Save The Date: 10th Anniversary!

Text: Celebrate a decade with the Scholarly Commons. Background: fireworks and party banner.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Scholarly Commons! To celebrate this momentous occasion, the Scholarly Commons is presenting a digital exhibition commemorating our history. This digital exhibition will highlight the projects, partnerships, and people that supported the unit over the past ten years. The exhibition will include:

An Interactive Timeline of the Scholarly Commons History

The Scholarly Commons has celebrated many milestones over the course of the past decade. From creating the Savvy Researcher Workshops to hosting symposiums and competitions to inviting guest scholars to the UIUC campus to share their ideas and projects with our community. The Scholarly Commons has created long-lasting initiatives that enrich the academic life of the UIUC. 

To commemorate some of our biggest achievements, the Scholarly Commons has created a timeline featuring the projects, partnerships, and people who have built the Scholarly Commons through the years. To read these highlights and learn about the future of the Scholarly Commons, you can view the timeline here.

A GIS Mapping Project Highlighting Former Scholarly Commons Graduate Assistants

Graduate Assistants play a valuable role in keeping the Scholarly Commons functional and efficient. They provide consultation services for patrons, develop instructional materials for technologies and tools in the Scholarly Commons, facilitate in-person and virtual workshops, and perform a wide variety of other tasks. By the time they graduate and leave the Scholarly Commons, our hope is that our Graduate Assistants gain new technical skills, form long-lasting relationships, and develop a profound sense of professionalism and responsibility that they will carry with them throughout their careers.

To recognize the achievements of our former GAs, the Scholarly Commons has created an interactive map showcasing where they are now and how their time with the Scholarly Commons impacted their careers. To see the global influence of the Scholarly Commons for yourself, you can view the map here.  

A Talk by Guest Speaker Thomas Padilla

Thomas Padilla in a study space at the University of Nevada Libraries

Thomas Padilla at the University of Nevada Libraries

On Tuesday October 20, 2020 from 3:30-4:30pm, former Scholarly Commons Graduate Assistant and current Interim Head of Knowledge Production at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries Thomas Padilla will lead a discussion around the importance of responsible operations in libraries. 

Drawing on his experience leading development of the research agenda Responsible Operations: Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI in Libraries, Padilla will discuss how cultural heritage practitioners and their partners can improve collection description and discovery, develop machine actionable collections, and create space for members of their organizations to expand skills and deepen cross-functional community partnerships using data science, machine learning, and AI technology. To attend this lecture, use this Zoom Webinar Link

To stay updated on all these events and more, please visit our 10th anniversary webpage on the Scholarly Commons website. Thank you all for celebrating 10 years with us!

Digital Timeline Tools

Everyone has a story to tell. For many of us doing work in the humanities and social sciences, presenting our research as a timeline can bring it new depth and a wider audience. Today, I’ll be talking about two unique digital storytelling options that you can use to add dimension to your research project.

Timeglider

An image of Timeglider's sample timeline on the Wright Brothers

Timeglider is an interactive timeline application. It allows you to move in and out time, letting you see time in large or small spans. It also allows events to overlap, so you can show the relationship of things in time. Timeglider also gives some great aesthetic options, including what they call their “special sauce” — the way they relate the size of an event to its importance. This option emphasizes certain events in the timeline to the user, and can make getting important ideas across simpler.

Started in 2002 as a flash-based app, Timeglader is one of the older timeline options on the web. After a major redesign in 2010, Timeglider is now written in HTML5 and JavaScript. Timeglider is free for students for a basic package, and plans for non-students can choose to pay either $5/month or $50/year.

Overall, Timeglider is an interesting timeline application with numerous options. Give it a try!

myHistro

A screenshot from a myHistro project on the Byzantine Empire.

myHistro uses text, video and pictures on maps and timelines to tell stories. Some of the power of myHistro comes from the sheer amount of information you can provide in one presentation. Presentations can include introductory text, an interactive timeline, a Google Maps-powered annotated map, and a comment section, among other attributes. The social aspect, in particular, makes myHistro powerful. You can open your work up to a large audience, or simply ask students and scholars to make comments on your work for an assignment. Another interesting aspect of myHistro is the sheer amount of projects people have come up with for it. There is everything from histories of the French Revolution to the biography of Justin Bieber, with everything in between!

myHistro is free, and you can sign up using your email or social network information.