Digital Scholarship Unit

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/74746

The Digital Scholarship Unit (DSU) at the UTSC Library aligns with campus and institution-wide services, and national and international communities of practice to provide the UTSC community with access to digital scholarship services. In the library, we work with liaison librarians to provide consultation and development services for experimentation and co-curricular pedagogy and collaborate with Archives and Special Collections for the creation of our local digital collections.

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Now showing 1 - 19 of 19

Metadata Gadgetry for Contemporary Digital Collections
(2024-01-25) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Steinburg, Bennett
The U of T Scarborough Library Digital Scholarship Unit is responsible for diverse collections created in co-operation with Faculty and external partners with unique needs and backgrounds: from oral histories to post-custodial collections. A (very) small staff is tasked with coordinating description in multiple formats and languages as well as producing indices and interfaces that work for stakeholders, but also digital objects that can claim citizenship in the wider world of controlled information standards. This poster shares lessons learned and introduces the library’s open metadata documentation. We hope these resources and workflows can inform similar work happening in other libraries as well as foster practical discussions about describing and stewarding modern digital objects.
Natural Language Processing for Virtual Reference Analysis
(2022-03-15) Sharma, Ansh; Barrett, Kathryn; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta
Objective – Chat transcript analysis can illuminate user needs by identifying common question topics, but traditional hand coding methods for topic analysis are time-consuming and poorly suited to large datasets. The research team explored the viability of automatic and natural language processing (NLP) strategies to perform rapid topic analysis on a large dataset of transcripts from a consortial chat service. Methods – The research team developed a toolchain for data processing and analysis, which incorporated targeted searching for query terms using regular expressions and natural language processing using the Python spaCy library for automatic topic analysis. Processed data was exported to Tableau for visualization. Results were compared to hand-coded data to test the accuracy of conclusions. Results – The processed data provided insights about the volume of chats originating from each participating library, the proportion of chats answered by operator groups for each library, and the percentage of chats answered by different staff types. The data also captured the top referring URLs for the service, course codes and file extensions mentioned, and query hits. Natural language processing revealed that the most common topics were related to citation, subscription databases, and finding full-text articles, which aligns with common question types identified in hand-coded transcripts. Conclusion – Compared to hand coding, automatic and NLP processing approaches have benefits in terms of the volume of data that can be analyzed and the time frame required for analysis, but they come with a trade-off in accuracy, such as false hits. Therefore, computational approaches should be used to supplement traditional hand coding methods. As NLP becomes more accurate, approaches such as these may widen avenues of insight into virtual reference and patron needs.
Critical metadata practices in the institutional space: Exploring the potential for liberatory description at UTSC
(2021-04-19) Liu, Erin De-Xin; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta
This poster highlights UTSC's project to develop a ‘knowledge base' mobilising key theories and accessible resources on the topic of critical description. This knowledge base is designed to support students and cataloguers in efforts to undertake decolonial, anti-racist and liberatory metadata practices in caring for digital material.
The Learning in Neural Circuits Research Environment
(2015) Pham, Kim; Jiang, Lingling; Richards, Blake; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta
Learning In Neural Circuits (LINC) is a new repository and virtual research environment for the department of biological sciences research cluster at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. The system serves the Blake Richards neuroscience research lab, which is comprised of early career researchers (ECRs) who would benefit from training and practices in research data management. The repository is designed to institute best practices for research data management with this audience in mind as well as foster new insights by replacing traditional paper and spreadsheet based systems with a more complex relational metadata system and robust Solr index.
Taking Things Further with Islandora Context
(2019-06-19) Jordan, Mark; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
A look at various use-cases of Islandora Context in Islandora 7.x and a look at Drupal Context use-cases in Islandora 8.
Perspectives on Preservation Practices Using Islandora
(2019-06-19) Jordan, Mark; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
An overview of preservation tools in Islandora 7 and of new and developing tools for Islandora 8.
Islandora 8 and Beyond
(2019-06-17) Jordan, Mark; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
A look at the first release of Islandora 8 and continuing development roadmap for the next major version of Islandora, as well as Islandora's short, medium, and longterm version support plans.
Visualizing Fedora-managed TEI and MEI documents within Islandora
(2019-05-06) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Viglianti, Raffaele
The Early Modern Songscapes (EMS) project [1] represents a development partnership between the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Digital Scholarship Unit (DSU), the University of Maryland, and the University of South Carolina. Developers, librarians and faculty from both institutions have collaborated on an intermedia online platform designed to support the scholarly investigation of early modern English song. The first iteration of the platform, launched at the Early modern Songscapes Conference, held February 8-9, 2019 at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, serves Fedora-held Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) documents through a JavaScript viewer capable of being embedded within the Islandora digital asset management framework. The viewer presents versions of a song’s musical notation and textual underlay followed by the entire song text. This article reviews the status of this technology, and the process of developing an XML framework for TEI and MEI editions that would serve the requirements of all stakeholder technologies. Beyond the applicability of this technology in other digital scholarship contexts, the approach may serve others seeking methods for integrating technologies into Islandora or working across institutional development environments.
Supporting Digital Scholarship in Islandora CLAW: Linked Data Modeling for Humanities Data
