by Tierney Gleason and Mariah Lewis

Many librarians at Walsh Family Library were in attendance last Wednesday for Digital Day, a full-day event organized by the Center for Medieval Studies to provide an introduction to digital scholarship for new and returning graduate students. Co-sponsored by the Preparing Future Faculty Program from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Digital Day highlighted exciting work and important resources across Fordham to support digital humanities scholarship and pedagogy. 

The day kicked off with an Introduction to Digital Scholarship at Fordham from Dr. Maryanne Kowaleski followed by a project showcase featuring the Siege of Antioch Project, the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, and Medieval Londoners.

The next set of presenters featured one of our library colleagues along with staff from Fordham’s Instructional Technology Academic Computing team. Tierney Gleason, Reference and Digital Humanities Librarian, spoke about the importance of data curation in the humanities and discussed two workshops she will be leading this semester: Introduction to Data Curation in the Humanities and Copyright for Digital Scholars. (Help her select the most convenient dates and times for these workshops through the links above if you are interested.) Heather V. Hill, Instructional Technologist, guided participants through data visualization tools and techniques and Shawn Hill, Instructional Technologist for Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy, demonstrated the benefits of using Voyant Tools, Perusall, and Recogito with students.

The final round of speakers featured faculty and staff sharing their experiences with using digital projects in the classroom. Christina Bruno, Associate Director of the Center for Medieval Studies, presented on mapping assignments from her class studying medieval Spain through walking the Camino de Santiago. Katherina Fostano, Digital & Visual Resources Curator, explained Moving Saints of the Bronx, a digital project by art history students for a class studying Modern Latin American Art. Nicholas Paul, Associate Professor of History, recalled his experiences assigning podcasting to graduate students in Medieval Studies in order to develop skills for communicating with general audiences about history. Micki McGee, Associate Professor of Sociology, closed out the session by describing her results mapping connections between 20th century artistic communities with students.

Overall, the fifth annual Digital Day continued its goal of providing information and guidance on digital research tools and showcased just how far digital projects have reached within the Fordham University community- whether it is across departments, across campuses and even across the world.

If you are interested in digital scholarship, be sure to check out the library’s research guide on Digital Humanities. The library is teeming with resources. Ask a librarian if you have any questions or need to be pointed in a direction. We are here to help!

To learn more about digital scholarship events across Fordham’s campuses, sign up for the newsletter circulated by the Fordham Digital Scholarship Consortium by sending an email to digitalscholarship@fordham.edu.

Stay tuned for our new “Digital Projects & Collections Spotlight” blog series! This series will feature digital collections both inside and outside of Fordham that can be utilized as part of your scholarly journey. Whether you are a student, faculty member, administrator, alumni or someone who has just happened upon our Fordham Library News blog, we hope to feature digital collections that are engaging and helpful!

Please email Mariah Lewis at mlewis83@fordham.edu if you would like your digital collection to be featured in one of our “Digital Projects/Collections Spotlight” series!