The Digital CoLab at Olin Library
The purpose of Digital Scholarship Services and the Digital CoLab is to support scholarly activity, particularly in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, that:
- Requires specialty methods for the acquisition, evaluation, transformation, or preparation of existing collections of research data (including text, images, and other kinds of data)
- Applies digital modes of analysis
- Produces new digital research material or user interfaces that enable the asking and answering of new research questions
- Uses digital methods to present or communicate the results of research
and/or - Exposes researchers and/or research subjects to personal risks associated with digital communication and surveillance capitalism.
We offer consultations, instruction, and support for:
- Data acquisition, preparation, cleaning and processing
- Database design
- Computational text analysis (sometimes called text mining), including corpus acquisition, cleaning, and processing
- Data visualization, including timelines and mapping for the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
- Scholar- and student-curated digital collections and digital exhibits of images, sounds, and other digital material
- Digital project scoping, management, and planning
- Digital harassment self-defense, anti-surveillance practices, and other digital privacy topics
- Algorithmic literacy and other everyday digital literacy topics.
Our approach
At the Digital CoLab we abide by an ethic that Miriam Posner defines as “people over projects.” We are here to support your research and teaching goals, but more than anything else, we are interested in supporting you – your learning, your skills, your imagination, and your community.
Part of our work is connecting researchers and students on campus who have similar interests. We host weekly open office hours at the Digital CoLab, occasional special events, and a regular newsletter.