(2018-06-06) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Rothman, Natalie; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Pham, Kim; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
The new version of Islandora, Islandora CLAW, combines the latest version of a Fedora repository with Drupal 8, brings notable benefits to those interested in creating custom Digital Scholarship Projects, including the ability to implement custom ontologies, provide highly-usable interfaces, and connect multiple records together in the graph structures supported by Linked Data. This sessions discusses the various aspects that are involved in developing a Linked Data driven application platform using Islandora CLAW for a local Digital Humanities project, touching upon the how the project was identified, how data was modelled and had to be structured to work with this technological framework, and the software development process to create the linked research data platform.
Working with the W3C Web Annotation Standards and Islandora
(2018-06-05) Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Pham, Kim; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
With the recent publication of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for annotations, annotation is now becoming a formally recognized and acknowledged activity on the web. It is now possible to annotate digital files on the web, persist annotations over time, group annotations by a resource, and discover annotations that are related by subject or content. The Digital Scholarship Unit developed the Web Annotations Utility Module that leverages W3C standards and libraries supporting those standards to allow for the production of annotations on different content types in the Islandora open-source repository ecosystem. This session will discuss the challenges and solutions in adopting and integrating the standards and various libraries into the islandora ecosystem and in handling the annotations as first class objects on the web.
Investing in open-source - community-level strategies for developing sustainable software
(2018-06-05) Pham, Kim; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Rahman, Irfan
This poster provides talking points on the approaches taken to maintain and develop sustainable open-source software. The team Digital Scholarship Unit at the University of Toronto Scarborough developed custom code to extend the support of audio and video oral histories in an Islandora repository, but at the same time implemented a number of strategies in order to ensure longevity and future sustainability of the software. These strategies will be discussed on three levels: on a local, technology department level, on an institutional level, and finally on a global level, applying to the broader open-source software community.
Towards Building Ontologies for Linked Open Data in the Tamil Context
(2017-08-26) Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran
Digital Scholarship Tools and Techniques
(2017-08-26) Pham, Kim
Annotation-based enrichment of Digital Objects using open-source frameworks
(2017-07-18) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Pham, Kim; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran
The W3C Web Annotation Data Model, Protocol, and Vocabulary unify approaches to annotations across the web, enabling their aggregation, discovery and persistence over time. In addition, new javascript libraries provide the ability for users to annotate multi-format content. In this paper, we describe how we have leveraged these developments to provide annotation features alongside Islandora’s existing preservation, access, and management capabilities. We also discuss our experience developing with the Web Annotation Model as an open web architecture standard, as well as our approach to integrating mature external annotation libraries. The resulting software (the Web Annotation Utility Module for Islandora) accommodates annotation across multiple formats. This solution can be used in various digital scholarship contexts.
IslandoraCon 2017: Islandora Oral Histories Solution Pack
(2017-05-17) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Pham, Kim; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
IslandoraCon 2017: Web Annotations in Islandora
(2017-05-17) Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Pham, Kim; Rahman, Irfan
TechKnowFile 2017 - The Digital Scholarship Unit
(2017-04-26) Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Rahman, Irfan; Pham, Kim; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta
An overview of the unit's activities presented at the TechKnowFile conference in April, 2017 at UTSC.
Supporting Oral Histories in Islandora
(2017-01-30) Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Pham, Kim; Stapelfeldt, Kirsta
Since 2014, the University of Toronto Scarborough Library’s Digital Scholarship Unit (DSU) has been working on an Islandora-based solution for creating and stewarding oral histories (the Oral Histories solution pack). Although regular updates regarding the status of this work have been presented at Open Repositories conferences, this is the first article to describe the goals and features associated with this codebase, as well as the roadmap for development. An Islandora-based approach is appropriate for addressing the challenges of Oral History, an interdisciplinary methodology with complex notions of authorship and audience that both brings a corresponding complexity of use cases and roots Oral Histories projects in the ever-emergent technical and preservation challenges associated with multimedia and born digital assets. By leveraging Islandora, those embarking on Oral Histories projects benefit from existing community-supported code. By writing and maintaining the Oral Histories solution pack, the library seeks to build on common ground for those supporting Oral Histories projects and encourage a sustainable solution and feature set.
Supporting the Web Annotation Framework in Islandora
(2017-03-07) Stapelfeldt, Kirsta; Pham, Kim; Ledchumykanthan, Natkeeran; Barnes, Marcus Emmanuel
The latest W3C specifications governing a Web Annotation Data Model, Vocabulary, and Protocol represent a step forward in work governing the interoperability of annotations. [1] The Digital Scholarship Unit at the University of Toronto Scarborough Library needs to support the work of scholars annotating large images and video/audio files. Unit developers Natkeeran Ledchumykanthan and Marcus Barnes have been developing an Islandora Utility module to provide a common approach for implementing the Web Annotation Data Model in an Islandora 7.x. Framework. The Web Annotation Utility Model uses a new content model and focuses initially on allowing users to author annotations in the OpenSeaDragon and Video.js viewers using open source annotation JavaScript libraries. This presentation will describe the development process and challenges of displaying and indexing annotations, as well as creating a module that interacts rationally with the other utility modules in an Islandora ecosystem. A priority is designing so as to ease the coming transition to Islandora using Fedora 4/Drupal 8.

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