Digital scholarship at Walker Library is interdisciplinary, collaborative, and committed. As a method, it emphasizes the use of interactive technologies to expand the participation, modes of access, diversity of analysis, and the dissemination, and preservation of scholarship. The frequently used term, digital humanities (DH), is a subset of digital scholarship (DS)--the larger umbrella of all scholarship including the arts, sciences, and everything between.

Specific examples include but are not limited to:

• Metadata, descriptive records that aid in the indexing and discovery of digital collections

• Open access publishing through library hosted journal software for peer-reviewed journals and open educational resources (OER)

• Institutional repository (JEWLScholar) that promotes, highlights and indexes scholarship of campus (including peer-reviewed articles, department newsletters, theses, dissertations, conference proceedings, OER, etc)

Earlier in spring-summer 2020, the Digital Seed Grant Committee was excited to receive applications for its fourth year of awarding Digital Seed Grants. The proposals received were of high quality despite the turn of events with COVID-19 and although these challenges continue, the Walker Library is committed to keeping the library’s charge of accelerating teaching and research with digital technologies and methodologies.  One way the library does this is by funding seed grants.

The Digital Seed Grant Committee commends all the applicants on their proposed research or teaching projects. We are pleased to announce the 2020-2021 winners in no particular order:

Project: Hidden Town in 3D Website

Led by Dr. Molly Taylor-Poleskey, MTSU Department of History

Project runs January 19, 2021 through January 18, 2022

Project: Studio Art Teaching Resources

Led by Professor Mark Mcleod, MTSU Department of Art and Design

Project runs September 1, 2020 through December 9, 2021

Introduction to NVivo Workshop

UPDATE 3/12/20: THIS WORKSHOP HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

Have you begun conducting qualitative research, but are finding it difficult to keep your data organized? Would you like a better way to manage data analysis? If so, come learn the basics of NVivo 12, a software tool designed for the collection and analysis of qualitative data sources. This overview will showcase some of NVivo’s functionality by using examples using NVivo’s preloaded sample dataset, as well as real-life data sets from Dr. Reed’s research.

Session topics:

• Navigating the NVivo Workspace
• Uploading and linking different data sources
• Structuring of data to facilitate coding
• Basic coding and analysis of text sources

Scholarly Publishing and Open Access Workshop • Tuesday, March 3, 2020, 11:30am-12:20pm

Do you need to produce a peer-reviewed journal article? Come jump-start your scholarly writing with this presentation emphasizing the Open Access movement. Participants will receive instruction on the evolution of the scholarly publishing model as well as an overview of author publishing concerns. In addition to lecture time, the session will include hands-on activities in which participants will create an individualized, multistep action plan for turning one’s research into a submitted article.

Session topics:

• Overview of scholarly communication
• Introduction to the Open Access movement       
• Using library resources to locate possible journals in one’s field
• Understanding author publishing agreements
• Production of an individual action plan

The Digital Seed Grant (dsi.mtsu.edu/dsgrant) had an impressive amount of applications for its second year (award period 2018-2019), which initially launched in 2016 for the award period of 2017-2018. Due to the quantity and quality of proposals, the Digital Seed Grant Review Committee and Dean of Libraries decided to award two grants for the 2018-2019 academic year. The awardees were announced on the website at https://dsi.mtsu.edu/dsgrant18-19.

The Digital Seed Grant had an impressive amount of applications for its third year. The proposals received were of high quality and diverse in scope. The Digital Seed Grant Committee commends all the applicants on their proposed research or teaching projects.

Due to the quantity and quality of proposals, the Digital Seed Grant Review Committee and Dean of Libraries decided to award one grant for the 2019-2020 year.

Project: Use of Spectral Interpretation and Database Resources

Led by Dr. Ngee-Sing Chong, MTSU Department of Chemistry