Monthly Archive Index for KSL News Blog

Buddhist Scriptures, Update from a 2011 Freedman Fellow

William E. Deal (Ph.D., Departments of Religious Studies, and Cognitive Science) crosses time and cultures with Chinese writings of Buddhist scriptures, and does it with skills from his 2011 Freedman Fellows award. As the 2012 Freedman Fellows Award Program announced the criteria and the April 2 deadline for new project submissions, Deal shares progress on his project:

Nearly 20 years ago, Deal meticulously color-coded by hand the content categories of some of the tales from the Japanese Buddhist text Hokke genki, "Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra," in order to see the people, events, regions of 11th century Japan.

A Larger Perspective
Written in Chinese, the tales served as inspirations for later Japanese Buddhist texts, says Deal, as his 2011 Freedman Fellows award and newly gained skills now allow him to apply digital textual and spatial analysis tools to the texts. Using XML and TEI to analyze and interpret the tales unlocks the complexity of the texts and also "dramatically changes what is possible," beyond reading texts. Using digital technologies, research is possible in new ways: one can see word frequencies, the relationships of those content categories on a larger scale, the scope of Buddhism in 11th century Japan via GIS, and a developing concordance of key words in context.

"I love that we can do projects now, as the Freedman Fellows Awards Program has evolved."
Deal's 2011 project was designed as phases of a multi-year project, and he's aiming for wide availability with an iOS app & a sustainable online presence. Scanning the tales with Unicode for Japanese and Chinese languages, he's adding English translations and believes the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the Freedman Fellows Program and projects are unique. While other programs exist, he says "they are nothing quite like what we have here."

The word cloud from one of the stories merely gives a glimpse into the revelations and potential of his project's work. "In some ways, we're pioneers," reflects Deal. "It's why the Freedman Fellows is so important to me. We build new models, not copy others. It's a huge opportunity!"

The Samuel B. and Marian K. Freedman Digital Library, Language Learning, and Multimedia Services Center is a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Kelvin Smith Library.

Cleveland Play House Archives @Kelvin Smith Library

Kelvin Smith Library is the new home of the Cleveland Play House Archives, in another collaborative effort between the university and America's oldest regional professional theater company. Join us on Monday, March 26 as Arnold Hirshon, Associate Provost and University Librarian, hosts an event for the public that showcases some of the artistic and historical items of the new collection.

A Thousand Boxes, Thousands of Letters, A Look Into Our Past
For researchers the 1,000 boxes from CPH can reveal the stories of American regional theater as well as the cultural environment of NE Ohio and its artistic community. From board minutes to scripts, stage drawings to producer's notes & more, the new archives expands opportunities for valuable primary research. Read a Tennessee Williams playscript from the Kelvin Smith Library collections, and then delve into the CPH Archives & read his letters to artistic directors & find review clippings from area newspapers of the times.

With partnerships long in place for university graduate programs and undergraduate internships, the CPH Archives' new home at CWRU also expands with the expertise of KSL staff who will oversee its organization and curation. Ultimately, selected items will reach into the digital environment for global researchers.

Attend the Event
Learn more about the special exhibit and event on March 26, 4 pm at the Kelvin Smith Library in the 2nd floor O'Neill Reading Room. Please register online by 3/22/12 to attend this event or call KSL Administration at (216)368-2992.

Read more details & remarks and view images from the March 18, 2012 announcement in The Daily, the online newspaper of Case Western Reserve University.

2011 Freedman Fellows Share Projects--Apply Now for 2012 Awards

The Freedman Fellows Award Program 2012 is open for proposals, and the 2011 Fellows share their experiences in this profile series that takes research through centuries, countries, cultures. Read the details for proposal guidelines, criteria, the April 2 deadline & more, as you enjoy another 2011 Freedman Fellow profile:

Wattaeau's Paris: Arts and Intersections
Georgia Cowart (Professor, Musicology) claims she was a novice in the digital world even as she recognized that faculty were "all becoming more aware of the possibilities for digital scholarship." Sharing her project's progress, she joins other 2011 Freedman Fellows in noting that staff support (early on, varied, and continuing) is a hallmark of the program and is appreciated by the Fellows. The valuable advice she's received along the way has allowed her to "shape a methodology beyond what I could have developed on my own."

A Sense of What Is Possible
Cowart's project aims for a new view of 18th century Parisian culture with an annotated digital archive of Watteau's Paris. Such a digital project would complement other works about the growing body of works about the French art, music, dance, and theater. Cowart emphasizes that sharing the Fellows experience is invaluable so that others can see how the instruction, advice, and introductions to new areas can be beneficial as Fellows move on to more independent work. "The most crucial component for me was to get a sense of how I could create a digital dimension that would support, rather than steal time from the research I was already engaged in."

Her project can take advantage of digital materials and bring new dimension of music, performance, and art to scholarly works in a digital archive that could let you stroll geo-tagged gardens of Versailles to see how they influenced Watteau's garden architecture. Innovative annotations can foster increased multi-institutional & interdisciplinary digital projects and shared expertise. Cowart also sees evolving best practices in intellectual property & collaborative publications as she continues to work with Circle institutions like CMA and CIA.

