Parks Library establishes a digital scholarship laboratory

With a gift of $225,000 from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust of Muscatine, Iowa, Parks Library will establish a digital scholarship laboratory, which will provide a dedicated space where students and faculty from all areas of study can collaborate and partner with library experts to use emerging research techniques and technology to engage in digital scholarship.

A vibrant experiential learning space, the digital scholarship laboratory will be a place where users can apply digital scholarship techniques such as text encoding, geographic information system mapping, data mining and data visualization, which are becoming commonplace and expected by potential employers. These methods can be seen in our everyday lives.

For example, the media use the techniques to visually represent data such as maps of COVID-19 cases across the country, develop overlays of before-and-after aerial photographs documenting the destruction of natural disasters, and construct interactive timelines.

Another use is in the development of open educational resources, an important topic right now because they lower the cost to students by replacing expensive textbooks.

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