 Um, at this point, we're going to go to the next presentation before the break. This is the work that's being done at the University of Arizona on what they are calling the digital border lines, Borderlands initiative, which is dealing with data intensive scholarly work around the borderlands between the US and Mexico. It's a really very interesting kind of multifaceted project. We have four presenters on this. Megan sense any Veronica Ries. I'm sorry, Ries Escadero and a lot of partner. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to them. Can you see my screen. The presentation. Alex good. Thank you, Cliff. On behalf of our project team really happy to be with you today I'm Sean Sutton Dean of University Libraries at the University of Arizona. And today we're going to share some information on our project that's in process right now the digital borderlands project which focuses on integrating library services into research workflows here at the University of Arizona. And we're going to talk about the origins of humanity scholarship on the US Mexico borderlands. So I'll provide a brief overview and then we'll dig a little deeper into the details. Next slide please. So our project team presenters who are here today and order of presentation myself also as PI for the project. Megan sense me is co PI as well as head of our research engagement department here at UA libraries and Veronica Ries Escadero is co PI and the Catherine be a lot ahead of special collections here at U of a libraries. We're at a really high level here. One, we're really grateful to the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for their generous support of this project, and also want to acknowledge this project is inspired by work that was done at the University of Calgary library grant a few years back. And we really appreciate all the work that was done at Calgary that helped lay the groundwork on which we are now building an additional kind of version of this model. I really appreciate Tom Hickerson, John Bros and Leonora crema who recently published an article on the Calgary model in college and research libraries and we put the link here if you'd like to learn more about that project. Now those of you who are familiar with the Calgary model will see some similarities but some important differences and how we're approaching this work at a root level, we are dispersing two rounds of four grants each round. To UA faculty led research teams, the grants can range up to $60,000 a piece, and these are for one year projects so we're approaching the end of cohort one, we're in the RFP phase for cohort to the objective of this project is really to use the grants to facilitate the integration of library services resources and expertise into these workflows. And you'll see a little bit later we don't leave it completely open ended as to which library services can be utilized. We're pretty directional in laying out the options for the research teams to consider as they're putting together their, their proposals so more on that in just a moment. A few of the distinctive features of this project. One, we are really focusing on data intensity intensive humanities research, and while we are defining data pretty broadly or allowing the proposals to define it pretty broadly. We are interested in a very intentional use of data and various forms to inform this research and its findings. We're also specifically interested in how data intensive methodologies in this area can work with the humanities and partnership with the libraries. Although we're happy to see that many of the proposals are very interdisciplinary and have certainly a humanities focus but bring in many other disciplines as well, which is something that we hope to see and indeed are seeing related to that an aspect we're really emphasizing in the RFP is data storytelling. So, the idea that the data and form some form of story some form of analysis that is very accessible not just a specialist in the field but also to the general public students and others and so we really want the applicants to be thinking about what kind of storytelling can you do what kind of methodologies can you use that really help to interpret analyze and present the data in a way that's widely understandable and accessible. We also require focus on the US Mexico borderlands which is of course a very multifaceted subject area, but we do that for a couple of reasons. One, the US Mexico borderlands research is really an institutional priority at the University of Arizona we have a large cohort of existing researchers in this area across disciplines. So our thinking is we knew we would have a solid constituency of potential applicants on campus. Secondly, the University of Arizona is a Hispanic serving institution and we feel that this focus aligns very well with supporting the university's commitments around that designation and different areas of research teaching and learning and experience that center. HSI designation. And then, finally, the University of Arizona libraries are really interested in how we can be facilitators of this kind of research across different library services, including digital scholarship support services data services but also our special collections as one of the top archival holdings of borderlands materials in the country so that's another asset that can be brought to bear in these projects. Finally, as the granting agency we use that leverage to require open access for all research outputs that we're funding through these projects. So the research teams know that coming in they need to be thinking upfront about how their work will be made openly accessible. That is both to support the library's commitment to open access as one of our fundamental fundamental values, but also again this idea that we want this research to be widely accessible to folks within United States within Mexico and indeed around the world. So as the granting agency we do require open access for all outputs and a tangible commitment to that with the library serving in a partnership role. So that's kind of the basic outline of what we're up to here. I'm going to turn it over to Alana to tell us a little bit more about the proposal development process which is a really critical aspect of this to ensure