Digital Scholarship at Schaffer Library

What we do

Services

Our services include providing instruction on digital tools and methods; consulting and collaborating on digital projects; advising on open access and open education; and managing long-term digital curation and preservation. Whenever possible, we strive for our projects to be openly accessible and advocate for sustainable models.

Instruction & Consultation

Work with faculty and students to better understand data modeling, metadata, software, project planning, and the life cycle of digital projects.

Data management plans

DSi can work to help faculty create data management plans for grants.

3D, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR)

We can help find, create, and preserve a 3D / AR / VR project in any discipline or major.

Learn more!

Data Analysis and Visualization

DSi can help find, analyze, and visualize data through a variety of tools and methodologies.

Check out our Data Center!

Digital Publishing and Preserving

DSi can help support student and faculty projects such as exhibitions, scholarly editions, journals, and open-access publishing whenever possible.


Tools

The DSi team supports the following tools:

3D: Sketchfab

The Library subscribes to Sketchfab to support 3D modeling. The production of STL and MTL files layered on OBJ files provides a digital export strategy across tools.

Data Management: DMPTool

The DSi team has experience with DMPTool and has crafted language to help guide your grant application for backups and preservation.

Data Visualization: Voyant, Vistorian, and more

The DSi team continues to explore visualization tools depending on methodology and output needed. We have worked with Voyant, Vistorian, various JavaScript libraries, and other graph-based visualization tools.

Digital Publishing: Arches, Manifold, Omeka

Digital publishing is a cornerstone of the work we do. Building, using, and repurposing our rich collections, whether from our library or produced via research and teaching, is our expertise. Our tools include Arches, Manifold, and Omeka.


Intake Process

The DSi group, as part of Schaffer Library, wants to empower users to explore research in a variety of ways. As a small group, however, we are always concerned about sustainability. Our intake process will ask many questions in order to best set up projects for success. To that end, we will provision accounts and maintain them over time (see “life cycle” below).


Digital project life cycle

The DSi team believes strongly in digital project life cycles, including thinking about projects as experimental at first and may evolve over time. We want to support research at all levels but we are a small team. To that end, we will ask users for a Memorandum of Understanding to understand better how we can support and sustain the project.