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Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio

Category: Iowa Research Online

Apr 25 2017

Saving Endangered Data: What Can Digital Humanists and Libraries Do?

Posted on April 25, 2017 by Sarah Bond

In a blog post last week, I addressed Endangered Data Week and the history of political parties hiding, removing, or altogether abolishing public access to government documents. However, my post wasn’t alone in trying to shed light on this serious issue. In schools, universities, libraries, and classrooms across the world, hundreds of concerned people came together to bring awareness to the issue of endangered and disappearing data. And while Endangered Data Week is now over, the threat is not. So this week, I teamed up with the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio to highlight some of the excellent work currently being done by digital humanists and to provide some advice on how to get involved.

The Adlocutio relief of the Plueti Traiani (Late 2nd c. CE). Now in the Curia Senatus in the Forum Romanum, Rome. Photo from Wikimedia but originally taken by Diane Favro (UCLA) for her “Death in Motion” article. It depicts debt records being burned.

First, I visited with Tom Keegan, Head of the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, and Matt Butler, the Studio’s Senior Developer, to discuss the services offered by university libraries to keep scholarly data safe. They stressed the import of digital institutional repositories in helping scholars to maintain their own data and make it accessible to others free of charge. The University of Iowa’s institutional repository, Iowa Research Online, houses an array of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate work. Librarians work closely with faculty, staff, and students to ensure these materials are properly archived and made available according to agreed upon standards. As I have pointed out before, non-university repositories like Academia.edu are for-profit and will indeed use your data in order to make them money.

Profit is a big factor to consider when thinking about where to put data. As Eric Kansa, founder of Open Context emphasized to me: “We need to maintain nonprofit (civil society) infrastructure to help maintain data (and backup internationally) during political crises. Organizations like the Internet Archive, and other libraries (including university libraries) are critical, because they have the expertise and infrastructure needed to maintain public records.” Kansa rightfully points out that libraries are integral to this fight, but notes that individuals need to know more about the vulnerability of data as well.

So, what do we do about all the government data (e.g. climate data) that is currently being pulled from government websites? This was just one question addressed by the group behind the formation of Endangered Data Week. Like most DH projects, EDW was forged by proactive academics who wanted to make a difference by using the biggest megaphone in the world: The Web. Michigan State University professor and digital humanist Brandon Locke, in collaboration with Jason A. Heppler, Bethany Nowviskie, and Wayne Graham, designed EDW on the model provided by Banned Books Week and Open Access Week. From there they brought the project to the Digital Library Federation‘s new interest group on Government Records Transparency/Accountability, directed by Rachel Mattson.

In order to find out more about this initiative and the problems they are addressing, I spoke to Bethany Nowviskie, Director of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) at CLIR and a Research Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, UVa. Prof. Nowviskie was kind enough to answer a number of questions I had about endangered data and how to get more involved in the fight to save it: 

SB: Who owns federal data? In other words, should data be available to us because we pay taxes and fund data-producing institutions like HUD? The EPA? Why is the Executive in control of so much of this open data? 

BN: Except where issues of personal privacy and cultural sensitivity are involved, data collected or produced by taxpayer-funded agencies of the federal government should be openly available to everyone. It’s a matter of transparency for the health of the republic — sunlight being, as they say, the best disinfectant — and of accountability of the government to its people. These are our datasets, and we should have the ability to analyze and build on them — using them to understand our world better, as it is, and to be able to *make it better.*

SB: How do we create a more centralized, non-profit infrastructure that can maintain data during political crises?

BN: Most pieces of our needed infrastructure are already in place. We call them libraries. The DLF will join a large number of allied groups in early May, convened by DataRefuge (our Endangered Data Week partner) and the Association of Research Libraries, to discuss a new “Libraries+ Network,” to take on exactly this issue: https://libraries.network/about/ Some questions that will motivate us: how can we create greater coherence among the many governmental, non-profit, and even commercial groups with longstanding commitments and expertise in particular areas of the data preservation enterprise? Might we re-energize and re-imagine something like the Federal Depository Library program for the digital age? What would it take for governmental agencies to implement data management plans for the full lifecycle of their information, just as researchers who receive federal funds are now typically required to do? 

SB: What can regular non-specialists do to contribute?

BN: This is one reason DLF jumped at the chance to support grassroots efforts to organize the first annual Endangered Data Week. The goals expressed and audiences implied in our capsule summary (“raising awareness of threats to publicly available data; exploring the power dynamics of data creation, sharing, and retention; and teaching ways to make endangered data more accessible and secure”) go far beyond the professional research data management and data stewardship community. Probably the most useful thing a non-specialist can do is to educate herself on the issues and represent the value of open data legislation and the advances in open government we saw under the Obama administration to her representatives. We also need to urge follow-through on past bipartisan commitments in this sphere, such as the OPEN Government Data Act: https://www.datacoalition.org/open-government-data-act/  

SB: Can you give some examples of digital projects or initiatives that depend on federal data to reveal racial inequity (e.g. redlining projects), bias, or certain dangers (e.g. lead poisoning)?

BN: Well, FOIA requests played an important role [in the Flint water crisis]— as they have done in Title IX enforcement on college campuses. In this sphere, I also think it’s worth mentioning that identical bills were recently introduced in both the House and Senate that would prohibit federal funds from being “used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.” [House Bill, Senate Bill]. They went nowhere, and were ostensibly meant to “protect local zoning decisions,” but *what is up with that?* This is the kind of thing that should energize non-specialist readers.

SB: How can we have trust in the integrity of datasets that have been given over to private institutions or saved by non-federal entities? In other words, who will hold the “control” copy (e.g. like a seed bank) that can assure us that datasets that have been saved were not then tampered with?

