May 11, 2023: Datathon Showcase – Computational Archival Storytelling with Jupyter Notebooks
On May 11, 2023, a public event showcased original and innovative work conducted by MLIS graduate students in the INST742 class (“Implementation of Digital Curation”) at the University of Maryland iSchool. The class (designed to provide hands-on learning experiences to students, with real-world environments and examples that touch on significant areas of digital curation) concluded with a 2-week final project. Digital Curation Implementation topics explored in INST742 included:
- Archival Science concepts and workflows and Computational Thinking (CT)
- Digitization management (ABBYYFineReader)
- Cleaning & Transforming (OpenRefine)
- Data Wrangling (Trifacta)
- Clustering algorithms (Artificial Intelligence)
- Text Processing through NLP and NER (GATE: General Architecture for Text Engineering)
- Geospatial Transformations through: geocoding, geolocating, georeferencing, and vectorizing/tracing (QGIS, ArcGIS)
- Data visualization (Tableau Storyline and Tableau Dashboard)
- Network analysis through graph databases (Neo4j)
- Digital Curation at scale
- Virtual machines (UMD iSchool Virtual Computing Lab (VCL), Sandbox tools, Jupyter Notebooks)
This year, the entire 15-week class was articulated around a single collection, consisting of a sample of the 1911 Charlotte NC city directory.
Speakers and topics included:
- Eden Hansen: Mad or Madam: Investigating an Undefined Data Term
- Sams Wilson: Mapping Over Time in Charlotte NC: Population, Redlining, and Urban Renewal
- Bethany Greenho: Building a Bigger Picture: A Case Study of Combining the General City and Business Directories
- Rosemarie Fettig: Expanding the Network: Modeling Relationships with Neo4j
- Valerie Sallis: Revisualizing Geographic Disparities: Examining Trends in Racial and Economic Inequality on the Streets w/o GIS
- Mia Steinle: Religious Life in 1911 Charlotte, NC
- Sarah Craig: Gender, Race, and Archival Silences
- Elissa Dallimore: Conceptualizing Prosperity: A Case Study Analyzing Housing through Job Types
- Henry Kemp: Visualizing Neighborhood Demographics
- Isaiah Cornfield: Race, Marriage, and Profession: Data at Scale Test Case
Presentation details and recordings:
1. Mad or Madam: Investigating an Undefined Data Term:
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2. Mapping Over Time in Charlotte NC: Population, Redlining, and Urban Renewal:
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3. Building a Bigger Picture: A Case Study of Combining the General City and Business Directories:
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4. Expanding the Network: Modeling Relationships with Neo4j:
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5. Revisualizing Geographic Disparities: Examining Trends in Racial and Economic Inequality on the Streets w/o GIS:
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6. Religious Life in 1911 Charlotte, NC:
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7. Gender, Race, and Archival Silences:
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8. Conceptualizing Prosperity: A Case Study Analyzing Housing through Job Types:
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9. Visualizing Neighborhood Demographics:
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10. Race, Marriage, and Profession: Data at Scale Test Case:
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They were joined by 6 members of the IMLS-funded TALENT Network project (educators, archivists, and technologists) and AIC Research Network.
- Richard Marciano: INST742 Instructor, UMD
- Rogers Hall: Professor & Chair, Dep. of Teaching and Learning, Vanderbilt U.
- Mark Conrad:ex-digital archivist at the National Archives, Advanced Information Collaboratory (AIC)
- Greg Jansen: Senior Research Software Architect, U. Maryland iSchool
- Sarah Buchanan: Associate Professor, School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, U. Missouri
- Mark Hedges: Professor, Chair of the Digital Humanities Dep., King’s College London
-Authored by Richard Marciano