That was the topic of conversation at the latest Mellon Funded Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) held at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) between October 22^nd-October 23^rd,2012. MATRIX Associate Director Ethan Watrall was invited to attend this institute, which focused on discussing what skills and pedagogical needs graduate students in the humanities will require to succeed in the digital age— as well as how traditional and digital humanities centers can intervene effectively in the transmittal of those skills and pedagogical processes to best prepare graduate students for traditional and alternative academic careers.

Dr. Watrall was part of a select group of invited attendees which comprised of directors and associate directors of various digital humanities and traditional humanities centers, along with deans and department chairs. Among the initiatives and programs central to the discussion was the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative Grad Fellowship Program and the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool, both of which are directed by Watrall.

To learn more about the Scholarly Communication Institute, or to read about upcoming and past institutes, visit their website. Or, to view the survey results that informed and prompted this institute, view Karina Rogers’ SCI presentation on the perceptions of career preparation in humanities graduate programs.

MATRIX’s Assistant Director Ethan Watrall has been invited to give a talk at the prestigious Microsoft Faculty Summit. He traveled to Redmond, Washington on Monday, July 16^th to participate in the two day conference and exhibition.

Watrall is speaking in a session organized by Donald Brinkman, manager of external programs in digital humanities, digital heritage, and games for learning at Microsoft Research. The session is entitled “Big Heritage, Big Quilts, and Big Canvasses” and also features Anne Balsamo— director of the AIDS Memorial Quilt— and Andries van Dam— a leader in pen-and-touch computing research from Brown University.

Watrall’s talk is entitled “Big Data, Small Stories: Community, Collaboration, and User Experience in the Age of Digital Cultural Heritage.” He frames his talk in the context of two MATRIX projects: the Quilt Index and Slave Biographies. The Quilt Index collects metadata about quilts and quilt ephemera from all around the world and the Slave Biographies project organizes information on individual slaves that were bought and sold in the Atlantic region.

In his lecture, Watrall plans to show how big datasets can, and should, be used to tell personal stories. He argues that, more often than not, large databases are used solely for the purposes of seeing large trends and patterns. This leaves out the equally important task of telling individual narratives and biographies. This dual purpose has been exemplified by both the Quilt Index in their attempt to preserve quilt stories and the Slave Biographies database in its attempt to create individual slave profiles.

His talk will also explore how large databases can be a source of community building and collaboration. Both the Quilt Index and the Slave Biographies projects exist because of high levels of collaboration and data sharing between various scholars, museums, public institutions, and individuals. Watrall will demonstrate how these shared repositories can create a sense of community and belonging between previously disparate people and organizations.

Finally, Watrall will demonstrate how large databases can be translated into multi-modal, user-centered interfaces. In particular, he will talk about the Quilt Index’s development of an iPhone application that serves selected quilt data to an individual’s mobile device.

The Microsoft Faculty Summit attempts to serve as a bridge between Microsoft’s technology experts and the academy with the purpose of exploring new opportunities and challenges in computer science research. In addition to Ethan Watrall, MATRIX director Dean Rehbergerhas also been asked to attend as an invited observer. To view a live stream of the conference, visit the Microsoft Faculty Summit website.

Matrix is pleased to report the recent presentation of “Podcasting the Past: Africa Past and Present and (South) African History in the Digital Age” by Peter Alegi, Michigan State University historian and co-host of the Matrix produced podcast Africa Past and Present. This presentation was part of the 23^rd biennial meeting of the Southern African Historical Society, which took place from June 27-29, 2011, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

 Reflecting on several years’ experience hosting Africa Past and Present, “Podcasting the Past” explores the role of podcasting in the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about Africa and South Africa in a global context.  Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, the paper examines technical aspects, issues of audience and access across the digital divide, podcasting as a new form of scholarly publishing, and the impact of podcasting on teaching about Africa. Africa Past and Present represents an unusual example of changing trends in the academic disciplines of history and area studies in the digital age; shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad, all seeking to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences. The paper concludes that podcasting can be a powerful technological tool with which to democratize knowledge, enrich classroom learning, and propel the “increasing incorporation of ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ within the new streams of academic and even popular discourse.” 

 Africa Past and Present is co-hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix. An online digital archive of all shows, as well as links to multimedia resources and collections of relevance to African experiences can be found at http://afripod.aodl.org/.

MATRIX developers participated for the second year this weekend at Lansing Give Camp, held at Impression 5 Science Center in Lansing, MI.  Give Camp is a great event put on to connect local web developers with non-profit groups who need assistance developing their websites and enhancing their ability to conduct various aspects of their daily operations.  In total over 100 developers participated with 13 non-profit groups.  A conservative estimate of over $100,000 of work was donated by the coders taking the time to give back.