BN: So, there’s a huge professional community — many of them are DLF members or members of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance which we host — whose whole focus is on questions like this, and there are excellent protocols and procedures for ensuring data integrity. I’m not familiar enough with the ins and outs to give you a good quote, but it’s not a new problem, for sure, and methods for auditing and certifying digital repositories and verifying the integrity and security of the data within them are well established. As always, matters of policy, funding, and the professional development and nurturing of the communities who do the work are a bigger challenge than the technology!

Software developers at UC Berkeley (School of Information, South Hall) coding to crawl and archive federal databases (Photo via Eric Kansa).

Bethany’s comments above echo what others on campuses across the US are saying: data is a resource. Like water or electricity, access to it ought not be taken for granted. We must continue to be vigilant in the face of lazy and aggressive attitudes, alike. Libraries and library associations remain a big part of the fight to preserve this data, but all of us can play a part by being more aware, spreading the word, and getting involved in the movement.

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, Iowa Digital Library, Iowa Research Online, Publishing, Uncategorized
Mary Louise Smith and Louise Noun, Des Moines, Iowa, October 1, 1996. University of Iowa Libraries. Iowa Women's Archives.
Mar 08 2017

Celebrating Women in Iowa’s Past

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Connor Hood
Edna Griffin photographs. University of Iowa Libraries. Iowa Women's Archives.
Edna Griffin photographs. University of Iowa Libraries. Iowa Women’s Archives.

Today, in celebration of International Women’s Day, we reflect on the progress and many achievements that women, past and present, have made around the world. The origins of this day can be traced back to the early 1900s, marked by a strike for better working conditions for women in the garment industry.  While the strike didn’t take place in Iowa we’d like to spotlight a few Libraries-housed resources and collections which help to give a little more meaning to the day.

The Iowa Women’s Archives, established by Louise Noun and Mary Louise Smith in 1992 provide a trove of collections and work highlighting women at the University of Iowa and in the state. Some of the fascinating work included in this repository are the Edna Griffin Papers, which share a story through photographs, interviews, and newspaper clippings highlighting the life of this remarkable Iowan and civil rights activist. You can even transcribe her FBI file from 1948 to 1951 in DIY History.

"Queen of the campus" February 4, 1956. University of Iowa Libraries. University Archives
“Queen of the campus” February 4, 1956. University of Iowa Libraries. University Archives.

Another resource that connects the Iowa Women’s Archives with Iowa Research Online and the Iowa Digital Library is Scholarship@Iowa. Here you will find theses, dissertations, articles, and collections that present work related to fostering and promoting diversity. Spend a little time here and you might find yourself listening to an interview with Dora Martin Bailey, who in 1955 became the first African American student to be awarded Miss State University of Iowa.

Take a few moments to enjoy the rich history of women in Iowa, and remember that they have played an important role in shaping our past, present, and future.  Take time to appreciate these strides and to discover the ways they have positively impacted your life and the world around you.

Posted in Campus history, DIY History, Iowa Digital Library, Iowa Research Online
Feb 08 2017

A Lapse in Time, Similarity in Action

Posted on February 8, 2017February 9, 2017 by Connor Hood

This past week I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at the Englert Theatre featuring Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Cullors’ activism was, in part,  fueled by the final verdict of the State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman case.  The controversial trial ended with George Zimmerman being found not guilty on all counts of second degree murder for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. In response, Cullors and others took to social media, proclaiming: “let’s take these three words and let’s start a movement.” The Black Lives Matter movement continues to combat racial injustice and call for the implementation of increased accountability within law enforcement practices. Thoughout her talk, Cullors expressed the importance of organizing at local levels as a means of creating a national and global movement. Her call to action and to the lessons of the past reminded me of two particular instances in Iowa’s past, where bold men and women have spoken out against injustice.

Patrisse Cullors speaking at the Englert Theatre on February 6, 2017.
Patrisse Cullors speaking at the Englert Theatre on February 6, 2017.

In 1945, Charles and Ann Toney were refused service in Davenport, Iowa’s Colonial Fountain, a local ice cream parlor. The clerk, Dorothy Baxter, refused to serve them solely based on the color of their skin. Charles Toney, knowing this refusal was in violation of their civil rights, brought the case to court. Toney, a member of the local NAACP chapter, credited his activism to his mother who refused to sit in the segregated section of a movie theater in Clinton, Iowa, the town in which he grew up. After two trials and much deliberation, the court ruled in favor of the Toneys granting them the first ever victory for a civil rights case tried in Davenport. You can read more about the Toneys and their case in George William McDaniel’s, “Trying Iowa’s Civil Rights Act in Davenport: the Case of Charles and Ann Toney.”

Edna Griffin photographs. Iowa Women's Archives, University of Iowa Libraries.
Edna Griffin photographs. Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries.

In 1948, Edna Griffin, a black woman living in Des Moines, tested the boundaries of this legislation by walking into Katz Drug Store. Griffin, her daughter, and two black men sat down to order ice cream sundaes on a hot July day. Though the waitress took their orders, she returned to the table saying that her manager had told her not to serve them. Griffin, aware of her rights, took the case to trial.  Several community members infuriated, organized protests and boycotts directed at the discriminatory practices occurring at lunch counters across Des Moines. The case was eventually brought before the Iowa Supreme Court, and in 1949 a civil rights victory was won Griffin’s behalf in the State of Iowa vs. Katz proceeding. More details on Griffin’s story can be found in Noah Lawrence’s,”Since it is my right, I would like to have it: Edna Griffin and the Katz Drug Store Desegregation Movement.”

These stories are two of many archived in the Iowa Digital Library and the Iowa Women’s Archives, and they invite us to look back on our history and the role Iowans have played in defending civil liberties.

Posted in Events, Iowa Research Online
First Page New York Atlas
May 03 2016

When content goes viral: looking at the first 3 days of “Manly Health and Training”

Posted on May 3, 2016December 2, 2016 by Wendy Robertson

On Friday, the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (WWQR) published a previously unknown book-length work “Manly Health and Training,” by Walt Whitman, recently discovered by Zachary Turpin. (Read more about it in a previous post.) Minutes after it was published, The New York Times broke the story. (We couldn’t say anything until their story launched at about 10AM, and the editors carefully timed publication to be minutes before the announcement.) From that point forward, we watched as the downloads of the content climbed. And yes, for some of us, this included watching over the weekend because it was very exciting!