success, both for the research teams as well as the libraries providing the kind of services and expertise that will be required for their success. Over to you Alana. Thanks Sean. As Sean mentioned the proposal development process is a pretty critical part of the project we're doing here. So applicants in the Digital Borderlands seed grants are required to participate in this commercial proposal development process that includes attending a four hour proposal development session, and also getting some deeper consultation with library personnel. And one of the key things that we do in these workshops is to introduce the proposal to introduce the digital Borderlands initiative to the applicants. So we share information about the project's influences like the work of our colleagues at the University of Calgary and their success in building out new research services using a similar approach. We talk about the efforts of the United Frontiers project to map digital humanities work in the Borderlands. And the workshop includes a hands on activity where participants are invited to explore a variety of digital humanities projects that look at questions about the stories being told. So we're getting used in those projects and the scope of those projects, providing all of this context prepares applicants to apply for the funding with an understanding of the overall goals of the initiative and the potential scope of a project that has a maximum of $60,000 in funding, and a one year performance period. So our goal here is to manage expectations and shape realistic project timelines and it's been really successful so far. The other thing we do is we scaffold the proposal development process itself. So during the workshop we review each of the required elements of the proposal and allow participants to ask questions and get clarifications and ensure that after going through the intensive application process. We're not getting applications that we have to reject because they're missing elements. And then we also help to establish connections between the researchers and library personnel. Applicants are introduced to library personnel through a series of pre recorded lightning talks that cover the library services that are supported through the grant. So these are sessions were initially planned in a pre COVID context. And one of the things we noticed in our shift to offering the sessions remotely over zoom was that having a pre recorded content allowed for greater consistency across the sessions. It allowed us to incorporate the feedback of a larger number of library personnel without having to wrangle. We have 10 15 different people in one small zoom conference. And it also helped us to ensure the applicants were starting the process with the same information. And then we also have library consultants join the last hour of the workshops and applicants are able to share information about their projects and get feedback, allowing them to begin the deeper consultation process with library personnel, where they're able to meet one on one or in small groups with folks to scope the library services for their projects and solicit solicit letters of attestation for the proposal. So it's a really exciting part of the process. We've seen a lot of folks who maybe don't get funded, come back to the library with relationships that they've established and ask about different ways they can incorporate library services into their work outside of the grant. And it's a really great sign that that these relationships are taking and that we're helping to adopt the service model. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the projects that we funded in our first round we've just finished our second call for proposals and are in the review process now. And we also have these four ongoing projects. So the border hub reporting on race and ethnicity in the border lands from 1882 to 1924 is a project that builds on an existing relationship between library personnel and faculty in the history journalism, Spanish and Portuguese departments. And it allows us to produce a web based platform that serves as a centralized hub for data focused humanities research teaching and digital storytelling that brings historical intent and context to contemporary questions about race and ethnicity in the border lands. We've incorporated library services from special collections, including digitization of special collections materials and consultation on metadata and digital curation and presentation. And they've also incorporated some data science support, as well as text mining support support from our catalyst studios which is our maker space and beyond. And they've also started to incorporate support for mapping and GIS using story maps as one of their outputs. We partnered with several community organizations in Arizona so they're working with the Arizona Historical Society, is being mining and historical museum, and the Douglas oral history project, as well as the new no gallas community development. All of the projects that I'll talk about have some community partners and as we go further in our presentation. We'll talk a little bit more about the importance of the way that we're asking people to approach community work. But it's, it is a central component of each of these projects. The next project that we funded in the first round is a project called detained voices from the migrant incarceration system. We're working collaboratively with former detainees to document their experiences in detention through a combination of multi-lingual written visual and audio forms. Detainee testimonials are archived alongside correspondence art and digital storytelling that contextualizes the growth of the migrant detention industry, presenting a synthesis of the personal and political repercussions of the modern day internment. They've incorporated library services including support for oral history, metadata and permissioning, as well as building out a digital archive in Omeca, and they've partnered with the Florence immigrant and refugee rights project to help make this project a reality. The next project I'll talk about is one called forensic citizenship in the borderlands. This is a visual and oral history project that documents, analyzes and shares the