Fore-edge painting of Lindesfarne Abbey

Tools and methods workshops

Citation Management with Zotero

Get started early with keeping track of what you read! 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 bibliographies. Bring your personal laptop, download Zotero 10.0 for your OS, and the Zotero Connector for your favorite browser.

Introduction to Omeka and Digital Community Archives

  • Wednesday, October 7, 3:00–4:30 p.m., online (Instructor: Tajah Ebram) REGISTER
  • Thursday, October 8, 1:00–2:30 p.m., online (Instructor: Tajah Ebram) REGISTER

During this workshop, we will discuss the basics of starting and planning a digital archive or exhibit to preserve community focused and/or family histories. We will consider some best practices, ethical issues, and existing archives that can help us understand and plan for projects that make careful use of digital tools for Black cultural heritage materials in particular. This workshop will also offer an intro to using Omeka to organize and exhibit your materials. Omeka is a digital content management system for creating media-rich collections and exhibits.

Prior to the workshop, create a free Omeka Trial Account and identify and save 2-3 images that you might like to practice with during our session.

Collecting and Analyzing Social Media Data

  • Wednesday, October 28, 3:00–4:30 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab and online (Instructor: Francesca Giannetti) REGISTER
  • Thursday, November 5, 3:00–4:30 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab and online (Instructor: Francesca Giannetti) REGISTER

Social media data provide researchers with a real-time view into a wide variety of social and cultural topics. This workshop will include a gentle introduction to the R programming language and RStudio, the most commonly used integrated development environment for R. We will use the searchPosts endpoint of the Bluesky API to collect posts related to a keyword string of our choosing. We will then explore the resulting dataset using the tidyverse collection of packages in R. No experience necessary but a Bluesky account is required.

Visualizing Demographic Data in QGIS

  • Wednesday, November 18, 3:00–4:30 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab and online (Instructor: Francesca Giannetti) REGISTER
  • Thursday, November 19, 3:00–4:30 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab and online (Instructor: Francesca Giannetti) REGISTER

Many fields study historic and contemporary data about people and the places in which they live, work, and travel. In this workshop, we’ll explore the basic building blocks of geospatial visualizations, including data types, file formats, as well as some ways of manipulating and analyzing data using a free and open source GIS called QGIS. We will tinker with data provided by the Mapping Early American Elections project. Download QGIS for your operating system.

Critical Making Workshops

See our call for participation for more details!

Botanical Dyeing & Black Wildcrafting

  • Tuesday, September 29, 2:00–3:30 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab (Facilitator: Tajah Ebram) REGISTER

During this hands-on workshop we will work with dye ink made from botanicals growing right around us this fall. We will also talk a bit about U.S. Black cultural history and present of foraging, plant craft and land based technologies. We will also learn about related collections in Rutgers Libraries. This is a fully in-person workshop.

Bring a poem or passage from your research that you might like to transcribe with your ink! Or an idea for an image to paint.

Data Visualization with Embroidery

  • Thursday, October 15, 3:00–5:00 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab and online (Facilitator: Francesca Giannetti) REGISTER

What do wartime, espionnage, and steganography have in common? Embroidery! Come for a brief history of data visualization in textiles and a hands-on activity in which we will learn to assemble and translate data into stitches. All levels of experience are welcome, including no experience at all. This is a hybrid workshop; materials will be provided to in person participants.

Zine Making

  • Wednesday, October 21, 3:00–4:40 p.m., Digital Humanities Lab (Facilitator: Megan Lotts) REGISTER

What’s a zine: A zine (rhymes with “bean,” short for “magazine”) is a small, self-made booklet, hand-assembled, and bursting with personal voice. Think mini-magazine meets scrapbook meets creative outlet: no rules, no publisher, just you putting your ideas, art, and reflections onto paper.

You’ll spend the session with Art Librarian Megan Lotts, taking a well-deserved creative pause from the workday. No artistic experience is needed. Just come ready to unwind, explore, read, and make something that’s entirely your own. You’ll leave with a handmade zine and a few new tools for weaving creativity and reflection into everyday life.

Edible Book Festival: Eat your words!

  • Thursday, April 8, 2027, Pane Room, Alexander Library

Save the date! Partnership with Special Collections and University Archives and the Scarlet Letterpress.

Events

Black Bibliography Project Wikidata Edit-a-thon

  • Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 12:00–4:00 p.m., Location TBA (College Ave) REGISTER

The Black Bibliography Project is building a database of Black book history to highlight the social networks and aesthetics of Black print culture from the 1700s to the present. Come learn more about the BBP and Wikidata — a free open access knowledge base and the “sister” to Wikipedia. During the edit-a-thon, we will learn how to create Wikidata items for Black authors and publishers. These records will ultimately be linked to the BBP’s database and make it possible for users to discover forgotten or overlooked Black authors and other literary figures.

Stay for some or all of the edit-a-thon! Feel free to BYO lunch. Light snacks provided.

To Prepare for the Workshop:

Image credit: Fore-edge painting [Lindesfarne Abbey in Northumberland.] Boston Public Library. Source: Flickr.