Pioneering CaD@Pitt:

Panel Description:

This panel brings together scholars who have worked on data-oriented projects using library collections. These projects all took place during the course of a single semester and demonstrate various ways that scholars can use and extend library data. Scholars working with library data have curated themed subcollections of Library collections, created datasets for (computational) research and analysis, and analyzed textual data from collections materials to identify interesting features or patterns.

Partnerships with these researchers were enabled by the ongoing Collections as Data @ Pitt project, which aims to make library collections data more accessible for research, teaching, and learning.

Presenter Bios and Project Descriptions:

Kahlila Chaar-Pérez (she/they) works as a Reference Associate at the JKM Library at Chatham University and is a LEADING fellow at the People’s Media Record, the archive of the Movement Alliance Project, a grassroots organization dedicated to building power with community groups working at the intersection of race, technology and inequality. Her writings have appeared in Small Axe, Global South, and the anthology book Uncle Tom's Cabins: the Transnational History of America's Host Mutable Book. They are interested in exploring library pedagogy, digital scholarship, and civic data literacy through a critical framework that considers the marginalization of BIPOC, trans, and disabled people in library and information science. She also continues to research Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and Caribbean cultures and politics.

Kahlila’s Afro-Latin American Studies Collection seeks to provide the basis for an easily discoverable collection of materials pertinent to the study of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, from the origins of enslavement to today's emancipatory struggles. In doing so, she sought to make more visible library items that are not easily discoverable because of a racialized cataloging system.

Addison Eldin is a graduate student in Pitt’s English Composition department. Her work is focused on digital studies and computer history, with an emphasis on how these subjects can help instructors support undergraduate work through interpretive and technical engagement with digital media, culture, and technology.

Addison’s CaD project looked at three magazines that emphasize a marginalized positionality in their authorship and readership: The Ladder, Shooting Star Review, and Bitch. Text analysis was performed using Python, with results used to interpret how each magazine constructs and represents the shared identity under focus.

Ben Naismith is originally from Victoria, Canada, but has spent the last 20 years working in various countries and contexts in the field of Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL). Currently, Ben is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department where he is completing his dissertation. This research focuses on learners' vocabulary use in writing and the impact of statistical vocabulary features on experts' ratings. Ben’s research interests relate to vocabulary development, teacher pedagogy, second language acquisition, and learner corpora. It is this interest in learner corpora which led him to his work with the Digital Scholarship Services.

For his CAD project, Ben created an extension layer for the Bob Nelkin Collection of ACC-PARC Records. This extension layer applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to explore the data collection, process the data, and provide additional text information which may be of use to researchers.