The use was obviously high for the journal itself, but the use for our entire repository was massively spiked by this publication; over 91% of the traffic on our entire repository was for Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. This illustrates the typical use of our site from April 1–May 2WWQR.

IRO use 1 April–2 May

 

While the other items in the journal issue did not receive nearly as much use as the Whitman work and the introduction about the work, they received far more use than would be typical. Compare the first 3 days of use for a book review, bibliography, and back matter in this issue with similar items in the previous issue since being published.

Downloads of current issue (29 April–1 May 2016)

Title Total
Whitman, Walt, Kinder Adams / Children of Adam; Iggy Pop, Alva Noto, and Tarwater, Leaves of Grass [review] 476
Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Winter/Spring 2016 277
Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, v. 33, nos. 3/4 340

 

Downloads of previous issue (31 Dec 2015–2 May 2016)

Title Total
Schmidgall, Gary. Containing Multitudes: Walt Whitman and the British Literary Tradition [review] 96
Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Fall 2015 109
Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, v. 33, no. 2 54

 

People all over the world downloaded this newly discovered Whitman work. The first image shows downloads of in Walt Whitman Quarterly Review vol 33 issue 3 during the first three days when “Manly Health and Training” was published.

 

This second map is interactive so you can see the counts by country. We will also periodically update this map with more recent data. [Update – The interactive map now shows the first 7 days of downloads.]

 

Most people who downloaded the content first went the journal or issue site (10,826 out of 18,234), so it is impossible to know what articles and posts resulted in the most downloads. The numbers below reflect the downloads that occurred when users were coming directly from another publication (i.e. a link to the PDF). I think these numbers are not included in the Google analytics counts because links directly to our PDFs do not appear in Google Analytics.

 

Downloads Referring Source
4226 The New York Times (includes mobile and app use)
965 Gawker (most coming when it was on its home page)
352 Google
349 Reddit
293 the Huffington Post
108 Helsingin Sonomat, a Finnish publication
75 total of two posts on Althouse (and this one)
22 Dave Draper’s fitness site
20 Iowa Now (The University of Iowa news)
20 Open Culture
19 MSN
14 The Press Citizen (our local newspaper)
11 Forbes

 

Google Analytics shows us what sites directed traffic to our site, but do not indicate if people downloaded content. Historically, most of the downloads on our site come from Google (and other search engines). During this 3 day period, traffic to WWQR was largely from all the news sources that had articles. People arrived at the specific issue or the WWQR site as a whole largely from links on referring sites (15,191). Only 584 (of the 22,387 total sessions) came via a search engine. It is unclear where 6,480 sessions originated as the links appear to be direct. This could be links from email, it might be people who have turned tracking off, or it may be people typing in the URL directly.

The top referring sites were:

Referring URL Total Sessions
nytimes.com + mobile.nytimes.com + app.nytimes.com 5602
bbc.com + bbc.co.uk 2876
npr.org 1532
pjmedia.com 1411
theguardian.com 1155
m.facebook.com + facebook.com + l.facebook.com 416
gawker.com 391
rawstory.com 344
boingboing.net 342
chron.com + m.chron.com + houstonchronicle.com 284
t.co [twitter] 135
newser.com + m.newser.com 124
whitmanarchive.org 70
time.com 51
cdn.ampproject.org 39
reddit.com 35
atlasobscura.com 27
nj.com 26
davedraper.com 24
grindtv.com 23
3quarksdaily.com 20

 

For more media coverage of the discovery and its publication, follow Stephanie Blalock on Twitter (@StephMBlalock), and for information about articles published in each new issue of WWQR, follow the journal (@WaltWhitmanQR) .

As more news sources pick up on this, we will post updates about the usage.

Posted in Iowa Research Online, Publishing
Apr 29 2016

The Discovery of “Manly Health and Training”: Walt Whitman’s Long-Lost Guide to Getting the Body You’ve Always Wanted

Posted on April 29, 2016December 2, 2016 by Stephanie Blalock
NewYorkAtlasAd
An announcement for Walt Whitman’s “Manly Health and Training,” published in The New York Atlas on September 12, 1858. Image Courtesy of The American Antiquarian Society.

In the third open-access issue of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (WWQR) Editor Ed Folsom and Managing Editor Stefan Schöberlein publish in full a newly discovered book-length work by the poet Walt Whitman entitled “Manly Health and Training.” Zachary Turpin, a PhD candidate in English at the University of Houston, recently discovered “Manly Health and Training,” a previously unknown thirteen-part journalistic series of 47,000 words that originally appeared in the New York Atlas in 1858. Turpin’s important find means that “Manly Health and Training” can now be republished and confidently attributed to Whitman for the first time since 1858. As Turpin points out in the detailed introduction that accompanies “Manly Health and Training” in WWQR, surviving issues of the Atlas are rare today, even on microfilm, and he used one of the few remaining reels containing the newspaper, currently held by the American Antiquarian Society, to find “Manly Health and Training.” The byline for each of the installments lists the author as “Mose Velsor of Brooklyn,” a pen name that Whitman was known to have used occasionally for newspaper articles, and some of the articles from the “Manly Health” series also correspond in subject matter and/or wording with selections from Whitman’s notes on health and the body. 

