Welcome back for the fall semester! The Graduate Center Digital Initiatives (GCDI) and GC Digital Fellows have been hard at work developing programming, events, workshops, and opportunities to help you continue to learn and to develop your digital scholarly projects.

This semester, please take a moment to review what has changed, what has stayed the same, and how you can continue to find the same support and encouragement for your work that you’ve come to expect from us! The best way to stay connected is to check the GCDI website regularly. There, you will find all of our workshops, events, and grant opportunities on our calendar, as well as a slew of online resources to support your work this semester.

You can also join us for a growing list of virtual, hybrid, and in-person events this semester! Don’t miss our Digital Scholarship Lab Hybrid Open House on Wednesday, September 11th. Drop In at the Digital Scholarship Lab (Room 7414) from 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM or virtually at 1:30pm or 3:00pm. This event is free and open to the entire Graduate Center community; however, registration is required. When you come, you can expect to hear a short presentation about what GCDI offers, meet and chat with the Fellows, tour the programs we have to offer, and learn about how you can be more involved with the GCDI community.

The variety of our offerings means we have something for everyone. This semester we will be offering virtual and in-person workshops, as well as one-on-one consultations. We will also still be offering support through our working groups, such as the R User’s Group (RUG), the Python User’s Group (PUG), the Sound Studies and Methods Working Group, the Digital Archives Research Collective (DARC), and the GIS/Mapping Working Group. Our offerings are open to GC scholars at all levels of digital experience, including students at all stages of graduate research, as well as faculty and staff. Whether you are digitally driven, curious, or defiant, we hope you’ll join us!

Below we’ve highlighted a number of upcoming events and opportunities that may interest you. We also encourage you to join the GCDI Group on the Commons, subscribe to our calendar, follow us on LinkedIn, and be on the lookout for regular updates about our programs shared through your program’s listserv. It’s always good to know what’s going on with the GCDI, because you, yes you, are the #digitalGC.

Looking for assistance with your digital project?

One-on-one Consultations

Have a question about your digital project? GCDI staff are available to meet in-person at the GC and remotely – via Zoom, Teams, or phone – with GC students, faculty, and staff to talk through technical challenges as the university continues to conduct remote teaching, research, and work. Sign up for a 30-minute consultation through this form.

Open House

We will host an Open House at the GC Digital Scholarship Lab at the beginning of each year to introduce folks to the various resources GC Digital Initiatives has to offer and to assist individuals with questions related to their digital project. Our Fall 2024 Digital Scholarship Lab Open House will be held both in-person and virtually on Wednesday, September 11. Drop In at the Digital Scholarship Lab (Room 7414) from 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM or watch the Virtual Presentation at 1:30 PM or 3:00 PM. Check out our event page for more information about registration and what to expect!!

Looking for a community to learn with?

We have several working groups that focus on specific interests. Working groups are composed of students, faculty, and staff who are looking for other scholars with similar interests to share resources, advice and opportunities. These interdisciplinary groups connect through the CUNY Academic Commons, and some have developed Slack workspaces to keep in touch. Regular remote meeting dates are forthcoming and can be found on our calendar.

These groups include the Python User’s Group (PUG), the GIS/Mapping Working Group, the R User’s Group (RUG), the Digital Archives Research Collective (DARC), Humanidades Digitales (DH in Spanish), and Sound Studies and Methods Working Group. No experience is needed to join; only an interest in the central topic and community. Do also check out our blog post on how to get the most out of our working groups.

Want to get involved beyond the Graduate Center? Visit our Participate page to learn more about each of these groups and groups across CUNY and NYC!

Workshops

This year, GCDI will offer hands-on in person and remote online workshops on digital research tools for people of all skill levels. Workshops are free and open to any member of the Graduate Center community (learn how to get the most out of our workshops). Registration is required, You can select the workshop on the calendar and complete the workshop RSVP.

This semester we are offering a variety of workshops across September to November. These include:

Digital Safety in the Age of Surveillance  // In-peron on September 24 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

How do you DH?  // Virtually on October 7 @ 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

From Paper to Website  // In-person on October 17 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Beginning Game Design with Python // Virtually on October 24 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

And more to follow…

In order to be as responsive as possible (workshop space is limited), please:

1) Be sure to RSVP to the workshops.

