The challenges and opportunities when working with a group of students in an international library via email, live Skype sessions, and WordPress blogging.

The State Department encourages partnerships with developing nations via their Virtual Student Foreign Service internship program. This past year I had the opportunity to work with the American Corner Library in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In Tajikistan, the infrastructure is poor – even in a US State Department-funded library – what other tools could help facilitate more robust discussions of issues of interest such as culture, education, and religion?

– Jennifer Pate

Scholarship is becoming increasingly digital and online, but inaccessible websites and digital content limit access for users with disabilities. While automated evaluation is not an adequate substitute for usability testing, we can employ web accessibility evaluation tools to help determine if content is accessible to users with accessibility needs.

This teach session would provide an overview of several free, web-based tools researchers, teachers, librarians, curators, archivists, and other content creators can use to evaluate website accessibility against recognized guidelines and create more accessible user experiences. To give you an idea of what to expect, Kim Smalley and I presented a similar session at HighEdWeb Alabama in June: bit.ly/hewebAL.

– Melissa Green

A local government archives established before local government archives were a “thing,” and long before “Describing Archives: A Content Standard” was conceived. Long-serving archivists with dedication to and knowledge of the community and its history… but no formal archival training. One-of-a-kind propriety software used to describe and catalog holdings. Collections housed in a century-old wooden train depot with no fire protection. If ever an archives has “gone rogue,” the Limestone County Archives, established 1980 in Athens, Alabama, is it.

So how do you rein in a rogue archives? And why should you bother? I propose a roundtable discussion session in which we tackle the ways in which all archives tend go a little bit rogue, and we compare the tools and resources available to us to help us align with ever-evolving professional standards and practices. Specifically, I’d like to discuss:

– Content management systems: ArchivesSpace, Archon, Archivists Toolkit, ContentDM, PastPerfect, Access database… check around and you’ll find that nearly every archives and special collections repository is using something different, or the same thing in a different way. At the Limestone County Archives, we’ve gone from an Access database to software created for us to limited use of PastPerfect to, just in the past week, installation of ArchivesSpace and the steep learning curve involved in getting started with that. What works? Why or why not? How can we help each other through this process?

– Archival training: Many small repositories are staffed by the local history buff and a group of volunteers, not necessarily graduates from the nearest archival studies program. Let’s talk about practical ways to provide basic archival standards and practices training to people who know and love their collections, but need to know how best to care for and provide access to those documents.

– Climate control and protection: A purpose-built repository is not always feasible, particularly in smaller communities where archives may be housed in whatever space is available. Let’s find ways to protect those physical documents, no matter where they are housed.

This whole discussion needs to be in the context of why it matters: It’s ultimately not about the numbers on the box, but about preserving and providing access to our past for future generations.

– Rebekah Davis

The NEH-funded Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project engages humanists, librarians, information scientists, and cultural heritage professionals with technologies, design standards, and accessibility issues associated with the use of digital environments. Participants in the 2-day Accessible Future workshops, repeated 5 times in different geographical regions, learn about digital environments and accessibility through readings, lectures, discussions, group activities, and presentations. Those interested in Accessible Future may learn more on the project website: www.accessiblefuture.org/.

I attended an Accessible Future workshop at Emory University in April and am happy to facilitate a session in which I share lessons learned and lead participants in an online resource evaluation and discussion activity similar to one held during the workshop.

– Melissa Green

I propose a talk session to explore some of the points that Miriam Posner presented in the keynote address to the Keystone Digital Humanities Conference, University of Pennsylvania, July 22, 2015. She is the coordinator of Digital Humanities at UCLA and a frequent author and speaker about the Digital Humanities. Point 1: Mapping platforms, including Google Maps, use a Cartesian model of space that embodies a colonialist project of empire building. While mathematicians may argue with this, the practice of visualizing space as flat with longitudes and latitudes grids the earth for identification and control. Point 2: Visualizing data tends to illustrate what is known when in fact scholars often realize that questions or parts thereof can be unanswered by lack of data or because they do not fit into predetermined categories. New programs and platforms, such as Topotime (visualizes time in nuanced ways with shapes, not chronological markers), are curatives that allow for uncertainty and approximations. Point 3: How accessible are the Digital Humanities? Are emphases on open source technology and freely available information on the Internet—and their formats—accessible in theory and in practice? We in Alabama probably know individuals and families with accessibility issues.

– Cynthia Kristan-Graham