“Manly Health and Training,” which Turpin describes as a long lost “guide to living healthily in America,” stands as a remarkably significant new find. The articles promise to help fill in substantial gaps in the poet’s biography and to change the way we understand Whitman’s writings from this period. “Manly Health and Training” ran in the Atlas beginning on September 12, 1858, and ending the day after Christmas, December 26, 1858. This is approximately two years after the publication of the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856) by Fowler and Wells—a Brooklyn publishing firm known for their texts on phrenology and physiognomy—and two years before the much-expanded third edition of Leaves of Grass (1860) that saw the addition of the “Calamus” and “Enfans d’Adam” (“Children of Adam”) poems on homoerotic and heterosexual love, respectively. In addition to being published between these two volumes of Leaves of Grass, “Manly Health and Training” (1858) was printed at nearly the same time as Whitman is believed to have been working on a twelve-poem sequence about love between men that he titled “Live Oak, with Moss,” which would become the core of “Calamus.”

In order to create “Manly Love and Training,” according to Turpin, Whitman drew on a number of sources ranging from temperance periodicals to works on science and pseudoscience of the period. The series of articles are shaped by many identifiable aspects of nineteenth-century culture including such topics as phrenology, eugenics, male friendship, sports and sports figures, lecture and oratory, vegetarianism, and other social reform and self-help literature. The articles are remarkable, then, for their wide array of content, but they are equally surprising for what is largely absent: the topics of women’s bodies, health, and training. Such an absence, while perhaps not entirely unexpected, merits further investigation given that on September 16, 1888, Whitman told his friend Horace Traubel that women were among his “sturdiest defenders, upholders” and that Leaves of Grass was “essentially a woman’s book.”

FirstPage_NewYorkAtlas_half
The first installment of Walt Whitman’s “Manly Health and Training” on the front page of The New York Atlas on September 12, 1858. Image Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Turpin’s discovery of Whitman’s “Manly Health and Training” will certainly shed new light on the poet’s activities in the years following the publication of the articles and leading up to and continuing through the Civil War. If, for example, Whitman advocated a training program that involved exercise and a healthy diet, then why did he choose to spend so much of his time in 1859 and the early 1860s at Pfaff’s, a New York beer cellar and popular American Bohemian hangout, known for its coffee, lager beer, and wine selection, as well as its substantial food offerings? How does Whitman’s interest in leading American men toward sound, muscular, and virile bodies change the way we view Whitman’s seeming need to volunteer in the hospitals of the Civil War, where he would have seen first-hand the devastating injuries—the gaping wounds—in those very bodies he was seeking to guide toward a state of  “perfect health”? And what does Whitman’s insistence that the very act of reading is not a “half-sleep” but rather a “gymnast’s struggle” mean for us, as readers of his works, in light of “Manly Health and Training,” with its assessment of prize-fighting and advocacy of exercise?

With the publication of “Manly Health and Training” in WWQR, we can begin to answer these questions and, no doubt, to formulate many others. But Turpin’s find, 158 years after the original publication of Whitman’s articles, should also draw our attention to the fact that even when it comes to well-known authors like Whitman, much remains to be discovered. This is likely true, not just of Whitman, but of many other nineteenth-century writers when our research includes newspapers and magazines. Examining periodicals in print and digital forms, as well as archival research in general, has yielded significant finds in the field of Whitman Studies over the past several years. A new Whitman poem, as well as numerous reprints of his short fiction and reprints of his poetry in periodicals have come to light, and, recently, a letter Whitman wrote for a Civil War Soldier was discovered in the National Archives. Turpin’s find also serves to remind researchers that not all newspapers and magazines from the past are digitized, available, and easily searchable online. In fact, many periodicals are still available only on microfilm and/or in print form. The discoveries we make in the future, then, will depend a great deal on where we look and how we preserve and use archival material in all formats.

0061860BostonbyphotographStephenalonzoschoffcharles e feinberg collection library of congress whitmanarchive
Walt Whitman in 1860, Photographer: Stephen Alonzo Schoff, after an oil portrait by Charles W. Hine, Original Plate in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress, Image Courtesy of The Walt Whitman Archive

Finally, the publication of “Manly Health and Training” in its entirety in the current WWQR is a noteworthy feat in itself. In October 2015, during open-access week, WWQR, a University of Iowa journal and the international journal of record in Whitman Studies, made the transition from a print journal to an online only, open-access publication with the help and support of the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio at the University of Iowa Libraries. This online format, as the editors of the journal make clear in their foreword to the issue, has made possible the publication in full of Whitman’s “Manly Health and Training.” In the journal’s previous print version, printing costs and page limits would have necessitated the careful selection of only a few excerpts from this previously unknown text. One of the many benefits of offering a scholarly journal as an online and open-access resource is that this digital format opens up a range of publishing options and formats not possible in print alone. As a result, the editors can share this newly discovered piece of the poet’s writing with an ever-growing international body of Whitman readers who access his writings via an internet connection. In the future, “Manly Health and Training” will also be available on the Walt Whitman Archive. If, as Whitman wrote in his advertisement for “Manly Health and Training,” he intended this text “for the People,” he almost certainly would have approved. It is my hope that all readers of “Manly Health and Training” will actively engage and even struggle with this piece as Whitman recommended, since it remains for us–the readers–to investigate how Whitman came to write this piece, to trace the origins of these ideas, and to determine how we, in coming to this text some 158 years after its first publication, might make use of it in our own time and in our own ways.

 

Stephanie M. Blalock

Digital Humanities Librarian &

Associate Editor, Walt Whitman Archive 

University of Iowa Libraries

 

 

 

Posted in Digital Scholarship & Publishing, Iowa Research OnlineTagged " Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio, "Manly Health and Training, The Walt Whitman Archive, Walt Whitman
Mar 09 2016

Women, Scholarship, & DIY History

Posted on March 9, 2016March 29, 2017 by Tom Keegan

Earlier this week, the Studio launched Scholarship@Iowa, a curated set of pages promoting scholarly archives related to historically underrepresented groups. To introduce that initiative I wrote a blog post touting the merits of these archives and their ability to help us see ourselves as a part of longstanding tradition of excellence and discovery at the University of Iowa.