stories of civilian forensic expertise on both sides of the Arizona Sonora border. They work with community organizations, such as the Madres Vospedora de Sonora and the Colibri Center for Human Rights to create an interactive website highlighting the work of people doing forensic recovery work in the borderlands. And they're producing videography of the landscape alongside oral history interviews and a binational map displaying the GPS locations where they found or identified human remains in the desert. They're incorporating oral history, GIS, and consulting as well as support for building an Omeca platform. And the final project that I'll share is one called the Raramari Dressmakers of Chihuahua City. It's a documentary film project that tells the story of a Raramari community in northern Mexico who have been forced by issues, such as ongoing food crisis due to prolonged drought, as well as growers taking over farmland to plant marijuana and poppies. And so these communities have been forced out of their traditional homelands and made to migrate to government-funded settlements in Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez, where they struggle to maintain autonomy over their culture and traditions. This project narrates the way in which the Raramari women uphold their sharing economy and identity through dressmaking. They're collaborating with the Oasis community in Chihuahua City, and they've incorporated support from the Catalyst Studio, special collections, digitization of materials, as well as Omeca support. And I'm going to put a link in the chat to a story map that goes a little bit more into details about these projects because they're all really beautiful and deep. And it's very hard to share all of the great information about them in such a short span of time. And then we've also seen now with the close of our second proposal period, some really exciting projects coming in that are dealing with issues such as climate, biology, disability, water justice, and community history, as well as housing discrimination. So we're excited to see what what the review board selects for our next round of projects. And with that I'm going to hand it off to Megan, who is going to talk a little bit about lessons learned in our first round. Yeah, so we learned a lot by engaging with the applicants during the proposal development process and then by collaborating with awardees from round one. There were three areas where we found projects were consistently needing more support and attention than they initially anticipated. Data management, rights and risk management, and project management. By increasing data management discussions, especially in the second round, we've been able to work with awardees to think about various aspects of their project work as data. There's things like collaborative file management and standardized file naming strategies. But with these digital projects, it's also helpful to think through the different components of each project with the applicants, so that we can help them identify which parts of the work should be prioritized for long term preservation, and which parts might be more ephemeral. We also have really useful conversations about the fact that a lot of what looks fresh and engaging in 2022 will appear dated in the not too distant future despite the fact that the content being presented will remain important and relevant. Distinguishing the content from its digital representation, we were able to develop strategies for long term content stewardship and strategies for documenting and contextualizing initial representations that may become obsolete over time. We discovered that when we required a single pre application consultation with the data management specialist applicants routinely sought to write in further data management consults at different points throughout their projects. It suggests to us that the applicants themselves readily understood the value of these conversations and adopted the mindset that data management is a continuous process throughout their work, rather than a checkbox during the planning phase and a headache at the end. While working with our first round of funded projects, we also encountered some sticky challenges associated with rights, risk and data ethics. We really required deeper consultations with our scholarly communications and research services librarians. The first major issues related to a fair use assessment for a drawing that a young person in an immigrant detention center had made depicting a certain infamous mouse. We resulted in really significant conversations with the project team about how to incorporate four factor fair use considerations within the broader context of vulnerable populations to determine appetite for risk among project participants and content creators. Another area that emerged as a point of active discussion related to institutional review board applications. And whether to pursue IRB applications within the context of oral histories and journalistic inquiry can be really nuanced, and it can predetermine which avenues a project might take over time. Similarly, the IRB does not address a range of emerging web based data collection methods that raise really important questions about ethical use of data. The conversations with one of our round two applicants about scraping Twitter data became a really important feature of our proposal development work. We were able to discuss potential ethical concerns, while also walking through the logistics of data collection and discussing how those data are sampled. Our experiences suggest that these are areas where libraries and research offices might start to collaborate to expand some of our programming to address new topics in responsible conduct of research. One final point of interest for digital borderlands in particular is the issue of cross border copyright regimes. There is significant variation between us and Mexican copyright laws that really warrants deep discussion, especially for by national digital projects. And so this is an ongoing area of conversation for us. The third area that required significant engagement on our part was supporting awardees as they managed complex projects. They required coordinating across business offices to help awardees