In partnership with the Digital Library of the Caribbean, University of Florida researchers led a collaborative project, which has been awarded $231,093 to host a week-long, in-person workshop and five additional monthly virtual workshops on collaborative Digital Humanities (DH) and Caribbean Studies. The project is entitled Migration, Mobility, and Sustainability: Caribbean Studies and Digital Humanities Advanced Institute. The lead researchers will open a call in October to select participants for the program. Participants will gain DH teaching experience and in-depth knowledge of how to utilize digital collections in teaching. The Institute will provide training in tools, processes, and resources for developing lessons, modules, and/or courses. Twenty-six participants will achieve: 1) acquisition of concrete digital skills and DH approaches for teaching and research utilizing Open Access digital collections; 2) participation in an enhanced community of practice for DH; and, 3) creation of Open Access course and teaching materials that blend DH and Caribbean Studies.
Migration, Mobility, and Sustainability: Caribbean Studies and Digital Humanities Advanced Institute is the most recent of ongoing initiatives by UF and the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) for building capacity and community for Caribbean digital libraries, from digitization for access and preservation, to building upon digitized materials for research and teaching. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. The dLOC partner institutions are the core of dLOC. dLOC partners retain all rights to their materials and provide access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. This is the first Advanced Institute with UF and dLOC, and it will enable greater engagement with more community members on critical needs and opportunities in the digital age for research and teaching.
Laurie Taylor, PhD, UF’s digital scholarship librarian and the dLOC’s digital scholarship director, is the lead investigator, and is collaborating with the co-principal investigators, Hélène Huet, PhD, European studies librarian; Paul Ortiz, PhD, Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program in the Department of History; and Leah Rosenberg, PhD, professor of Caribbean Literature in the Department of English.