In that same spirit, this week we have released over 3,000 manuscript pages into a new and related DIY History collection called Scholarship at Iowa. The collection brings into public view 22 handwritten theses dating primarily from the nineteenth century. More than half of the theses were written by women and the topics are primarily scientific. These documents provide a fascinating window into the nature, scope, and aims of scholarship being carried out at the University by undergraduate and graduate students well over a hundred years ago. They also help tell the story of women within the scholarly enterprise at the UI.

While PDFs of the theses are posted in our institutional repository, Iowa Research Online (IRO), they’re not text searchable. That’s where DIY History comes in. By inviting the public help in the transcription of these materials, we aim to make them searchable. Completed transcriptions will be added to IRO to aid in the discoverability of the documents.

The Slime Moulds of Eastern Iowa
The Slime Moulds of Eastern Iowa, Minna P. Humphreys, 1891.
The Histology of the Common Frog, Rose B. Ankeny, 1887.
The Histology of the Common Frog, Rose B. Ankeny, 1887.

Among these theses you’ll find:

  • A brief description of nine species of Hepaticae found in the vicinity of Iowa City, 1886, by Mary F. Linder (B.S. ’86)
  • The Histology of the Common Frog, 1887, by Rose B. Ankeny (B.S. ’87, M.A. ’90)
  • Vegetable secretions and the means by which they are effected, 1888, by Kate L. Hudson (B.S. ’88)

    sunflower
    “And as the sunflower in/Some barren field/Lights up the waste with/Cheerful golden glow.” The Sunflower as a Type of Flowering Plants, Anne B. Jewett, 1890.
  • The Mosses of Iowa City and Vicinity, 1888, by Annette Slotterbec (B.S. ’88)
  • The sun flower as a type of flowering plants, 1890, by Anne B. Jewett (B.S. ’90)
  • The Fertilizing Cell, Its Varying Form and Behavior, 1890, by Nelly Peery (B.S. ’90, LL.B. ’93)
  • The Slime Moulds of Eastern Iowa, 1891, by Minna P. Humphreys (B.S. ’91)
  • Derivatives of hydroxylamine, 1892, by Agnes E. Otto (B.S. ’92)
  • Ophiuridae of the West Indies, 1893, by Leah May Gaymon (B. Ph. ’92 and M.A. ’95)
  • The terrestrial Adephaga of Iowa, including descriptions of all known species which occur in the state, with notes on their habits, distribution, synonymy, etc., part 1 & part 2, 1895,  by Fanny Thompson Wickham (B.S. ’90, M.S. ’95)
  • The ethical tendency of the English novel, 1897, by Helen M. Harney (B.Ph. ’90)
  • Previous legislative experience of United States senators, 1912, by Agnes Wallace Smith (B.A. ’11)

When I was introduced to this collection by my colleague Wendy Robertson, I was struck by its humanity. The calligraphy and design of the title pages, the detail of the illustrations, the idiosyncrasy of the handwriting. I had not expected the people who wrote these works to be so present in them. I expect that of handwritten letters, but (perhaps tellingly) I didn’t expect it of these (mostly) scientific theses. And looking over them, I was drawn back to my own time as a graduate student toiling away on a dissertation. I was reminded of how many of us come to see our work as both apart from us and as a part of us. I wondered how these writers (and artists!) felt as they toiled here on the thinning edge of the nineteenth century.

It’s not hard to hear the enthusiasm in lines like this one from undergraduate student Annette Slotterbec (B.S. ’88) in “The Mosses of Iowa City and Vicinity”:

In no tribe of plants is there so great a similarity between the different species. A simplicity and uniformity of structures runs through the entire family. The individuality of each species is revealed by the microscope, the stem, the leaves, the fruits, so alike they appear in their structure and their flaws, so unalike in their development.

Screen Shot 2016-03-08 at 9.59.58 PM
Plate I. “Sphagnum cuspidatum. Ehrh. a. The plant natural size; b. The stem with stem leaves.” The Mosses of Iowa City and Vicinity by Annette Slotterbec, 1888.

Elsewhere she notes a “beauty of form and ingenuity of structure as though [the mossses] were the mightiest monarchs of the forest.” The buoyancy there is infectious. Who was this enthusiastic undergraduate writing gleefully about mosses here on the cusp of her Bachelor of Science? What did she want for herself and her scholarship in 1888 looking forward to a coming century?

I found myself captivated by the same curiosity that has made Iowa Digital Engagement and Learning’s Archives Alive project so successful. Last year, my colleague Kelly McElroy (now a Student Engagement and Community Outreach librarian at Oregon State University) and I wrote an article on the merits of connecting students with history in this way. And here I was, like my students, like Annette Slotterbec, placing something under the microscope, investigating its individuality.

History is tantalizing. It is (at the risk of making a bad pun–from a guy who wrote his dissertation on James Joyce and the public house) intoxicating. So, I looked up Annette Slotterbec, and a partial story emerged.

She had clearly been an active presence in the intellectual life of the University, competing in the declamatory contest the year she graduated. As The Vidette Reporter, May 26, 1888, notes on page four:

The ladies preliminary declamatory contest was held in Zet Hall last Wednesday afternoon. Prof. Anderson was the only judge. The contest resulted in the choice of the following persons to speak at the final contest held during commencement week: Anna Balor, Florence Brown, Annette Slotterbec, Myrtle Lloyd, Ella Graves and Miss Musson.

After graduation she earned a certificate in scientific temperance instruction (a fascinating movement in education) en route to her career as a high school teacher of German and Science at “the high school in Elgin, Illinois” in 1891. A decade after she graduated she was  mentioned (and arguably slighted) in T.E. Savage’s short paper, “A Preliminary List of the Mosses of Iowa,” in the Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Sciences 1898, volume VI. In which he noted:

Specimens of the more common species of this list have been collected and used in the laboratories of the university during many years. More particularly, Miss Annette Slotterbec, in 1888, collected and identified some forty specimens. But on the whole it has been deemed better to record the collection of such material only as has been gathered for the preparation of this paper.