The weekend was filled with coding with technologies for the MATRIX developers such as Ruby, HAML, CSS, and Sinatra, as well as development techniques such as test driven development and behavior driven development.  The developers were also exposed to GIT, a decentralized versioning control system that is very popular currently in the open source community.  Events such as this allow the developers at MATRIX to network with great people as well as learn new technologies that they can then apply in their daily work.  The group included Matt Geimer, CTO of MATRIX, and a special thanks goes out to the MATRIX developers who participated:

• Chelsea Carr
• Sarah Godoshian
• Lisa Kelly
• Cassi Miller
• Tim Miller
• Madalyn Parker

A very special thanks goes to the generous event sponsors and organizers as well – it wouldn’t be possible without them!  Thanks for the great swag and prizes that were offered up (and some wonderful dev tools were won by MATRIX folks)!

Michigan State University Museum announces a major event this fall: “Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry and a Symposium on Using Quilt History Collections,” to explore the connections between using collections in making or studying quilts.

The symposium is set for Oct. 8-10, 2010 in East Lansing, Mich., and is planned in conjunction with an exhibition that showcases examples of materials from the Cuesta Benberry Quilt History Collections that were recently acquired by the MSU Museum.

Scholars and creative artists use private and public collections of objects and archival materials to inform their work. What do they collect? Where do they find collections and how exactly do they use them? What do they do with the collections when they are done? How have they been inspired by collections? What obstacles do they encounter when building or using collections? These questions and more will be explored in the MSU Museum symposium.

“We were wonderfully surprised and honored that Cuesta Benberry’s collections have come to the Michigan State University Museum,” says Marsha MacDowell, MSU Museum curator and MSU professor of art and art history.  “Research-based collections like hers are critical to still under-studied but important aspects of quilt history and of African American art and cultural history. We know that this collection of primary materials will enable scholars here on campus and around the world to benefit from Cuesta’s trail-blazing work and to carry it forward. Her collections and others held at the MSU Museum allow us also to examine the importance of building and using collections in creative, scholarly, and educational ways,” she adds.

To download the symposium brochure and to register by mail or online, go to:  http://museum.msu.edu/Events/cbsymposium/

On August 25, Lisa Schmidt, electronic records archivist at MATRIX, attended an e-forum presented by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Great Lakes Region and the State of Michigan at the Michigan Library and Historical Center in Lansing. Keynote speaker Kenneth Thibodeau, Ph.D.. director of the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) at NARA discussed challenges, lessons learned, opportunities and next steps for the ERA program. ERA is NARA’s strategic initiative to preserve and provide long-term access to the uniquely valuable electronic records of the US. Government, and to transition government-wide management of the lifecycle of all records into the realm of e-government. NARA representatives also presented on the agency’s e-records scheduling initiative and its e-records toolkit. In addition, Debra Gearhart, director of Michigan’s State Records Center, provided an overview of the state’s centralized document management system initiative.

Lisa Schmidt, electronic records archivist at MATRIX, participated in the Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual meeting in Austin, Texas, August 12-15. As part of the standing room only session “Building Sustainable Preservation Environments for Born-Digital Records: Three Case Studies,” Ms. Schmidt delivered a presentation entitled “A Sustainable Preservation Plan: The H-Net E-Mail Lists.” The presentation described the results of Schmidt’s research on the preservation of the H-Net e-mail lists, a project funded by NHPRC.

Held jointly with the Council of State Archivists and themed “Sustainable Archives,” the conference offered attendees opportunities in educational sessions, workshops, repository tours, section and roundtable meetings, special SAA business, social events, and networking. SAA is North America’s oldest and largest national archival professional association.

On July 17, Lisa Schmidt, electronic records archivist at MATRIX, attended “Managing the Digital University Desktop,” a Society of American Archivists (SAA) workshop held at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing. Duke University archivist Timothy D. Pyatt led the workshop, which focused on research results and subsequently developed electronic records training tools from the joint University of North Carolina-Duke University Managing the Digital University Desktop (MDUD) project. Practical strategies on training university employees how to manage e-mail and other electronic records were discussed, as well as general issues related to the management of active electronic records. Staff from the MSU Archives and other departments across campus attended, along with archivists and librarians from Wayne State University, Hope College, and the University of Illinois. This workshop was part of a series presented by the Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections in honor of its 40th anniversary.

Matthew Geimer, CTO at MATRIX, attended Google I/O 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Fransisco, CA.  The conference focused on many aspects of new technologies involving web development, as well as mobile application developlment and the Google APIs and toolkits available.  MATRIX is excited with the new features available in HTML 5 showcased at I/O 2009 as well as the many other products showcased.  The keynote speeches are available at the I/O 2009 website and many of the sessions are available on YouTube.