understand institutional policies, providing consultation on scoping work and setting project expectations for graduate student labor, and investigating strategies for optimizing collaborative collaborative access across a range of digital tools and platforms. While this work is specific to the seed grant strategy of our project. It did reveal potential areas for programming and consultation, where the libraries can share their expertise with scholars. Next slide. I also want to briefly discuss how several of our earliest findings from our first award cycle informed strategic and operational planning at the University of Arizona libraries. During the 2021 fiscal year our libraries embarked upon a year long process of future state planning that directly coincided with the first phase of the digital borderlands project. Our future state efforts resulted in significant reorganization around three key areas, student learning and engagement, research engagement and collection services. The research engagement department now consists of three units with digital and data services incorporated throughout. We have the research incubator that data cooperative and scholarly communication. Our experiences with the proposal development workshops cemented the value of prioritizing early engagement in the research process. In creating a research engagement department, we established a new research incubator unit that focused on providing support for research planning data collection and reuse data management planning and evidence synthesis. Our cooperative unit includes support for data science GIS and digital scholarship, and it also currently hosts our research data repository pilot, which will be integrated into a scholarly communication unit later this year. We also brought a former content and collections librarian into the scholarly communications unit to provide more concerted support for open educational resources as part of our goal to advance open access to resources and to build out our library publishing footprint. Borderlands was also our very first pilot initiative for exploring reclaim hostings domain of one's own for digital scholarship services, and we're now assessing further directions for how to integrate domain of one's own into services that are focused on community engaged research and community archiving. On that note, I will turn it over to Veronica to talk a bit more about lessons learned on her end. I apologize to my, my fellow speakers here because I'm just coming off of medical leave and I'm a little bit rusty but I'm happy to be here. I will talk a little bit about the kind of the practicalities of this here in a second but I wanted to sort of start off by saying that, given its inherent cross disciplinary nature. The US Mexico borderlands has the opportunity to make significant contributions to diversifying representation in the digital humanities, which has been heavily critiqued over the past decade for centering the research and concerns of white Anglophone scholars. So with this in mind and our goal has always been to have, at least in the special collections arena is to have material so that primary sources material so that we can enhance the, the historical record and add more materials that would be relevant to the communities in our US Mexico borderlands. So some of our opportunities that we saw with the grant and working with our faculty is that we had opportunities to use some of the existing digital content. But along with that of course we have limitations with machine readable. There were limitations with the machine readable content because we had material that was scanned many years ago and of course they're not up to date to this point at to the state sorry. The other piece then that we did see though is to further our digitization goals along the with materials related to the US Mexico borderlands, certainly with the border hub project which has selected quite a few collections to fully digitize, we were able to contribute to that digitization so that the faculty would have the material but also so that we could have the material incorporated to our collections, which is in line or in alignment with our goals to provide more more content in that area. Some of the challenges that we have faced in in these digital realm and Megan alluded to this is that we have had to really talk with the participants in scoping their projects. So let's walk them through a lot of the intricacies of digitization project planning that we maybe didn't anticipate fully, but it is certainly getting us stronger in our consultation role from our colleagues here in special collections to consult with faculty on on how to go about digitization project. And if you want to go on to the next one. So these here with research methodologies and border studies. There was a work that was not too long ago published it was to reigns new directions and border research methodology ethics and practice, which acknowledged as the title says you know the importance of racing methodological ethical questions when researching in a transnational context. So because a lot of these projects are community center. And it's this, this practice really has is relatively new it's, it's not so new and indigenous research methodologies, but it's new and in an academic arena and how we look at it, how we see it we've been used to doing IRB. But it doesn't necessarily encompass like, for instance, oral history projects, which have not been considered research per se. And so we wanted to make sure that the criteria encouraged relationships were set long before the proposals and the award period for sure because we understand that in having community centered research we want to have equal partnership with both the faculty who are working or the or the partners that are working. That are copy eyes in the projects but also with the communities that they're working with the research tends to be because of how I think because of how we set up that that projects or that proposal. But they center on mutual reciprocity and that's something we discussed in the workshops is to ensure that whatever the projects are that it's beneficial both to the communities that they're working with. And of course as well to enhance the research that the