So there I had been idly looking through the undergraduate thesis of Annette Slotterbec, and there I was tracking down bits and pieces of her intellectual life. This happens all the time with DIY History. It seduces you into asking questions about people and their lives. And as you follow the thread, you find interesting stuff.

Plate XIII.
Plate XIII. “Ophiothrix angulata. Fig. 45 above x9; Fig. 46 below x9; Fig. 47 arm joint; Fig. 48 arm spine.” Ophiuridae of the West Indies by Leah May Gaymon, 1893.

According to Trina Roberts, director of the Pentacrest Museums, some of these theses clearly connect to the UI Museum of Natural History‘s collections. For example, Fanny Thompson Wickham’s (B.S. ’90, M.S. ’95) thesis makes use of specimens in the Museum’s insect collection. Likewise, Leah May Gaymon’s (B. Ph. ’92 and M.A. ’95, English) thesis is based on specimens collected during the 1893 Bahama expedition. And it’s possible that she’s in this picture of students drinking coconut milk on that expedition. And that’s exciting!

Asking questions, drawing connections, building the historical record – that means something. That helps us not only tell the stories of the people who came before us, but it also helps us understand ourselves within a longer story about this school and the people who have made it what it is today, one day, one page at a time.

So, I’m thrilled to be sharing these documents with the public. And I’m really delighted to be asking people to engage not only with the work of making their handwriting intelligible to the rest of us, but also to be inviting people to learn more about the individuality of the scholars who wrote these materials. We hope people will find something interesting and engaging in these works. And we appreciate, greatly, the public’s willingness to lend a hand in this scholarly endeavor.

Posted in Campus history, DIY History, Iowa Research Online
Mar 07 2016

Scholarship@Iowa: celebrating diversity in the archives

Posted on March 7, 2016December 2, 2016 by Tom Keegan

We in the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio are reminded – daily – of the incredible digitized material held in our archives. Letters, dissertations, scrapbooks, newspapers, photographs spanning hundreds of years can be found in places like the Iowa Digital Library and Iowa Research Online.

Arlene_Roberts_Morris_posed_with_bicycle_Iowa_City_Iowa
This portrait of Arlene Roberts Morris was taken while she was a sophomore at the University of Iowa. The image was featured on the cover of the first issue of Eyes magazine, an early publication about African American life and culture, in 1946. Morris also served on the Eyes magazine staff.

These collections and this scholarship remind us of who has passed through here; who has informed and shaped this institution and this town. They fill gaps in the record. They bring to light the daily lives of students and citizens, from the carefree to the careful. They map out lines of inquiry and the ground we’ve covered as a scholarly community. These archives help articulate where we have been, where we are now, and, arguably, where we are going. We know ourselves through what we keep and what we do. And at Iowa we carry a tremendous history with us and everyday deepen our understanding of who we are in the research we do and discoveries we make.

In service to this idea, we’ve begun creating a series of curated pages as part of a Scholarship@Iowa initiative showcasing some of the digital scholarship and digital collections associated with the UI’s communities of diversity. With the help of our digital scholarship librarian Wendy Robertson, our digital collections librarian Mark Anderson, researcher/developer Ethan DeGross, public engagement specialist Lauren Darby, and Studio intern Andrea Bastien, we’ve begun selecting materials and scholars whose work pertains directly to these historically underrepresented groups. You’ll also find links to Library Guides created by librarians and faculty in cooperation with the Research & Library Instruction department. Our goal is to connect both current and prospective students, faculty and staff, as well as the broader public, with these resources and the wealth of knowledge and insight they provide.

Our first two pages highlight materials associated with Black History Month and Women’s History Month. The Morris Family Papers and James Morris Digital Collection, for example, trace two generations of Iowans through their time at the UI and into later life. The Patrobas Cassius Robinson scrapbook (excellently profiled by University Archivist David McCartney in an Iowa Now piece) provides glimpses of the African American community in Iowa City in the early 20th century. In a more contemporary context, we highlight Tight Spaces, a “tri-autobiography” by Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji, and Egyirba High that began during their time as students at the University.

We feature also feature recent work by Professors Gigi Durham and Keisha N. Blain. Professor Durham’s 2012 article, “Blood, Lust, and Love” looks at gender violence in the Twilight series. While Professor Blain recently profiled  African American journalist John Q. Adams for the University of Exeter’s Centre for Imperial & Global History blog. [btw: Both Professor Durham and Professor Blain graciously deposited their work into Iowa Research Online as well – a reminder to all interested faculty that we will gladly house and look after your scholarly record.]

atiowa2
“A Songless Quartette” from the Patrobas Cassius Robinson college scrapbook, 1923-1928.

These pages also look beyond IRO and the IDL to other collections purchased by the UI Libraries. Under the guidance of Associate University Librarian Carmelita Pickett, the UI Libraries recently purchased several digital scholarly collections from publisher Adam Matthew. In particular, African American Communities focuses on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina. The collections provides access to “pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.” By acquiring these kinds of collections, the UI Libraries adds to its existing databases (available on-campus) like Readex’s African American Newspaper Series and expands the depth and breadth of primary source material available for research and study.

We’re also growing our collections on DIY History this month with the release of over 3000 pages of digitized manuscript dissertation material from the late 19th century. These materials are noteworthy both for addressing scientific discoveries in the latter half of the 1800s and for having been written by women at the University of Iowa. We’re excited to be making these primary source materials more accessible to the public and look forward to bringing more pieces of the scholarly record into view.

Craig_W_Spotser_AB_Iowa_City_Iowa_1927
Craig W. Spotser, A.B., Iowa City, Iowa, 1927. Althea Beatrice Smith scrapbook, 1924-1928.

