I’d like to propose a Talk session titled “Envisioning a Digital Harrisburg.”  I’ve been deeply impressed with projects such as Digital Durham,  Digital Harlem, and other digital humanities projects focused on the history, culture, and forms of social life of various cities.  The City of Harrisburg and the surrounding Central Pennsylvania region has a rich history and cultural life.  Moreover, in many respects, though we don’t think of it as such, Harrisburg is a “global” city, experiencing its own cultural and political changes over time through patterns of immigration, economic displacement, and the simple fact of its being enmeshed like everywhere else in large scale movements of capital and commerce.  What would it look like to give Harrisburg and its surrounding regions that kind of close critical attention that humanists always give, and to disseminate the knowledge that we produce through the various digital tools available to us?  Such a project could have the potential for bringing together a number of educational and civic organizations in the area, combining scare resources to achieve larger contributions to the cultural and civic life of the area than we could accomplish separately.

Some Questions to be discussed in this session:

1. What are the projects that individuals or institutions already have underway that touch on Harrisburg and the Central Pennsylvania region?

2. Where do those projects overlap or where could they complement and reinforce each other?

3.  What are some areas of history and culture in the region that might be especially interesting to examine?  Oral histories of immigration?  Connections between local and national politics?  Harrisburg as a center for jazz and other forms of musical development?

4. Would it be worthwhile to imagine incorporating some of these projects in to a larger scale project on the order of a Digital Durham or Digital Harlem?  What kinds of collaborative models might work and what kinds of resources might be necessary? What benefits might accrue to different institutions and their constituencies?

Omeka is a web publishing platform used by archives, librarians, museums, and many others organization. It is used to to organize, describe, and display digital images, audio files, videos, and texts. The websites are visually appealing (many themes feature responsive design), and you can create exhibits to tell the narrative of groups of items.

In this introduction to Omeka, you’ll learn how to add images, audio, video, and text to your archive, how to arrange items into collections, and how to create exhibits. We’ll also go over the difference between Omeka.net and self-hosted Omeka sites, examples of pedagocical uses of Omeka, and discuss the Dublin Core metadata standard for describing digital objects.

To bring:
1. Laptop
2. Sample materials (several images, pdfs, and audiovisual files)
3. An Omeka.net Basic account (free) – sign up at www.omeka.net/signup

Handouts (complements of Miriam Posner) available at:
hbg2013.thatcamp.org/files/2013/10/Omeka-Up-and-Running.docx
hbg2013.thatcamp.org/files/2013/10/Omeka-Creating-an-Exhibit.docx

I haven’t yet attended a THATCamp, so I feel really under-qualified to propose a session. Having said that, I have a strong interest in ways to apply IT processes to library assessment needs to facilitate collection development and weeding. I would love to discuss some of the applications I’ve found and to learn more about how other library professionals are doing this.
I’ve been working on a number of assessment projects in which I found it very helpful to apply the concepts of:
• Chunking
• Iterative processing [Implemented using saved queries to apply auto-assess criteria via Millennium Create Lists]
• Batch processing [i.e. Rapid Update via Millennium ILS]
• Parallel processing
• Asynchronous processes
My experience in applying these processes has been using the Innovative Millennium ILS, but I think the theories are applicable to any robust ILS.

In fall 2012, I created a massive digital library of 8,000 records related to ancient and modern discussions of the city and region of Corinth, Greece. In part a collection of references, in part a collection of texts, the Corinthian Studies library forms a comprehensive body of texts related to a popular subject of ancient history, classical archaeology, and New Testament scholarship. I began making sections of the library available online last year and will continue this fall to release parts of the collection through the Zotero Groups feature. The goal of the library is to serve scholars, teachers, and the interested public by creating a starting point for texts and research.

In this session, I team up with librarian Beth Transue to discuss the use and application of Zotero for individual and collaborative research, and public ends. We propose a hands-on workshop focusing on the mechanics of using Zotero, and its potential for collaborative research, teaching, and public scholarship. David will discuss the Corinthian Studies library as an example of Zotero’s utility, and Beth will cover the basics in using Zotero, such as creating a Zotero account, collecting resources, online vs. stand-alone libraries, and using the Zotpad app to connect with Zotero on a mobile device.

David Pettegrew is Associate Professor of History at Messiah College. Beth Transue is Associate Librarian/Collection Development Coordinator at Messiah College.