For Georgia Cowart, there'll always be Paris...and Watteau, but she'd like it to be shown and known in new ways through her Freedman Fellows Award Project. Reflecting on her progress, she says she "appreciates the Program's willingness to accept repeat applications...my work with digital resources has blossomed."

Image: Antoine Watteau, Les fêtes vénitiennes (c. 1718), a painting Cowart has been able to interpret through its connections with a 1710 operatic work.

Feature: 2011 Freedman Fellows, as the 2012 Program Opens

Case faculty are invited to submit proposals for this year's Freedman Fellows Award Program, in existence since 2005 to help faculty bring their research & teaching projects to fruition with digital technologies, tools, and support.

Read more about the 2012 program criteria, and enjoy these weekly features about the 2011 Freedman Fellows Award winners and their developing projects, like Putting the Adelbert Two-Step and Cleveland Music Publishing On the Map:

Music department faculty Daniel Goldmark knows what musical life in Cleveland was like 100 years ago, when "There was a theme song for everything, from vaudeville to Cleveland's Peerless Motor Car Company, & the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-37." He's researched & acquired 900+ pieces of Cleveland-produced sheet music, covering musical genres from 1890-1950s, including the theme song for the Exposition. Goldmark says his Freedman Fellows 2011 project is about "the presentation of the Cleveland musical story, the diversity of publishers, and how the mass media in music started."

Goldmark's plan to apply GIS (geographic information system) to his project will take people to the publishers' houses, theaters, and streets of a city that had a thriving sheet music publishing industry like Chicago & New York City, revealing trends & relationships beyond the sheet music. A scanned border detail (above) from the Adelbert Two-Step (James D. Johnston) might be mapped to 365 Bond Street in Cleveland, the theater, to performers, and ultimately to an 1896 Billboard review of this baseball song.

Take An Historic Musical Journey
Music, metadata, images and information in his project will ultimately take you on a musical journey through Cleveland's sheet music trade and its local history, perhaps to a local landmark via sheet music covers like The New Euclid Arcade March Two Step by Louis C. Snyder.

Now planning details for a searchable database, embedded music files, & interactive web portal, Goldmark will bring it to life, and says of his 2011 Freedman Fellows Award, "It's knowing that support is there, as a scholar. I know about this part of my project—and I know that technology makes it possible."

The Samuel B. and Marian K. Freedman Digital Library, Language Learning, and Multimedia Services Center is a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Kelvin Smith Library.

Get There Faster with Quick Links!

You've probably noticed a lot of things have been happening around the Library lately, including a redesign of the library website earlier this semester. Since that time we have been getting feedback through our website, from our Librarians in the field, as well as feedback sessions we have been conducting here in the Library.  What we've heard is that many of our users would like quicker access to the things they use the most.  This has resulted in our bringing back an updated version of our KSL Quick Links, a short cut section of links on the right-hand side of our homepage.  Through all this feedback we've compiled, we've gathered the top requested links and have added them there.  As we continue listening to our users, and as people's needs change, these changes will be reflected.

Please keep the feedback coming!  Our Feedback button is always in our footer, and you can access it directly here.

Now Open: Proposals for 2012 Freedman Fellows Award Program

In its 8th year, the 2012 Freedman Fellows Award Program begins by inviting faculty proposals for this year's awards. Since 2005, over $100,000 in awards have helped faculty integrate multimedia technologies and digital tools into the curriculum, and varied staff and resources have helped to shape the Fellows' projects into new teaching and learning experiences.

Read more about the Freedman Fellows Program 2012, the application criteria, the April 2, 2012 proposal deadline, and more. Enjoy these weekly features about the 2011 Freedman Fellows Award winners, as they describe how their projects have developed.

Visualizing Nanoparticles
Physics faculty Robert W. Brown, one of the 2011 Freedman Fellows says that he became interested in 3-D effects after an introduction to Freedman Center tools, because his work in nanoparticle behavior was relevant to so many things. When the spring 2011 Freedman Center call for proposals came, opportunities called, too: "it was a match made in heaven!"

Reflecting on the award project nearly one year later, Brown recently showed an animation of nanometer-sized magnetic particles. Brown prefaced the demonstration by saying that he knew the particles rotated & had different frequencies. But the work done through the 2011 Freedman Fellows Program award allowed his project staff to write code to focus on data visualization for a "a microscopic understanding of how nanoparticles behave." Seeing is believing, and his audience saw nano particles self-assemble into agglomerates...and then self-assemble hierarchically into new structures.

Brown, principal investigator, Timothy Atherton, co-investigator (Physics faculty) and Phillip Durachinsky (Physics graduating senior 2012) applied code to data so that images are dynamically generated by OpenGL animation. The results, says Brown are "totally new views, instead of just looking at a slice on a slide!"

The excitement of seeing research come to life also stimulates ideas for future opportunities like applying audio waves, developing future Freedman Center skill sets, and putting research data, animation & text up on the Visualization Wall in KSL.

More importantly for Brown, the results also meet three of his Freedman Fellow project goals:
• more effective publications, with embedded media
• more persuasive oral/slide and e-poster conference presentations
• more compelling classroom experiences

"A moving picture is worth a thousand words, and graphical tools help learning enormously," said Brown. "We should teach with more of this!"

The Samuel B. and Marian K. Freedman Digital Library, Language Learning, and Multimedia Services Center is a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Kelvin Smith Library.