Throughout the year we’ll be adding pages to Scholarship@Iowa and sharing more voices that help tell the historical and contemporary stories of Iowa for new audiences. I was reminded recently of a story my predecessor Nicki Saylor shared on this blog in 2007. She was grappling with how to best explain the value of digital collections in a world informed by global and local strife and burdened with the understandably weighty concerns of everyday life. She wrote:

But the most compelling evidence of the power of digital collections arises from stories of people like Craig D. Spotser of Texas. His email, forwarded to us by Susan Kuecker at the African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa, started this way: “GOD…..This is a picture of my Grandfather. He passed away when my father was a small boy. I only had a small picture of him, far way, standing in front of his car and home in Iowa. My father, Craig W. Spotser, has never seen a picture of him that close up, but he passed away in February 2002. This is amazing. How can I obtain a copy of the photo of my Grandfather? I was surfing the web, and this is the first time that I have seen this picture. I almost started crying. I look almost identical to him, and so does my son.”

Here is a case of a man literally finding himself, his family, at Iowa. As Nicki noted then and as I am continually reminded, discoveries like Craig D. Spotser’s are why we do this work. Use animates collections – and the collections, in turn, shape who we are and how we understand ourselves. The lives recorded in our archives come to life in communion with the people using them.

When we welcome new students, faculty, and staff to The University of Iowa; when we welcome new people to Iowa City, we welcome them into the ongoing stories of our communities and our community. To the extent that we make these resources as available and as visible as possible, we invite a growing audience of people to participate in the work of scholarship and discovery.

With that in mind, what you will find in these pages is only a small part of what you’ll find in our archives. And we encourage everyone to explore our holdings, to encounter something you didn’t know, to create new knowledge with what you find, and in so doing, perhaps, to find yourself in Scholarship@Iowa.

Posted in Campus history, DIY History, Iowa Digital Library, Iowa Research Online
Feb 03 2016

Iowa Research Online DH Salon

Posted on February 3, 2016December 2, 2016 by Wendy Robertson

The first DH Salon for spring 2016 was about Iowa Research Online (IRO). IRO is not a DH specific tool; we use it to publish, archive, and freely disseminate output of the University community. It has been primarily used for textual scholarship and creative works, but it also includes audio, video and data.IRO download map

IRO includes faculty, graduate student, undergraduate, administrative and community content that meets the Libraries selection criteria and which we are able to post according to copyright. Although it is called Iowa “Research” Online, it includes creative works as well, such this dance video filmed in the Art Library.

Next Chapter

IRO also functions to archive University content essentially as part of University Archives (e.g. various Office of the Registrar reports).

The Library has committed to maintaining content in IRO for the long term. Virtually all the content is freely accessible everywhere in the world, without anyone needing to login to access. The Library ensures the content has good metadata and that it can be easily found through Google and Google Scholar, as well as through more traditional library indexes and catalogs. For example, IRO content is in the SHARE database.

IRO is very well indexed in Google and the majority of people find content in this manner. The use of content is worldwide (see map at the top) – even on a late Friday afternoon in Central Time we were seeing downloads! (Last summer Rob Shepherd made a great map showing the downloads by country, which was featured in a previous blog post). 41,277 Downloads

A download count is also visible when something has had more than 10 downloads.

IRO includes articles published in open access journals for which the library has paid the author publishing charge (APC) for people without grant or other money to cover this charge. Such publications are more common in the sciences than in the humanities/social sciences, but please keep this option in mind for future articles. The Library will also use the fund to cover some of the costs of an open access monograph. Our guide has additional information.

Note that APCs are one form of gold OA, but freely available journals with no charges to read or for the authors to publish is another model which IRO supports. For example, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review is a peer reviewed, gold OA title, with no charges for the authors or readers.

Little Village

 

IRO also includes journals with back content freely available (e.g. Iowa Review) or can serve as a permanent archive for content that is already freely available (e.g. Little Village). We also publish an undergraduate journal (Iowa Historical Review).

All non-MFA theses and dissertations submitted from fall 2009 required by the Graduate College to go into IRO, after an optional embargo period has ended. Currently theses and dissertations are all PDFs, but some theses do include supplemental content, expanding the traditional thesis. The Graduate College is working with various groups to allow more variety in what is submitted (and housed in IRO).

IRO also serves as an archive for oral histories from HistoryCorps. The official HistoryCorps site has more styling and personality, but the archive ensures we will be able to maintain the content of this public engagement project for the long term, even if the look and feel of the current site are not maintained.

IRO includes selected undergraduate work as well, primarily original content created in innovative classes. For example, it includes an archive of twitter data (from back before people understood how useful Twitter was to see current events and before the Twitter API changed) The series includes student archives alongside the faculty member’s collections, some of which have receive thousands of downloads.

We have also archived student oral histories made as part of IDEAL’s Iowa Narratives Project. These items include an audio file, text and images and show that IRO can hold more complex content. I particularly like this series for how it captures Iowa City from a student perspective and includes people and businesses that are no longer here.

Tobacco Bowl

We have a few books in IRO. These can display the cover and be downloadable by chapter.

IRO includes conferences (paper, presentations, handouts and videos can all be included). This has allowed at least one conference to stop printing out large packets of handouts for each participant. Conferences can also have more formally published papers. We work with the UI Center for Conferences of directly with the organizers as needed.

Smaller data sets, such as to supplement an article, are also included in IRO; it is not appropriate for very large files, but it is being used for data connected to business publications as well as for some linguistics data.

IRO interoperates well with a separate product from the same vendor (bepress), called Selected Works (SW), which allows you to make a custom profile. You do not need to be part of the University of Iowa to have such a profile – you can keep it after you graduate and move to another institution. You can easily include IRO content on your SW profile. However, if you upload content to SW, it will NOT be archived by the University of Iowa.

Classics CommonsYou can search for content across all customers that use the same software as IRO. Each page includes a link to the larger “commons”. The content is all full text, but it is also only from customers using the same software so it may or may not include major researchers in your field.

Institutional repositories, like IRO, are distinct from Academia.edu, which, despite the edu domain, is a for profit site. Some publishers, such as Taylor & Francis, allow posting content in an institutional repository but not on a commercial site.

