, Liaison Librarian, University Library System

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Understanding the complexities of collaboration is key to the success of Digital Humanities projects. DH project work reveals the challenges and possibilities of partnerships forged among librarians, faculty, staff, and students. Robin Kear and Kate Joranson will share examples of librarians and faculty reflecting on these dynamics, drawn from their forthcoming edited book, Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships. They will facilitate a discussion of issues such as labor equity, community engagement, and building project networks. Please join this discussion of how digital humanities is rich territory for exploring the role of collaboration in higher education.

Friday, November 17, 2017

An Introduction to Twine

Presented by Chelsea Gunn and Aisling Quigley, Doctoral Students, School of Computing and Information

1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
G-49, Digital Scholarship Commons, Hillman Library

Are you interested in learning how to create more dynamic and engaging presentations? Twine is a free, open-source tool that can be used for telling interactive stories, modeling processes, and designing games. In this workshop, we will explore some of the ways Twine can also be used for teaching and presenting research. We’ll begin with an introduction to the tool and some examples of how it has been used, and then spend some time on hands-on experimentation. Twine supports the use of CSS and publishes directly to HTML, but no prior experience with markup or code is necessary for this workshop.

Spring 2017 Speaker Schedule

Friday, March 17

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Berenika Webster, Coordinator of Strategic Assessment, University Library System

Maximize your research potential: learn to identify star collaborators and research opportunities with SciVal

Today’s research landscape is more competitive than never, with many researchers vying for resources and recognition. It is critical for early-career researchers to develop a good understanding of the landscape of their research field: current trends, leading institutions and researchers, collaboration opportunities and impact.

This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to SciVal, a publication and citation analysis tool which analyses tens of millions of research publications to illustrate the current state of disciplines. Researchers will learn how to identify leaders in their field and how to find potential collaborators and research partners. Find out more about SciVal at http://www.library.pitt.edu/bibliometric-services.

Friday, March 3

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Jessica Benner, Doctoral Candidate, School of Information Sciences

Understanding and Practicing Map Literacy

Everyday we interact with visualizations of space, aka maps. How we interact with a map is determined by many factors. Who made it? What is it trying to convey? Where did the underlying data come from? We ask these and more questions, often unconsciously, as we decide whether a map contains the information we seek. This workshop will begin with a brief history of the map, introduce the concept of map literacy and finish with participants interacting with a series of digital and paper maps using the information they obtained during the first part of the session.

Friday, February 24

1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Lauren Collister, Scholarly Communications Librarian, University Library System

Editing Wikipedia for Beginners

This workshop will cover the basics of editing Wikipedia to improve one of the world’s most popular information resources. Learn how to use the Visual Editor to update content, add references, connect articles to each other, and more. After a brief training, participants will engage in editing Wikipedia as part of the ongoingPittsburgh Wikipedia Redd-up-a-thon event series or on pages of their choosing. Attendees are strongly encouraged to create a Wikipedia user account prior to the start of the workshop.

Friday, February 17

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Na-Rae Han, Director, Robert Henderson Language Media Center and Lecturer, Department of Linguistics

Basic Text Processing with Python

What can you do with a piece of text? The very first steps in processing a text file would involve (1) reading it in, (2) tokenizing the text string into a list of words, and (3) compiling and exploring word frequency counts. With a beginner-friendly programming language like Python, it is possible to learn to accomplish these tasks in a short period of time. In this workshop, we will try them out using Python and NLTK (Natural Language ToolKit), a popular Python module. Knowledge of neither will be assumed.

Friday, February 10

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Chelsea Gunn and Aisling Quigley, Doctoral Students, School of Information Sciences

Hypothes.is Web Annotation

Hypothes.is is a web annotation tool that can be used to highlight, annotate and edit online documents, and export data. This workshop will teach participants the basics of web annotation with the Hypothes.is Chrome extension, as well as how to create private groups, and how to use Hypothes.is as a teaching tool.

Friday, February 3

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Kate Joranson, Interim Head, Frick Fine Arts Library, ULS; Kiana Jones, Visiting Fine Arts Librarian, ULS; Nora Mattern, Postdoctoral Researcher, ULS and School of Information Sciences

Multimedia Digital Narratives

Digital tools have introduced new modes for telling research stories, enabling people to work outside of the more traditional structure of the essay, connecting text with timelines, maps, videos, and other visual material. This workshop provides participants a space for exploring digital writing tools for creating collaborative, non-linear, and multimodal scholarship. We will explore multiple tools for generating maps, timelines, and image collections, as well as introduce Scalar, a free authoring and publishing platform that allows users to bring together their writing and imported media. We will look at examples of Scalar projects and experiment with its functionalities through hands-on play.

Friday, January 27

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Matt Lavin, Clinical Assistant Professor of English and Director, Digital Media Lab

Digital Humanities Approaches to Text Analysis

Computational text analysis is widely regarded as the most established subfield of digital humanities. Integrating large-scale information gathering, data analysis, and visualization techniques into a dissertation, scholarly article, or book project—even if done sparingly—can have tremendous benefits. The pathway to integrating these tools, however, can be daunting. This interactive session will focus on well-established methods and exciting new approaches to text analysis, as well as common pathways for skills acquisition and project development. No experience with computer programming or code is needed, as this workshop will focus on surveying approaches and establishing common strategies for implementation. Participants are encouraged to come with a brief description of a project or research question that might benefit from a computational text analysis component.

Friday, January 20

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

Matt Burton, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences

Introduction to Data Visualization with Tableau

Tableau is a data visualization tool that is being used to help analyze data and illustrate the patterns and insights behind them. This interactive workshop will introduce researchers or students to Tableau Public, a free access version of Tableau. Laptops are required; if necessary it may be possible to check out a laptop from Hillman's lending desk (come early).

Friday, January 13

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m
Hillman Library, Ground Floor — Amy E. Knapp Room

S.E. Hackney, Doctoral Student, School of Information Sciences

Securing Your Information: Privacy and Encryption Online