DSG Coordinator

People

Current DSG Coordinator(s): Caroline Klibanoff (June 2017 - Present)

Previous DSG Coordinators

• Sarah Connell (fulfilled DSG Coordinator duties)
• Sarah Grissom
• Alicia Peaker
• Jim McGrath (Spring 2015-August 2015)
• Abbie Levesque (June 2015-July 2017)

Coordinator Documentation

Meetings

Recurring meetings should be scheduled and booked by the end of the semester before they take place.

Regular attendance:

• Weekly DSG all-staff meeting (Coordinator schedules, book space for, and takes notes for this.) (everyone at DSG)
• Weekly CERES team meeting. (Coordinator schedules and book space for this) (DSG RAs, Sarah, Amanda, developer, coordinator)
• Weekly RA meeting (Coordinator runs this - prep notes in advance. Coordinator schedules and book space for this.) (Coordinator and RAs)
• Weekly Manager’s Meeting (Sarah schedules this. Agenda set by Julia, bringing in items as needed. Take notes.) (Sarah, Amanda, Coordinator, Julia)

Occasional Attendance:

• Women Writers Project Meetings. (Sarah C takes care of the group very well, just keep a general idea of what they’re up to. Coordinator books space for this group, but Sarah C takes care of scheduling)

Non-regular meetings to attend:

• Trainings and workshops run by the RAs (workflows below) Coordinator books spaces and schedules these.
• Planning meetings for things like Charon, various project meetings (sometimes scheduled and booked by the coordinator, sometimes by Sarah or Amanda)
• Writing sessions, event planning sessions, etc (Scheduled by the coordinator when needed)
• Additionally, the coordinator schedules and books the TAPAS weekly meeting, but does not attend. (Ask Julia who is involved - it changes)

Glossary

• Charon - A nascent project for the DSG. Envisioned to be a workflow software that allows for transcription, translation, and encoding of archival documents.
• CERES - CERES in sometimes called “the toolkit.” It’s a WordPress-based software that is used to curate and display archival items from the DRS and the Digital Public Library of America.
• DMP - Data Management Plan. We ask groups to make these, and they’re often required for grants. We have a data management plan document written by the RAs to pass on to outside groups.
• DRS - Digital Repository Service. Used to store materials from northeastern. Feeds via API into CERES.
• DSC - Digital Scholarship Commons. Our current space, which includes the offices and the outside communal area.
• DSG - Digital Scholarship Group
• EBBDA - Early Black Boston Digital Almanac. One of the CERES projects, and the original project to use CERES in the classroom.
• ECDA - Early Caribbean Digital Archive. One of the CERES/Charon projects we provide support for.
• GIS/DataViz - Geospatial Information Systems and Data Visualization. Specialties provided to the DSG by Steven and Bahare, that have to do with digitally displaying and manipulating data.
• ITS - Information Technology Services. A separate group from LTS. They oversee the IT for the entire university.
• LTS - Library Technology Services. Includes people like Karl, Eli, and David, who work directly with the DSG. They provide library server space, site maintenance, etc.
• NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks.- A faculty and student group that does lots of DH work. We work mostly with the humanists from the history and English departments, but they also work in network science, journalism, and other fields. We co-host events with them pretty often.
• Omeka - Commonly used software for museums, public history, etc. We sometimes offer introductory workshops to Omeka.
• PCDM - Portland Common Data Model. This is the type of data model we’re using for Charon.
• WWP - Women Writer’s Project.
• Podio - Used for documentation and analytics. We add all events in here, as well as a full list of WordPress installations.
• R & I - Research and Instruction librarians.
• TAPAS - TEI Archiving, Publishing, and Access Service. One of the projects run by the DSG. They work to build a repository for TEI documents.
• Trello - Workflow software. We use this for tracking tasks for CERES and grants.
• XML/TEI - XML and TEI are both encoding languages. They’re easily identifiable by their use of pointy brackets: <>. Several projects, like the WWP, use TEI. XML is a more generalized form of markup language.

Tasks

These are the current tasks for the DSG Coordinator. Some tasks may be offloaded to other positions, in which case that workflow information should be shared.

• Scheduling meetings
• Booking meeting spaces
• Putting all-staff meeting notes on the wiki
• Keeping other sections of the wiki up-to-date
• Keeping the website up-to-date
• Posting blogs to the website
• Tweeting
• Planning and running DH Open Office Hours
• Assisting on planning other events (welcome event, wiki events, workshops, etc) Includes planning meetings, publicity/outreach, contacting library access if outside people are coming, etc
• Writing documentation for CERES (assisted by RAs)
• Writing other documents as needed (Assisting on articles, grant writing, internal documents and documentation, papers for Patrick and outside groups)
• Cleaning the public DSC space in the morning (putting chairs back in order, picking up trash, calling in for any major cleanups that are needed. Especially vital around mid-terms and finals. If there are any large cleaning issues, contact Ethan to submit a cleaning request.)