Posted in Iowa Research Online
Nov 03 2015

Update to Use of Digitized Theses

Posted on November 3, 2015December 2, 2016 by Wendy Robertson

Last year, we looked at use of our digitized theses. We decided that a bit more than a year had passed so it was time to look at these items again.

The collection has grown modestly to 258 theses and dissertations. These PDFs have been downloaded almost 55,000 times total (an average of 213.2 times each), from 12 November 2009 (when we first posted a digitized thesis) to 31 October 2015. On average, each digitized thesis is downloaded once every four days, an increase from last year. Our digitized theses date from 1886–2008, with the vast majority dating from 1912–1921.

5,820 Downloads since August 01, 2011Each thesis or dissertation that has been downloaded at least ten times shows a count of downloads on the individual page in Iowa Research Online (IRO). This download count appears in all our collections in IRO.

The following items, from a variety of disciplines, have been downloaded more than 1000 times each. These high use items are by graduates from as early as 1913 and to as recently as 2008.

Graduation Year Title Author Degree Use/Day Total Downloads
 1961 The Production book of “The Diary of Anne Frank” Allan Kurtz Longacre II Master of Arts, Speech and Dramatic Arts 3.73 5,794
2008 Teacher-initiated talk and student oral discourse in a second language literature classroom : a sociocultural analysis Joshua J. Thoms Doctor of Philosophy, Second Language Acquisition 5.39 4,387
1949 A formal analysis of Hawthorne’s The Blithedale romance Lewis Dwight Levang Master of Arts, English 3.24 2,099
1931 The catenary J. P. Kacmarynski Master of Science, Mathematics 1.72 2,068
1999 Development of a method for the simultaneous detection of mycotoxins in corn using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and electrospray-atmospheric pressure ionization/mass spectrometry (ES-API/MS) for extraction, separation, and identification Jenelle Daria Brown Master of Science, Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health 1.44 1,791
1956 Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis (Rome, 1650) : the section on musical instruments Frederick Baron Crane Master of Arts, Music 3.14 1,628
1914 Morphology of Cannabis sativa L Joyce Reed Master of Science 1.81 1,203
1955 Construction and application of a mechanical differential analyzer Joseph Emil Kasper Master of Science, Physics 1.08 1,190
1913 Ore deposits produced by magmatic segregation, with special reference to the nickel ores of the Sudbury district, Ontario Stuart St.Clair Master of Science, Geology 1.24 1,113
1937 A study of the origin and development of the educational excursion and field trip Harriet A. Woods Master of Arts, Education 1.58 1,113

If you are interested in having your thesis digitized and added to our open access collection, please let us know by submitting this permission form (PDF).

Posted in Iowa Research Online
Open Access logo
Nov 02 2015

Whitman, Iowa Review and Dada in Romania

Posted on November 2, 2015December 2, 2016 by Wendy Robertson

Walt Whitman Quarterly ReviewOne of the things we do in the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio is support locally published journals. The journals which we publish/host are part of Iowa Research Online. During Open Access Week in October, there were several noteworthy additions/changes.

Walt Whitman Quarterly Review became fully open access. We have published the journal in partnership with the Department of English since 2009. Until now, the current year was restricted to print subscribers. Effective with v.33 (2015), the journal is published online only and is freely accessible to everyone. The issue begins with a statement from the editor:

With this inaugural number in our new format, we take an exciting step toward realizing Whitman’s dream of creating a truly democratic literature. For democratic literature to function effectively, he knew, all citizens needed access. Now the contents of every issue of WWQR are available to everyone worldwide who has access to the Web. As access to the Web continues to grow, access to WWQR grows with it. Paid subscriptions to WWQR are now a thing of the past: everyone who wants to read what we publish is a subscriber, and your subscription is free.

Ed Folsom also wrote eloquently about the change in a recent blog post. We are so happy to have supported the journal through this transition of a print+online subscription journal to a fully open access title.

The Iowa Review

We are also very happy to have added back content of the Iowa Review. Adding this title to Iowa Research Online demonstrates our commitment to support creative works as well as research outputs of the university. The journal’s announcement follows:

The Iowa Review announces the launch of its free digital archive, ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview, containing full text of virtually all the writing published in the magazine from its founding in 1970 through 2011. The archive comprises 130 issues of the magazine and 5,752 individual poems, essays, and stories, searchable by volume, author name, and title. The site also includes links to the most frequently downloaded pieces, as well as a world map displaying real-time readership.

Issues from the most recent three years continue to remain accessible only to subscribers, bookstore patrons, and those who order copies through the Iowa Review’s website, iowareview.org. Excerpts of work from recent issues also appear at iowareview.org.

The Iowa Review partnered with the University of Iowa Libraries’ Iowa Research Online service, which preserves and provides open access to the UI’s scholarly and creative work, and the digital library JSTOR, which creates a digital archive of the magazine’s back issues. UI digital scholarship librarian Wendy Robertson developed the site’s data infrastructure and user interface.

The Iowa Review is based in the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Iowa. It publishes three print issues per year featuring poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography. Work from its pages is consistently selected to appear in such anthologies as Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

More information about The Iowa Review, including how to subscribe, purchase individual issues, or find the current issue in a bookstore, can be found at iowareview.org. The archive can be accessed directly at ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview.

We are thrilled that everyone in the world will be able to read the fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and translations included in this well respected literary journal.

Dada/Surrealism

Finally, we also published a new issue of the journal Dada/Surrealism, with the theme “From Dada to Infra-noir: Dada, Surrealism, and Romania.” As the articles are being published incrementally, a few articles are not yet posted, making this a soft release. The issue is so large that there are almost two dozen articles already posted!  Dada/Surrealism was a print title from 1971–1990. In 2013, publication began again as an online only title. The journal is edited by Timothy Shipe, the Curator of the International Dada Archive.

Posted in Iowa Research Online, Publishing

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