[“Peacoat’” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Perry: Welcome to the University of Washington Libraries Digital Scholarship Summer Immersion podcast. This podcast is a companion piece to the Digital Scholarship Summer Immersion program, or DSSI and is meant to give you a greater insight to the world of digital scholarship at the UW Libraries. In each episode, we interview a UW Libraries staff member whose work impacts or intersects with digital scholarship in some way. I’m Perry Yee and I’m the Online Learning Support Manager for the Libraries.

Elliott: I’m Elliott Stevens, the English Studies Librarian and the Research Commons Librarian. And we are the teaching team for the DSSI Podcast Track. For the last three years, we have offered online digital storytelling workshops using video and podcasting formats. We thought this podcast would be a great way to introduce ourselves, introduce our colleagues, and give you an idea of the breadth of digital scholarship support at the Libraries.

Our guest today is Verletta Kern. Verletta is a Digital Scholarship Librarian at the UW Libraries and she works in the Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit. Verletta, welcome to the show.

Verletta: Thanks so much for having me.

Elliott: So, we’re going to start with some very personal questions. And our first one is: what’s your favorite thing about summer?

Verletta: I really enjoy gardening so my favorite thing about the summer is getting to plant lots of new flowers and plants and we have lots of fruits and vegetables that we grow in our garden. So being able to go out and pick what we get and do some canning, making some jam, and those sorts of things. I really enjoy that part of summer.

Elliott: Do you have any specific summer stories to share, maybe related to gardening?

Verletta: I grew up in the Midwest so some of my fond and not so fond memories from high school…I worked de-tasseling corn. It was a lot of hot summers in the humid Midwest, in corn fields, um, watching the clouds roll in before a storm and trying to get it done in a hurry and out of the corn field. Because you don’t want to be the tallest thing in the area when the thunder storm is coming through and the lightning is coming down.

Elliott: Whoa, that went from very idyllic to really kind of omniscient.

[Elliott, Verletta, and Perry laugh.]

Verletta: Very dark all at once!

Elliott: Fantastic! And I think maybe we’ll explore summer stories together in DSSI this summer. So now we’d like to ask you some questions about your expertise related to digital scholarship. And what we’re curious about is how does your work relate to digital scholarship?

Verletta: Yeah, so I am the Digital Scholarship Librarian here at Seattle campus of the University of Washington Libraries. My role is really a concierge role. So, I meet with faculty and students and listen to the projects that they are interested in undertaking and try to connect them with folks in the Library who can help them with their projects whether that’s looking at copyright sort of questions to long-term preservation of their materials. So, the range of things.

Elliott: As our Digital Scholarship librarian at the UW Libraries, and I think a visionary of digital scholarship, why do you think it’s so important? Why is this a focus for us?

Verletta: I…gosh, that’s a really good question. I really am excited about digital scholarship in terms of thinking of it as knowledge mobilization. So, trying to get the work that we’re doing in the academy into the hands of the people and that’s what really excites me about this work. It’s trying to share the amazing research and instruction that happens here with a broader audience.

Elliott: Seems that people want, people are curious about digital scholarship at the University of Washington, or people want to do it. But something I’m wondering is, how do you think…by doing digital scholarship, someone can become a better research, a better academic, a better scholar? Is there some relationship between doing digital scholarship that can make you better at your actual scholarship?

Verletta: I think it’s always hard to take what you’re doing, I think at a research level, and trying to translate it to others. I know I’ve found that when I’m trying to teach something and I may know it really well, but trying to figure out how to communicate it to a classroom is always a challenge for me. It makes me better at what I do to be able to communicate that in a better way. I would hope digital scholarship, by getting research out into the hands of the people, it helps researchers become better researchers. And to think about how the public is involved in the process of research and how they should be involved in the process of research.

Elliott: And you were just talking about teaching. As digital scholarship librarian, you do a lot of one-on-one consultation with people. You do a lot of workshops. What are ways, you think, people who get involved with digital scholarship, how can they teach it? How have you seen people teach digital scholarship or how could people incorporate it into their lesson plans and syllabi?

Verletta: Yeah, I think there’s a variety of different ways you could incorporate it into your syllabi. I think, you know, conversations about copyright and how the things we are creating can be shared out to wider audiences. What rights do you want attached to the materials you’re creating? I think that’s really important. And then I’ve also seen a really interesting movement in teaching metadata – that’s data about data. So, when we’re doing searching for images, why is it that certain images come up when we search for certain terms when others don’t? Having a really fundamental understanding of metadata and how, as researchers, we’re applying that knowledge to things we’re creating and how that impacts what people will access or how they’ll access the materials later. I think it’s a really important teaching tool as well.

Perry: Verletta, say someone is listening to this podcast and they’re like, “digital scholarship sounds awesome! I want to get involved.” What would be your recommended first steps for someone who just wants to learn more, do more, or engage more in the conversation?

Verletta: I would say, “Come meet with us!” We’re happy to chat with you. You’re learning from a variety of experts from this podcast and they’re all great resource folks. During the academic year, a colleague – Beth Lytle in Learning Technologies – and I offer office hours in the Research Commons. So, we’re happy to sit down with folks and just brainstorm ideas. You don’t have to come in with a really well-baked project. You can come in and say, “I want to do something in digital scholarship. My research is in this area.” And we will help you brainstorm things.

