Resources

The following is a list of resources available locally at The Graduate Center and elsewhere. It is non-exhaustive, and serves as a helpful guide for getting started. The list can continue to grow and change over the semester. If you have suggestions of resources that you think should be included here, email Lisa or Duncan.

In-person Workshops

GC Digital InitiativesGC Digital Fellows, the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program, the Mina Rees Library, the Teaching and Learning Center, Publics Lab, and the Futures Initiative all run workshops throughout the semester. Many of them are on topics related to digital tools that could be useful to you as you begin to formulate your proposals and projects. Check their websites periodically and register to participate. 

Consultations

The GC Digital Fellows provide consultations over Zoom. You can request a meeting by completing the consultation request form.  GC Digital Fellows will help you think through and solve your problem with you, help to develop your project proposal, and brainstorm with you on your project design.

Online Resources

Archival Encounters Group Library – We have created a public, group library using Zotero. The library includes links to readings that have been assigned in addition to many resources about archives, critical archive studies, textual editing, digital production, print history, and more. As you work through your projects, please feel free to draw on this collection. You may also add new resources to the library to share with the class. Want to learn more about how group libraries work with Zotero? Watch their tutorial: https://www.zotero.org/groups/

CUNY Academic Commons – We’re using this open source, CUNY-based platform for hosting the course website [https://remotearchives.commons.gc.cuny.edu/] and the class group (which includes the forum). You will want to set your settings for the group [http://cuny.is/group-archival-encounters] to “all email” which will allow you to receive emails when someone posts a discussion item to the forum. We will be using this feature in lieu of a class listserv. While the website is a public-facing display of course content, syllabi, calendars, and blog posts, the Archival Encounters group is designed for private sharing among the class. Public facing blog posts and writing assignments should be posted to the website. Internal discussion should be posted to the group forums. If you have questions, you can consult the Commons help desk or email Duncan or Lisa. 

DARC (Digital Archive Research Collective) Commons Group – You can join a CUNY Academic Commons group of students, staff, faculty, and librarians all interested in working with digital archives and collections. With technical platform use that spans Omeka to Drupal to WordPress to TEI, members of the group share best practices, lessons learned, tips, and tricks about how to develop, curate, interpret, and share digital collections. The group is open to all those with a CUNY Academic Commons account. 

DariahTeach – There are a wealth of resources about creating digital scholarly editions, especially using TEI, on this European Union site. For our purposes, there are two courses you may want to look at: Introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative and Creating Digital Scholarly Editions. Each course comes with supporting materials, video tutorials, and print resources. 

Introduction to Omeka Workshop – GC Digital Fellow Stefano Morello has written a wonderful introduction to Omeka workshop to help novice users learn how to start their first online archive using Omeka.net. Skills that you learn during this workshop will carry over if you would like to use other versions of Omeka. If you are interested in using Omeka, this workshop will be a useful place to begin experimenting with the platform. 

Omeka – Several versions of Omeka exist now, but Omeka is a tried and true platform for creating digital archives and exhibits of collections. Designed as a means for publishing collections, Omeka is designed with small collections in mind, but can scale up well. It follows Dublin Core Metadata standards, which is helpful if you would like your collections to become discoverable or potentially to be included in larger data aggregation projects such as the Digital Public Library of America. 

Tropy – How we do work in the archives has changed following the advent of the digital camera and the advances of the camera phone. Tropy helps researchers to organize their images, create metadata, and improves the efficiency of working with photos taken in the archive. The site has documentation, and on February 26th and 27th, the Graduate Center will be hosting “Train the Trainer” workshops on the use of Tropy for librarians, archivists, and graduate students. 

Zotero – If you have not already created a Zotero account, we strongly recommend that you do so. It is a citation management tool which will help you considerably with any bibliographic research and writing that you may do.