From Access to Interaction: Leveraging Digital Repositories to Advance Teaching, Learning, and Research

From Access to Interaction: Leveraging Digital Repositories to Advance Teaching, Learning, and Research

Date Presented:

9-11 Apr.

Abstract:

How can digital archives be made more open and accessible, both within and across institutions? Can new ways of accessing digitized objects truly improve the ways these objects and their physical counterparts are used in teaching, learning, and research? And how has the new emphasis on open online learning driven the way these questions are approached? This paper provides a case study in the use of digital material in scholarship and pedagogy, with particular focus on Mirador, an open-source (https://github.com/IIIF/mirador), scalable, high-resolution tool with annotation capability that makes use of an open API standard (specifically the International Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF) to support simultaneous interaction with digitized objects from multiple repositories worldwide. Beyond being developed as a next-generation tool for interaction with digitized library and museum objects, Mirador also serves a key role in Humanities instruction online, with its first public release coming in 2015 in the service of an interdisciplinary Massive Open Online Course focusing on the history of the Book (HUM 1x, offered via edX). This presentation will include a demonstration of Mirador, with particular emphasis on its role in fostering intimate, user-directed interaction with digitized objects in museums, libraries, and other repositories, both as a research tool and as an interoperable (LTI) resource for teaching and learning in the online environment.

Last updated on 06/08/2016