faculty are working on. And then of course centering border studies, as I think somebody mentioned earlier, furthers the library and university goals. So we're not doing something that's completely outside of our realm. We wanted to make sure that we for support what is happening on campus already with the border lab for instance, through the Confluent Center, which is an effort to enhance border studies and have cross disciplinary research across campus. And for us in special collections to include some of our consultation role that we've had with whether academics or community members who are looking to do projects like this. In addition to then adding more digital content to the to the record. I was, I am Catherine be well I kind of special collections, but I was also in the sort of serving as interim borderlands curator that's my, my role has been that for quite a few years. And so the, the, sorry, losing my thoughts here. Yes, we as a, as a team, recognize that at the core of humanistic, humanistic approach to research is understanding the human, the human condition as scholars investigate to better understand communities and cultures. Border studies research naturally calls for working in a binational and transnational sphere. So we wanted to ensure that that was a possibility with these projects. But that is it for me, I think we're set or we're going back to Alana or Sean sorry. It's a pardon me back to me again for a little wrap up before the Q amp a so these kinds of projects naturally bring about questions on replicability and sustainability so I want to take a couple minutes to share some thoughts from the team on that. And lastly, the strategy on which this project is based is to use funding to inspire faculty to think about ways to integrate library services into this kind of research in this subject domain, comprehensively. There's a real strong linkage between, yes, the funding gets their attention. But what we want the funding to be is a bridge towards deep collaboration. And the hope of course is that the faculty members who are funded, moving forward we'll see the libraries as even more instrumental to their future research endeavors, but also as Alana mentioned earlier, even the equity proposals that are not successful. We're starting to build a relationship there that can lead to greater collaboration and partnership with those groups as well. And then in terms of scale, we hope that they will tell their colleagues and peers, how instrumental we've been and that that can help spread the word around. Speak just for a second about kind of scalability because I think that's important here in terms of replicability. So, to our mind, this kind of approach can be scaled at a very large or medium or small level depending on what your circumstances are so. In my view, you could scale down the number of awards, the amount of money offered if that's what's possible to you and I think projects like this have the potential to be attractive to funding bodies within a university like a provost office or a research office. I just want to acknowledge that you can definitely scale this kind of approach according to your resources. The ultimate goal for us is for this project to really help to advance the cause of library engagement throughout the research workflow from conceptualization, through execution, through dissemination, and as Megan outlined that model really informed how we structured our own research engagement department during this process in a parallel fashion. And then finally, it's important to acknowledge the strategic balance between consultative roles for the libraries in balance with deep integration into research workflows. We probably couldn't handle 20 of these at a time. In fact, I'm sure we couldn't logistically and we scale we scaled it to do four at a time. And it's just being realistic that in our view the library should be able to strike an appropriate balance long term beyond this project to say, we have expertise that can be provided to you in a consultative manner a fairly lightweight manner to help your research process but we also have the potential to be deeply integrated partners in your research process to and different faculty members on different projects will have different needs, but we're trying to find a way to sustain both understanding that the deeper partnership can be very demanding on FTE and resources. But we do feel that there is an appropriate balance to be struck so that we are deeply integrated partners, as well as more lightweight consultants in these kinds of digital scholarship and data focused research areas. So that's it for our presentation. We do have a few minutes and are happy to open it up to your questions. If you have any. I should also note that on the online program for the online CNI conference there is a link under our project description to our project website. You can find more details there including our call for proposals and some more in depth information about the library services that are part of this project. So take your questions if you haven't. Thanks. Thank you very much, all of you for a really comprehensive look at that work. A very interesting product program. It really is a program to not a project. I'd really welcome questions, either in the chat or if somebody'd like to just ask a question. Alison. Hi, thanks. Thanks for that presentation that was great. And I don't know this is an easy way to answer this question but I was just thinking about the fact you have, you know, four projects probably so you can be able to manage expectations as you say and maintain the work. Do you have a sense of with with your library staff and librarians that worked on these projects was there a lot of was it the same people working in all four projects or how much overlap was there in terms of trying to get on it when we're all these projects being done at the same in the same time period I got the sense that they were but just a couple questions around I guess those logistics. Let's start with that. So we did have two separate calls for proposals round one and round two. In round one projects had the option of starting with a June 1 date or a September 1 state, mostly so that faculty could decide how they best wanted to use those crucial