Category: Week 7

It’s always nice to have another pair of eyes glance through the same words I have been staring at for the past 7 weeks, and to receive feedback from someone who has not been involved with the entire process of my project. From changing the order of my paragraphs to defining specific terms that previously lacked explanations, I have made several changes to my project in the past week. The most significant of these changes would probably be the ArcGIS map that I have been working on since the start of the program.

Janine and Luyang have been incredibly helpful in teaching me how to navigate the ArcGIS site, giving valuable suggestions on how I can present my data and helping me transform an idea in my head to an actual visualization. For the past week, I struggled to put 2 different layers on together on the same map without having it be confusing or too cluttered. When I explained my concerns to some Gettysburg students on our trip there, one of them showed me a slider/swipe layout on StoryMaps that could be embedded in my Cascade site. It turned out to be the perfect solution to my problem and after some experimentation, I finally got the map to look the way I imagined it to. I’m so thankful for the opportunities to talk and interact with digital scholarship summer fellows from various colleges. The exchange of ideas and feedback has been extremely valuable.

As we are nearing the end of the program, I am working on refining the content and presentation of my site based on the feedback I have received over the past week. It’s hard to believe it has already been 7 weeks since we met for our first session and I can’t wait to see everyone’s final sites this Friday.

What’s summer without road trips? On Monday, we took #dssrf17 on the road again, this time visiting our digital scholarship peers at Gettysburg College. We were inspired to start the DSSRF program after seeing librarians and students from Gettysburg and Lafayette present at last year’s Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference, so this was a perfect opportunity to get to know Gettysburg’s students and facilitators better. And I’m a Gettysburg alum (class of 1999), so any opportunity to visit my alma mater is welcome!

Working on the first round of elevator speeches.

In the morning session, we did a workshop on elevator speeches, led by Courtney and Clint Baugess, Research & Instruction Librarian at Gettysburg. This was a chance for the students to get to know each other and become familiar with each others’ projects. We went through two rounds of elevator speeches: one round was crafted as if students were talking to a senior level administrator, and the second was crafted to an audience of each student’s choosing. The elevator speech practice would definitely come in handy for our students later in the week (more on that in a bit).

For the afternoon session, we did two rounds of peer evaluations and project workshopping. Students worked in groups – one senior fellow from Gettysburg, one junior fellow from Gettysburg, and one of our students. The #dssrf17 crew have all been working together so closely over the last seven weeks that it can be difficult to step back from the projects and give concrete, constructive feedback. Having fresh sets of eyes on their projects was enormously helpful to our students, and I know they all came away with good feedback and suggestions for improvements that they could make to their work. Hopefully they were able to offer constructive feedback to the Gettysburg students as well.

Presenting projects to Param Bedi.

On Thursday, our students had an opportunity to meet with Param Bedi, Vice President of Library and Information Technology, for informal project presentations and discussion. Param has been a staunch supporter of DSSRF since we first started talking about creating this program, and this was a chance for him to see all the work the students have been doing over the last seven weeks. I’m sure Courtney and I have said this before, but it bears repeating: we’ve constantly been impressed with the levels of passion and knowledge that each of our students possess about their research topics, and Param was equally impressed with their work.

Next week is the final week of #dssrf17, and the students are working on fine-tuning their project sites for our final presentation session on July 21. It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached this point – it seems like just yesterday we were gathering for our first sessions and planning out projects! We can’t wait to see what the students finished products look like, and to share them with the larger community!

Bucknell’s #dssrf17 and Gettyburg’s #dssf17 at #dsgcmeet17