Fusion: repo to expo

Deakin University has set up a new exhibition system, Fusion, to showcase the University's special collections and research outputs. Data in Fusion will also be used by researchers in the digital humanities, and will provide a means of involving the wider, local, community in research efforts and collaborative projects. Fusion uses the Omeka software, which supports highly-visual, media-rich presentations. It is linked to the University's research repository, which remains the primary store for the data.Deakin’s special collections include unique material related to Alfred Deakin and the Federation of Australia, as well as the cultural and social milieu of the period 1859 to 1920. The Library has begun a digitisation project to ensure the long-term preservation of the rarer, older and most fragile items from the collection. The poster will cover:• Principal software requirements for the new system• Fusion setup, features and functionality• Curation of items for digitisation• Long-term preservation strategy• Exhibition planning and setup• Collaborative projects with Research Services• Collaboration with the wider community• Future plans, including crowd-sourcing projects• Lessons learntThe poster will draw on the following conference themes:Supporting research: Research digital outputs as collection materialsSupporting research: Research content accessibilitySupporting research: Data management / curationConnect: Crowdsourcing

Use of digital media and dance within the classroom

Beckwith spoke on and conducted workshops on the use of digital media and dance within the classroom.

From the website http://ausdance.org.au/news/article/2011-dance-across-the-domains-2011 :
Dance Across the Domains (DADs) is an innovative program for teachers and educators to receive professional development from dance industry practitioners and leading dance teachers.

In 2011 the focus for the conference is “dance from many cultures”. A key feature of the conferences is exploring the ways dance can enhance learning in other areas of the curriculum, such as literacy, numeracy, humanities and ICT.

DADs is includes practical activities, theory-based sessions, peer observation, case studies, resource sharing and networking. The conference supports schools’ implementation of VELS domains and strand, provides curriculum advice and related support materials.Megan spoke on and conducted workshops on the use of digital media and dance within the classroom. 

As luck would have it: serendipity and solace in digital research infrastructure

 This essay explores the ways in which new developments in digital research infrastructure change our expectations of archival research and offer opportunities for a newly energized feminist approach to the archive. A specific platform, the Humanities Networked Infrastructure, is explored as an example of how digital technologies enable the coproduction of the archive and at the same time extend the possibilities for serendipitous discovery.

Deletion as second death: the moral status of digital remains

There has been increasing attention in sociology and internet studies to the topic of ‘digital remains’: the artefacts users of social network services (SNS) and other online services leave behind when they die. But these artefacts also pose philosophical questions regarding what impact, if any, these artefacts have on the ontological and ethical status of the dead. One increasingly pertinent question concerns whether these artefacts should be preserved, and whether deletion counts as a harm to the deceased user and therefore provides pro tanto reasons against deletion. In this paper, I build on previous work invoking a distinction between persons and selves to argue that SNS offer a particularly significant material instantiation of persons. The experiential transparency of the SNS medium allows for genuine co-presence of SNS users, and also assists in allowing persons (but not selves) to persist as ethical patients in our lifeworld after biological death. Using Blustein’s “rescue from insignificance” argument for duties of remembrance, I argue that this persistence function supplies a nontrivial (if defeasible) obligation not to delete these artefacts. Drawing on Luciano Floridi’s account of “constitutive” information, I further argue that the “digital remains” metaphor is surprisingly apt: these artefacts in fact enjoy a claim to moral regard akin to that of corpses.