(Acting as first point-of-contact for projects and collaborators. People will contact the coordinator with questions or requests. Answer them as much as possible while also passing them along to the relevant parties.

• Checking the DSG general email
• Keeping tabs on project progress
• Sending materials to groups, as well as making them user accounts as needed.
• Attending regular meetings, planning as needed.
• Podio entries
• Github tickets for CERES
• Slack standing meetings/adding users

Important Contacts

• Eli is the CERES developer. He answers questions about CERES installs, development work, and the DSG website.
• Sarah Sweeney is the Repository Manager. She is the contact for all things digital repository.
• Hillary Corbett is Digital Publishing and University Copyright Officer. Copyright questions, digital publishing questions, and open access questions all go to her.
• Karl Yee managers servers for the DSG. If there is a server issue, go to him. He also gets told about new installations of non-Toolkit websites for projects.
• Ernesto Valencia is the head of LTS. If things are really broken or there’s some kind of huge issue with the websites, talk to him.
• Ethan Bren is our contact for space issues. He helps us put in maintenance requests. If there is a facilities question, he’s the contact. Also, if the space has a major issue, contact him.
• Jonathan Stirling helps with hardware issues. If the office needs to order new computer equipment or needs help with a computer/printer, contact him instead of Ethan.
• Jon Reed is our Marketing and Communications contact. Talk to him for things like logo and poster design as well as help with publicity for large events.
• Sarah Connell wears many hats, but one of them is the NULab Assistant Director. They have lots of events, some of which the coordinator may want to partner with them on.
• Patrick Yott is the Associate Dean of Digital Strategies and Services. The coordinator won’t work with him very often, but he is who the DSG answers to.
• Michelle Romero and Giordana Mecagni are the archivists. We work with them quite often, as they have several CERES installations.
• If someone needs tap access to the space, contact Steven Peters
• Karen Merguerian is in user services, and should be looped in on conversations about changes to space policies - like if the noise policy changes.
• Julie Jersyk and Brooke Williams are the R&I librarians who should be looped in on talks about CERES sites, especially during the CFP process. They are also serving as general DSG liaisons, so keep them in mind for any larger projects that the liaison librarians should know about.
• If a project comes in from outside of English, the Library Liaison for that department should be looped in. Amanda is the English librarian, so she’s pretty much always already in the loop.
• Email Library-Access_Services@northeastern.edu to give RSVP lists for events where outside attendees will need library access.

Workflow information

Scheduling meetings

The coordinator schedules meetings for the department and standing meetings that they're part of (and some they are not, like TAPAS.) For staff and faculty use the scheduling assistant in Outlook. Go to the Calendar app and make a new event. Add/invite others by adding them under “People.” Next to people in the “Scheduling assistant”, which can be used to see who is free and when. Scheduling pretty much has to be done in Outlook, it's usually better to put work emails and such on the Outlook account and not the Husky account, especially because Library-All emails and such require the Outlook and not Husky emails.

Faculty calendars aren’t always up-to-date, but library staff calendars are usually. Check in with faculty to make sure their calendars are accurate.

Husky accounts (which are student accounts) can’t share their calendar with Outlook. You can use when2meet or Doodle for scheduling for large groups with students in them. It’s usually easiest to find a few times our staff is free and then asking the outside students and faculty to pick from those.

Booking meeting spaces

The coordinator uses the back-end of NUSSO, called EMS, to book spaces in the DSG world. The coordinator has special booking powers that no one in the DSG has. Use these WISELY.

The link is https://nuevents.neu.edu:8080/EMSWebClient/Default.aspx.

To book a space, go first to the “book” tab on the left. Make sure the space and times you want are open. Then, go to the wizard. In the wizard, select the date (or dates, if it’s a regularly occurring meeting. Select all the days you want.) Put in the meeting time, and select “specific room” in the “search” box. Select the space you want in here. You can book multiple spaces at once but unless you’re reserving the whole DSG, it’s easier to do them separately. Under status, select confirmed, and then press next.

Fill in the event name, and select “Administrative hold: general” for the event type. Source will almost always be email. Under customer, search for “English” and select “English - sp.” Then select your name as “First Contact.” You should be included in the drop-down menu. Add your phone number, and select “default” and put 1 for the count in setup. It’s finicky so if it’s being buggy just choose “no setup needed.” You can then click finish to book.

Recurring meetings should be booked during the last month of the previous semester. Book for major events ASAP as sometimes the space fills up with meetings. If you need room 90, 420, etc, ask Amanda for assistance with how to book.

Putting all-staff meeting notes on the wiki/ Keeping other sections of the wiki up-to-date

Karl will give you a wiki login. Every week, upload some (cleaned-up) notes from the All-Staff meeting to the wiki. If you don’t know how to do the formatting in the wiki ask Amanda for help. Keep an eye on the other sections and update them as needed, like when we get a new staff member.

