Spring 2019 Workshops

Welcome to our Spring 2019 programming! Please find below a description of the workshops we have scheduled. Reserve your place at a workshop here. Browse the rest of our advanced research workshops, including offerings in machine learning with Python, version control with Git and GitHub, and qualitative data analysis in NVivo at https://libguides.rutgers.edu/graduatespecialist/workshops.

Citation Management with Zotero 

• January 29 – 10:00-11:00 am, Digital Humanities Lab, Alexander Library (Instructor, Francesca Giannetti) 
• February 5 – 1:00-2:00 pm, Digital Humanities Lab, Alexander Library (Instructor, Francesca Giannetti) 

Zotero is a free application that collects, manages, and formats citations and bibliographies. In this introductory, hands-on workshop, we’ll learn how to organize sources, attach PDFs and notes, create tags for easy searching, and generate citations and bibliographies in Word. Bring your personal laptop, download Zotero 5.0 for your OS, and the Zotero Connector for your favorite browser.   

Visualizing Demographic Data in Social Explorer 

• Thursday, February 7 – 4:00-5:30 pm, Alexander Library Room 415 (Instructor, Francesca Giannetti) 
• Tuesday, February 26 – 10:00-11:30 am, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Francesca Giannetti) 

This workshop will introduce you to Social Explorer, an online mapping tool that allows you to explore and visualize demographic data. We will explore the tool’s basic capabilities, and make sample maps using data from the American Community Survey (ACS).  

Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis

• Tuesday, February 19 – 1:00-2:20 pm, Alexander Library Room 415 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)
• Thursday, March 14 – 10:00-11:30 pm, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)
• Monday, April 22 – 10:00-11:30 am, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)

This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to the basics of quantitative textual analysis using the R programming language. Participants will each first select a text of their choice from Project Gutenberg (literary or otherwise), which we will then explore through the demonstration of a variety of approaches, including word frequency, distribution, and co-appearance. No coding experience required.

Introduction to Mapping

• Thursday, March 7 – 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Digital Humanities Lab, Alexander Library (Instructor, Alex Leslie)
• Tuesday, March 12 – 1:00-3:00 pm, Digital Humanities Lab, Alexander Library (Instructor, Alex Leslie)

What kind of information should be mapped? Which tool is best for the job? If you’ve ever found yourself asking either of these questions – or any other about getting started with mapping – this workshop is for you. We’ll begin with a primer how to identify what kind of data is best suited by a map and what data is necessary to make a map. Then, we’ll explain how to get started with a few common mapping programs (StoryMap JS, Palladio, Tableau, Carto) and evaluate what kinds of uses each is best suited to.

Accessing and Exploring Twitter Data

• Thursday, March 28 – 10:00-11:30 am, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)
• Tuesday, April 2 – 1:00-2:30 pm, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)

This hands-on workshop will step participants through the process of collecting social media data from twitter (by handle, hashtag, and/or search phrase) and some of the concerns involved. Participants will then be introduced to a few simple ways to begin analyzing tweet content and metadata, such as the number of likes and retweets.

Approaches to Web Scraping in R

• Thursday, April 11 – 10:00-11:30 am, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)
• Tuesday, April 16 – 1:00-2:30 pm, Alexander Library Room 413 (Instructor, Alex Leslie)

An ever-growing wealth of information can be accessed online, but often there is no easy way to obtain this information for further analysis. This hands-on workshop will introduce a solution to this problem: web scraping, a technique for extracting data and data structures from public websites. Using our browsers and the R programming language, we’ll also explore strategies for handling different kinds of websites. No previous coding experience required.