Activity: Digital Scholarship Project Dissection

Overview

Digital scholarship leverages digital tools to analyze scholarship in new ways, offers routes to openly share research with wider communities, and invites wider publics to engage with the production of scholarship.

Activity: Exploring Digital Scholarship

This activity offers an opportunity to examine a variety of digital scholarship projects and to think critically about the construction of that scholarship. Pick one or two projects from the list below and reflect on the questions below:

As you look at the following examples, ask yourself:

What is the purpose of this project? What are the project’s goals?
- Is the project’s decision-making documented?
- Can you tell what materials were gathered and how and why decisions were made to include some content over others?
- Can you reuse materials in the project (ex. images, media materials, etc.)?
Who is the intended audience for this project?
- Is the project associated with a particular institution?
- Did the project receive grant funding to complete its work?
How many people were involved in the creation of this project?
- How are the contributors credited for their work?
- Is content included cited so that it can be traced back to an original source?
- When was it last updated? Is it intended to be a one-time project or an iterative project?

Bringing it Together

Now that you have had a chance to review some digital scholarship projects, along with an opportunity to critically evaluate them, share one thing that stood out to you about this critical evaluation exercise. Or, if you’re thinking of creating your own digital scholarship project, share what ideas this exercise has brought to how you might approach your project. Answers can be shared in Slack.

Learn More About Digital Scholarship

Learn more about digital scholarship and how you can create your own project at these guides!