Perry: You mentioned experts and I would say you, Verletta Kern, are an expert in digital scholarship. So where do you turn to learn more?

Verletta: There are a bunch of different places. I find I learn a lot from Twitter and just following different folks who are in the digital scholarship, digital humanities community. The University of Victoria does the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and that’s been a really great resource to learn more as well. So, following their listservs. In Libraries, we’re big on listservs [laughs]. That’s been really, really useful for me, too.

Perry: Great! So, as we wrap up this interview, Verletta – how do you see digital scholarship evolving at the University of Washington?

Verletta: I think we’re in very early days of our digital scholarship program and the DSSI is hopefully the start and the beginning of something bigger that will be coming. I’m really excited. I think, you know, we’re looking in the Libraries at dedicating some space to this work and hopefully that will be coming in the next couple of years. And then also growing this great community of instructors for DSSI and folks who are participating in, hopefully, will be doing more education, more workshop, and more integration into the classroom. So, I’m excited about the future!

Perry: That’s amazing. I think a lot of people we are interviewing are very, very excited so that’s telling.

Verletta: That’s great!

Elliott: What do you think would be an ideal place in which someone could work? Or what are ideal ways of working? Or what would be – you don’t necessarily have to list tools – but what would you see are ways of working that are best for people or that are maybe futuristic or going toward the future? It seems there are things that people are doing right now – Omeka, Scalar, podcasting in Audacity or something like that. Are there places that you see the field of digital scholarship going to that are a little bit more futuristic?

Verletta: I’m trying to think in terms of spaces here. We have an ideation team that’s been thinking about developing an Open Scholarship Commons that would hopefully provide kind of a one-stop shop for people on campus wanting to do this work. So right now, we kind of bump people from the libraries to maybe the eScience Institute to get some help with more technical work. I think it’d be great to have, you know, some of the campus partners like that in this one space together so we’re not bumping people around. I think…

Elliott: We’re using the word “open” – in what ways does that concept of open, or openness, how in the world does that relate to digital scholarship or to a physical place? Or to a way of working or to research? What do you mean by “open” when you say “open scholarship?”

Verletta: I think you know, we’re thinking of it, again, in sort of that knowledge mobilization context. Trying to get the good work and the research that’s happening here in the academy out to broader audiences. So that’s one definition of the word “open.” I think, also, with Open Scholarship Commons space, thinking about a space that has a variety of expertise and tools and technology that’s open to everybody on campus regardless of disciplines or what discipline you’re from. I know in some departments they have certain pieces of technology but only that department can access it. We want to make sure that what we provide is open to everyone. So, I think in those two ways, that’s kind of how I’m thinking about the word “open” and framing it. And then open, I guess, to everyone from undergraduates to researchers, faculty….

Elliott: So, it sounds like between all this movement and all this revision though, is there a problem with people not saving things or preserving things? Is that a problem? Is that part of digital scholarship?

Verletta: Yeah, absolutely.

[Elliott laughs.]

Verletta: I wouldn’t be a good librarian if I said no. A lot of digital scholarship is about documenting the process of creation as well which is not always the sexiest part [laughs] of digital scholarship. I think people are really interested in the flashy end product, but it’s really beneficial for researchers along the way who come to your project and who want to build on your project or create a project in a similar style to yours to have that sort of documentation and documented process on how you created this. It’s sort of like, you know, for scientific research, you wouldn’t just say, “Here are my findings for this particular research!” You’d include your methods of how you got to those findings. I think, you know, that piece is really important to digital scholarship. How a project changes over time that we’re documenting and making sure we’ve got those changes tracked. And then yes, preservation is hugely important, too. Saving all of the files. We typically ask you to save them in three different places in three different locations. And then the different types of files, too. So, you may be doing an oral history and you may edit your interview down. Or you may be doing a podcast…so, making sure you have the full, uncut version of the file later. You may need it later; you never know what may happen with your project down the road. But making sure you also have the shorter version and the longer version.

Perry: So last words of wisdom to any newbies or experts. What do you want them to know?

Verletta: Don’t be intimidated by digital scholarship. Everyone is learning at the same time. We’re all learning new things. I would say it’s a very iterative process. It’s not like a typical publication where you write your book and it’s published and on the shelf and done. It’s constantly, you know, the topic that you’re coming back and revisiting and building on more and more. So that’s where I see digital scholarship. I see it as a long road.

[“Peacoat’” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Perry: That’s all the time we have for today. Check out the show notes for a link to the transcript for today’s recording. And subscribe to the DSSI Podcast on iTunes and Google Play and wherever you get your podcasts.

Music for this episode is provided by Blue Dot Sessions. Their song, Peacoat, served as our intro and outro music. Check them out at www.sessions.blue for recordings that are Creative Commons licensed for noncommercial work.

Thanks to Verletta for chatting with us. And a big thanks to you for listening to the DSSI Podcast. Catch you on the next episode.