Digital Scholarship Camp 2026 Outline

Digital Scholarship Camp will be two meetings where we explore how we do digital projects in CDIL. This is intended as a basic introduction to concepts and tech via explorative learning and discussion that hopefully gets everyone thinking critically about digital scholarship and possibilities for their projects.

Day One:

• Intros
• Exploring existing projects, web literacy basics
• GitHub orientation
• Software and “development environment”

Day Two:

• Build demo collection
• Writing in markdown
• Discuss project ideas
• Exploring other digital scholarship areas

---

Icebreaker

• CollectionBuilder-Sheets collaborative collection
  • Explore Digital Collections, CDIL project, or some other repository. [Think about discovery features, search, Item pages, and URLs]
  • In our collaborative “ds-camp-2026” Sheet, add a row describing one Item you are interested in. [Spreadsheets + Metadata!]
• Intros: your name, your collection Item, academic background and interests, project idea(s), and experience with digital projects.
• See also:
  • LIS Best Meal
  • Digital Exhibit Lab
  • Digital Dramaturgy

Digital Scholarship at CDIL

Data:

• Wilderness Hearings
• Digitized/digital objects
• Metadata in Spreadsheets
• Text in Markdown

Templates:

• Iteration
• CollectionBuilder
• Oral History as Data

Static vs. Dynamic web:

• Dynamic web = WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, other CMS. –> a piece of software that you install on your server, that you have to continuously update and maintain.
• Static web –> some files (html, css, js, images) that you put on a server.
• Static web = “maintaining files, not software”.
• Static Web Methodology as a Sustainable Approach to Digital Humanities Projects

Examples:

• Devin, Sedimentation
• Andrew, make-believe

---

First Demo Collection

On GitHub

• GitHub orientation
• CB-Docs
• CollectionBuilder-CSV
• Generate from template
• Look around repository
• Edit “README.md” (Markdown, Commit)
• Edit “_config.yml” (YAML, Commit)
  • url
  • baseurl
• Activate GitHub Pages with Action
• View your demo site!

On local

Try it on your local machine:

• Open VS Code
• Git clone using VS Code (can also use GitHub Desktop or terminal). Choose a location that is not synced to a cloud service (OneDrive, Drive, DropBox, etc)!
• Orientation to VS Code (check settings and extensions)
• Open Terminal in VS Code (check terminal set up on windows)
• bundle install
• bundle exec jekyll s
• Ctrl + C

Orientation to development environment:

• Git
• (GitHub Desktop, optional)
• VS Code
• Ruby
• Jekyll
• CollectionBuilder

---

Second Demo Collection

On local

Add new data and explore:

• Download demo data:
  • psychiana_cbdemo_csv.csv
  • sbw.csv
  • postcards.csv
  • flora.csv
  • cities.csv
• Add file to repository “_data”
• Edit “_config.yml”
  • metadata
  • noindex
  • title, etc
• bundle exec jekyll s
• Configure stuff (theme.yml, configs)! Mess around!

Version control:

• Commit.
• Push.
• cb-docs Commit & Push
• Get Git!

Writing in markdown

Introduction to narrative writing using markdown and includes in demo collection.

• writing on the web concepts (headings, shorter, links, media)
• markdown concepts (Write Markdown Everywhere)
• markdown details
• using includes
• Add a page

Computation concepts with Liquid

Introduction to fundamentals of computation as represented in Liquid to create basic features in CB (create and display a list of filtered items).

• Liquid intro
• Liquid variables
• Liquid for loop
• Liquid conditionals

Working with Spreadsheets

Introduction to CSVs, Sheets, and the data used in CB.

Working with Files

• extensions
• filenaming
• formats
• sizes, preservation

Working with AI

• VS Code Copilot