Created for the LET showcase at JMU Libraries on February 9, 2015.

1. Engaged
Graduate
Experience:
The First
Year of the
MALA
Program
Liana Bayne (English MA
‘17) + Caroline Hamby

2. MALA?
Madison Academic Library Associates!

3. What does MALA do?
We are working at the meeting-point of archives and digital humanities.
We work for both Special Collections and CIT, and have also collaborated with
many others in various departments.
We have the opportunity to engage with LET and the larger university community
at many different levels.
We experience engaged learning through doing.

4. Humanities and Social Sciences
Institute
DH/SS is a 6-week intensive designed to help faculty members design a new
digital humanities project, or to help them transform a current project to be more
DH-friendly.
We worked with Carolyn Schubert to re-imagine the final project for NSG 317, The
History of Nursing, an online class. We made a Canvas page to host the new
assignment, instructional videos, and a full mock-up of a student project. We
presented our vision to about 50 people at the end of DH/SS, and also to the
faculty member who teaches the class.

5. The original project: A powerpoint with
recorded vocal narration
The final project: A Thinglink-
annotated image, which gives students
the opportunity to present and interact
with information in a more natural way
● Right: A finished annotated image
using Thinglink.
● Next: The super user-friendly edit
mode of Thinglink.

7. Project example: The Carol Barton
Collection
We are working with Special Collections to help clean, organize, process, and
digitally showcase a large donation of artists’ books, papers, and pop-up books
from artist Carol Barton.
We are almost finished with unboxing items, identifying items that need to be
cleaned, and doing an initial check of items that are present/not present.
We have also begun working on a Tumblr.com site to showcase the collection.

9. Engaging with technology
Workshops and tutorials that we have attended and completed since August that
have expanded our technological skills include:
• Trello
• iMovie
• hypothes.is
• Mendeley
• Camtasia
• Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
• 3D printing
• GIF making tools
• Qualtrics

10. Engaging with knowledge
In a way, MALA is more like “little library school” than like a typical GAship. We
learn all the time, from nearly everyone in LET.
Learning content modules include:
• Mindmapping and planning strategies
• Introduction to LET organization and culture
• Organizational and scholarly communication and collaboration strategies and
norms, including social media
• Project management
• Curation: Processing, metadata, digital preservation
• Digital content creation and publishing
• Intellectual property

11. Engaging with the academic
community
We have gotten to work at an extremely interdisciplinary level. We are an
interdisciplinary team, we work with nearly all teams within LET, and we work with
departments outside LET.
Other, more interdisciplinary projects that we will be or have been engaged
tangentially with include:
• The Lucy Simms project
• Animation sandbox
• Engaged Learner Collaboratory
• TLT Conference

12. Engaging with LET
• Andrea Adams
• Jamie Calcgano-Roach
• Jeff Campbell
• Howard Carrier
• Ashley Caudill
• Laura Drake Davis
• Cheri Duncan
• Lynn Eaton
• Jody Fagan
• Jenna Fries
• Amanda Hedrick
• Kevin Hegg
• Stephen Holloway
• Elaine Kaye
• Chelsea Mann
• Seán McCarthy
• Julia Merkel
• Kate Morris
• Adam Murray
• Mark Purlington
• Grover Saunders
• Carolyn Schubert
• Dave Stoops
• Liz Thompson
• K.T. Vaughn
• Andrew Wittmer
Many thanks to the following people who have contributed content and guidance so far this year:

13. Call For Proposals: Capstone
projects
➤ Do you have a big project in the digital humanities, educational and library
technologies, or digital scholarship areas planned for the academic year 2016/17?
We are soliciting project proposals that are large enough in scale to provide
Associates with projects that can be completed during one to two semesters of the
academic year. The project must consist of professional-level work that is both
useful to LET and JMU and will provide an interesting experience for the graduate
students. Any member of LET may submit a proposal. Collaboration among
colleagues and across departments is highly encouraged.
Submit by February 29! More info on the Hub.