The iSchool and the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong are cohosting the workshop "Digital Scholarship Centers: Building Library Services for Data-Driven Scholarship" from November 28-30 at the University of Hong Kong. Illinois participants include Professor and Dean Allen Renear; Professor J. Stephen Downie, a member of the workshop's organizing committee; iSchool faculty affiliate Harriett Green and her colleagues Eleanor Dickson and Karen Hogenboom from the University Library; and iSchool alumni Nic Weber (PhD '15) from the University of Washington and Xiao Hu (PhD '10) from the University of Hong Kong.
At the three-day workshop, participants will discover how digital scholarship centers support academic research by bringing together hardware, software, and in-person expertise "to empower researchers with the tools, skills, and information resources to incorporate computational methods into their work." Lectures and hands-on labs will share practical strategies for supporting or partnering in digital scholarship. Topics will include text mining, analysis, and data visualization using the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC); spatial humanities; machine learning; data wrangling with OpenRefine; and publishing data on the web.
Downie is codirector of HTRC, a partnership between Indiana University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the HathiTrust. Established in 2011, HTRC develops cutting-edge software tools and cyberinfrastructure to enable advanced computational access to the growing digital record of human knowledge. "I'm thrilled to have the HTRC contribute its expertise to this workshop," Downie said. "It has been an amazing collaboration with colleagues in Hong Kong and Illinois as well as with some of our own alumni."
"This workshop is another example of how the iSchool at Illinois, working with partners from around the world such as the University of Hong Kong, continues to lead the way in exploring how libraries can provide the services needed by scholars applying advanced digital technology in research and education," said Dean Allen Renear, who gave the opening remarks.