Keeping the website up-to-date

The DSG website is a group effort, but the coordinator does a lot of the day-to-day updates. This includes putting in events (Pretty simple - just add a new event and fill in the fields. Make sure you select tags and categories for the events), updating text (make sure to run major text changes by Julia) and putting up CFPs, as well as other minor tasks. It helps to know a little HTML but if not one of the RAs can assist you with how to format.

Posting blogs to the website

Writing blogs is occasionally part of the job, but more often the coordinator is posting blogs for others in the group, including outside projects and the RAs. (They can technically post them on their own, but they haven’t in the past.) To add a blog, add a new post as normal. If it’s from outside the DSG, we have stock text like this:

Sarah Connell, Project Manager on the Women Writers Project, passed along another exciting announcement! Since 1986, The Women Writers Project has been committed to ensuring that texts written by women in the early modern period are digitized and accessible to contemporary audiences. Northeastern is privileged to host one of the oldest projects in the field of digital humanities and aid its ongoing work. Visit our Projects page to learn more about the WWP and other initiatives supported by the Digital Scholarship Group.

And this:

This content was first posted on the WWP’s Announcements page; learn more about recent developments in the project there!

To put before and after posts. Also put bylines if you are posting for an RA or other member of the DSG. You can see examples on the News section of the website.

Tweeting

We tweet a few kinds of things: Events, CFPs, announcements, and blog posts. We also retweet news stories about our group and its members, appropriate tweets about our groups, and job postings in digital humanities, specifically in libraries. Hillary Corbett also tweets from this handle.

Planning and running DH Open Office Hours

DH Open Office hours are the weekly event the coordinator is in charge of. They get more attendance if there is a talk or planned activity. These are usually informal, and have included: making a twitter bot, practice runs of conference talks, project and work-in-progress presentations, outside speakers, and chats with specialists like Hillary Corbett and Steven Braun. The earlier you plan, the better, and since people actually like getting to talk at them it’s a good idea to send a few reminders (at all staff meetings and to the DH Certificate students) that you are looking for people to present. There is stock text in past events you can use when you post these in WordPress. You should send out a start-of-semester schedule once things are solidified and weekly updates to remind people what event is happening that week. Sometimes it’s easier to break the semester into two halves and schedule that way. You email about these to Library-All, NUDigital, and DSGST-F. You also usually ask the History and English departments to send them to their graduate students. (If you’re in a department, just send it to grad students yourself.) These are usually an hour long, around or after lunch time on a day people are on campus, and are usually pretty informal. Be sure to log these in Podio.

Writing documentation for CERES (assisted by RAs)

The documentation is at cerestoolkit.dsg.northeastern.edu. Check it often and be sure to update it whenever a major feature update happens. Large chunks of writing can also be assisted by the RAs. Future projects include video tutorials and an expansion of the resources.

Checking the DSG general email

You should have access to this email when you start, but if not ask Julia for help getting you access. If you click your user profile, you should see the option to open another mailbox. Search for dsg@northeastern.edu and open it. It doesn’t get mail often and gets a lot of spam, but when we do get contacted it’s usually important.

Sending materials to groups, as well as making them user accounts as needed

You are in charge of getting new uses onto their CERES websites - this includes things like new work study students, or additional staff on projects. We sometimes in cases of large groups, have the project add users themselves, but some of our Project Leads don’t feel confident adding new users. Before trainings, add the trainees to the sandbox site: http://toolkittraining.dsg.northeastern.edu. This is where they learn to use the toolkit. Also send them the CERES Documentation from above, and example sites like http://arader.library.northeastern.edu/ and http://catskillsinstitute.northeastern.edu/. You should also mention the GitHub (see below) , though outside groups almost never use it. You are a central point of information dissemination so be sure to regularly inventory who you should be communicating with so that groups, including CERES groups and NULab/DSG projects, can have access to the information they need to do their work.

Podio entries

Amanda will assist you on getting set up on Podio. We track events and projects here. Log any consultations, classroom work, or closed workshops in the “consultations” tab. Open events go in “DSG events.” You shoud be set-up as the person who gets assigned tasks in the workflows. Podio is easy to deal with, if sometimes finicky. If you need a walk-through, Amanda is the Podio expert. You should also periodically update: event attendance, project consult meetings, and project records.

Github tickets for CERES

The coordinator usually attends training sessions for projects, since they have more knowledge on individual projects than the RAs do. Since the RAs actually run the trainings, it is your job to follow along and log GitHub tickets as needed. (You should also send the trainee the documentation, example sites, and other resources.) The GitHub for CERES issues is https://github.com/NEU-DSG/toolkit_requests. You should be added to it but you can watch it and add issues even if you’re not. (You do have to make yourself a GitHub account, however.) If something happens and you need to log a ticket, include the URL, a screenshot, and if possible what conditions trigger the issue. The more information you can give the better. Eli may have questions, so respond with as much as you know to help him figure things out.