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Digital Scholarship at UCSC

What We Support

The Digital Scholarship Department supports a wide range of digital methods and tools. Our librarians and staff possess a diverse spectrum of specialties and training, and we each hold advanced degrees and have extensive research experience, which positions us to not only help you learn a new digital tool but, more importantly, to think through the critical fit of particular digital methods and tools with your research questions and source material.

Below is a list of the digital methods we actively support.

Digital Methods We Support

2D Design – The Digital Scholarship Department is available to assist with a variety of digital design tools. We can provide assistance with research and assignment development with a design focus in mind. The DSC Lab also offers a wide range of up to date software packages to support digital design projects and visualization.

3D Design – We can offer robust advice and support for a wide range of 3D development and provide various tools to support the digital 3D lifecycle. Our computer lab in the DSC and our workstations in the DSI contains up to date 3D modeling software packages. We also support the 3D visualization in virtual reality at our VizLab and 3D printing in the DSI.

Audio – The DSC checkouts a wide range of audio equipment and contains two rooms dedicated to audio recording and production. Digital Scholarship staff also specialize in audio production, storytelling, and podcasting. We can consult on technical needs as well as audio project workflow.

Digital Exhibits – Digital exhibit tools range from simple to complex. Robust and flexible systems can be used to create in-depth websites (Scalar) or online versions of a physical exhibit (Omeka). For smaller projects, there are tools that focus on specific ways of displaying information. For example, we use ThingLink to annotate images with pictures, text, and video, and TimelineJS to organize information in an interactive timeline. We can help you narrow down the right tool to meet your needs.

Digital Productivity – We promote and support digital tools that facilitate group communication and collaboration, and provide task organization and time management options, and boost productivity. Using these tools can boost the productivity of group work projects, class assignments, or aid in digital scholarship creation.

Digitization – The DSC and the DSI have equipment to digitize documents, photos, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, or create 3D scans of objects. This equipment is available for self-service use. To get started, contact us for a consultation on equipment use and how to reserve the equipment you need.

Mapping – Also known as GIS, or Geographic Information Science, digital maps can enhance both analysis and presentation of research. We support entry level to advanced applications of GIS, including commonly used tools like ArcGIS, QGIS, and StoryMaps.

Network Analysis – Networks can reveal patterns of connection within your research subject. We offer advice and consultation on structuring network data and analyzing and visualizing that data via tools like Net.Create, Gephi, R, and Python.

Text Analysis – Text analysis can consist of word counts, phrase usage, word clouds, prevalence of phrases or words throughout a document, comparing multiple documents, topic modeling, or natural language processing (such as sentiment analysis). The type of analysis you do will depend on what questions you want to ask of your set of texts. We can help you get started using simple tools for basic analysis or put you on the right track to use more complex tools, such as R or Python.

Video – In addition to the equipment available for checkout, the Digital Scholarship Department is available to provide assistance getting started with your video project. We can help guide research and pedagogy with knowledge-based assistance with camera operations, video production, editing, and post-production practices and help design projects with these methods in mind. We also provide a variety of video editing software and post-production packages in the DSC Lab.