2) If you realize you can’t make it, please RSVP again with the “Can’t go” option.

CUNY and GC Resources

Manifold Scholarship

As CUNY students, you have free use of the open source, digital publishing platform, Manifold. Manifold is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded collaboration between the GC, University of Minnesota Press, and Cast Iron Coding. On CUNY’s instance of Manifold you can publish your own scholarship (searching for mami & abuelita – dissertation, Queer and Trans Prison Voices – capstone), journals (Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy JITP), Open Education Resources (OER) such as: archival projects (Let My People Know, Realizing the Dream of a Black University), class projects & course materials (Black Diasporic Visions, Modern Art and OER Writing Seminar, Archives Unbound) teaching editions of public domain texts (The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), teaching handbooks (Teach@CUNY Handbook), and creative work such as poetry or personal essays (When We Had Cancer). Manifold projects are multimedia friendly and texts built in Manifold may be annotated using Manifold’s built-in social annotation tool. To learn about the project, its development, and the institutions using it, follow Manifold on GitHub, join the Manifold Users group on the CAC, and check out our Quick Guides, documentation and walkthroughs to get started using Manifold! If you have questions about using Manifold please contact Robin Miller or Manifold Graduate Fellows Cen Liu and Maura McCreight.

CUNY Academic Commons

As a CUNY student, you are eligible to register for an account on the CUNY Academic Commons. The Commons is a CUNY-created and run platform for building websites, creating and joining groups, and connecting  with peers across various spaces at the GC and beyond. Faculty, staff, and students at CUNY use the Commons to teach and take courses,  create academic portfolios, host websites for their research projects or academic department, and more!  Not only are you welcome to create your own websites using the WordPress framework offered on the Commons,  you can also take advantage of the Commons’ Group capabilities to share files, host private discussion forums, and send emails to group members. To learn more, check out the Commons’ About page, read the latest Commons News releases, browse featured groups and sites, and visit the Commons’ HELP pages for support with getting started.

GC Resources and Centers

Among the other acronyms you might see associated with GCDI are some amazing partners — the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (ITP) certificate program, the Futures Initiative, the Center for the Humanities, and the New Media Lab. The GC Library also offers great workshops, this nifty digital tools guide, and consultation with Data and Digital Projects Librarian Steve Zweibel. The in-house Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy also provides great articles and tool tips for incorporating digital methods in your teaching.

GCDI Online Resources

If you find yourself unable to attend a particular workshop, there are a number of asynchronous GCDI resources you can use! Our resources include tutorials, handouts, and reflections that cover topics such as tools, methods as data and databases, research design, mapping, programming (including python and R), project management, sound recording, sharing, and analysis, text analysis, and web development.

• Please visit the Digital Resource Guide for materials by current and former Digital Fellows.
• Check out the Digital Fellows’ Tagging the Tower blog for posts like:
  • Introduction to R Markdown by Yuxioa Luo
  • JavaScript or Python: Which is Better for Academics to Learn? by Chelsea Lane
  • Finding the Right Tools for Mapping by Olivia Ildefonso
  • Recap: Beginner’s Guide to Web-Scraping by Di Yoong 
  • A Conceptual Guide to Digital Academic Identity by Stefano Morello 
  • How do I solve [insert problem here] with Python? by Rachel Rakov
• Additional resources include the Digital Archive Research Collective, the Digital Dissertations Resource Guide, the entire curriculum of the GC Digital Research Institute AND the Digital Humanities Research Institute.

Please, don’t hesitate to contact the Digital Fellows with questions!

With best wishes for a productive and smooth semester,

your Digital Fellows,

Anna, Chen, Maggie, Parisa, Peyton, Silvia, Tuka, and Zach

Note: This post by GC Digital Fellow Tuka Al-Sahlani is updated from the post by GC Digital Fellows Rebecca Krisel in 2023, Zachary Lloyd in 2022, Param Ajmera in 2021 and Stefano Morello and Olivia Ildefonso for fall 2020. Previous versions were written or updated by Jojo Karlin for spring 2018, Kelsey Chatlosh in fall 2018, Javier Otero Peña in the spring of 2019, and Kristen Hackett in fall of 2019.