summer months. So that was the end of a project. We had developed a process of attestation for library faculty, who were consulting on projects to provide information both on what their capacity was across all potential projects, as well as what they anticipate their contribution to any given project applying. And I will say that was something that we adjusted between round one and round two, we, we, I think created a simpler form for the librarians to librarians and library staff to estimate what they thought their contribution would be. And what was really interesting is, you know, we had some worries at the beginning that, you know, maybe like our GIS specialist would get super overloaded, or digitization services would get super overloaded. So we were able to look at the applications as a cohort and make some decisions within our review board selection criteria to try to think about the cohortive approach of like, let's get a group together that is doing enough that touches different library services that we really are exercising the broader model. And I think that has been helpful. That said, I think the area that got the most hit was probably requests around digitization of some of our special collections that are yet to be digitized. Would you say, I think Veronica's nodding. I don't know if Veronica or a lot of have more to add on that front. Yeah, I'll start but I think Alana has probably a better picture but it is something to be aware of that faculty weren't as I guess knowledgeable of the digitization project planning piece so we've had we have had to do quite a bit of, you know, running through those those pieces and maybe Alana I don't know if you want to share more about that. I can just say that the, you know, the great thing about having this grant is that it is really allowing the library to learn a lot of lessons and so some of those lessons have been, you know, helping library personnel figure out how they can scope their services and and kind of manage their time and expectations and doing that kind of consultation because as Sean said we're looking towards replicability and sustainability in a way that we don't have the continued funding to do. We need to figure out how to make this part of the library service. The other thing is, is with the lessons that we've learned right in the first round there were a lot of questions about digitization and all of these things that required the library to do a little bit of like work to come up with, you know, a digitization time and make them accessible and figure out like, you know, does a grant need to pay for the library to digitize an entire run of a collection that we should probably eventually want to digitize anyway or do we need to figure out how to digitize those materials for the grant to make them accessible. And so it's allowed us to figure out a lot of those kinds of services as well as helping library staff say what they can and can't commit to. That's a fantastic great answer. Thank you very much. We have time from some additional questions and I want to also just note that there's some extra information in the chat as well on this. Further questions. I'm not seeing any. Oh, here we go. Robert. Okay, so I wanted to kind of follow up actually a little bit on Allison's question and the and the answer and circle back to something that Veronica had raised which, you know, being that this is community centered research, there was this interest in ensuring mutual reciprocity. I'm curious if, and this kind of goes to like managing the relationships with partners. Was there some form of like a written document that was like co authored, I mean, I'm thinking, you know, right, we would do like an MOA, but maybe that's a little legalistic of a model for something of this nature so I'm curious if you did something like that and what it looked like and how that works. I can answer that. Yeah, I think I do. So we in in the proposal process we require documentation for many things so one of those, one of those components, in addition to letters of attestation from library service providers is letters of commitment from community partners that that kind of attest to the existing relationship and the expectation so that it's also very clear to the review board that the project team has been forthright with with the communities they're working with about what, what the project is and what outcomes they can expect, as well as assigning clearly the roles and responsibilities for those projects. So we, we want lots of documentation. Thank you. We also had a lot of conversations as project applicants were putting their proposals together around really understanding what the stakes were for their partners, because, you know, in our academic context sometimes what what's legible as value to us is than what's the most valuable to our community partners and so it was really interesting to see what people wanted that we could accommodate and then some of the things that people wanted that were really hard to accommodate like anybody who's ever tried to purchase gift cards knows that in like a public university that's that they might be impossible. So people would love it. And so it was really great to see as people were writing up their proposals. How were they thinking about what people would want and so sometimes that was like with the Raul Ramore dressmakers doing some really cool workshops with the community to do skill sharing about storytelling about animation about some other things. So that it was clear that the people participating we're getting something that felt valuable to them in whatever form that took, and that we were also able to support it. You know, within the confines of our institutional policies. Thanks Megan I literally had a conversation about gift cards for something this morning so I feel, I feel you on that one. Well, I think it's about time for us to go on break for a little less than 15 minutes will restart promptly at four o'clock and please come back for what I think will be a very interesting. Let's look at the actual costs, or at least attempts to discover the actual costs of making research data public, and then some concluding comments for the day. So we'll be back in about 13 minutes. Thank you for a great presentation.