The Library will host a presentation on ArtStor next week (Friday Oct 19, 1pm). ArtStor is a collection of digital images, licensed by the UCLA library. It now has over 1/2 million images which can be accessed by faculty, students and staff.

The collections continue to grow. The most recent additions include Classical Antiquity lantern slides from Bryn Mawr College and Community Murals from Timothy Drescher.

To learn more about next week’s presentation, please take a look at the attached invitation ->>>artstor.pdf

The ARTstor website is www.artstor.org

Dean Stowell announced a search for a faculty member in Digital Humanities:

From: “Stowell, Tim” <TStowell@college.ucla.edu>
To: chairs.humnet@lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Digital Humanities Search
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:22:50 -0700

Dear Colleagues:

I have authorized an open-rank ladder faculty search this year in the field
of Digital Humanities. UCLA already has one of the most vibrant intellectual
communities of scholars engaging in innovative research and teaching in this
area, and one of our new Mellon programs is helping to foster ties among
this new community of scholars, together with those working in media
studies; http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/ for further information.
This open-rank search will allow us to strengthen our faculty base and
further increase our visibility in this area.

Given that digital and media studies span the full spectrum of fields in the
humanities, no home department has been designated for this search. If the
search results in a viable candidate, the home department(s) will need to be
determined based on the academic background of the successful candidate. For
this reason, and in order to cast the widest web possible, the search
advertisement has been published in a variety of listings and journals
across the humanities disciplines, in addition to the Chronicle and the main
digital humanities postings.

The text of the job advertisement is appended below, at the end of this
message. The application deadline is November 20, 2007. Please feel free to
forward the text of the ad to faculty members of your department and to
colleagues at other universities in your respective fields.

I have appointed an interdisciplinary search committee, chaired by Todd
Presner, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Chair of the CDH
Faculty Advisory Committee. Other members of the committee are Ali Behdad
(English/Comparative Literature), Steven Nelson (Art History), Joseph
Vaughan (Center for Digital Humanities), Willeke Wendrich (Near Eastern
Languages & Cultures) and Maite de Zubiaurre (Spanish & Portuguese).

The search committee is charged initially with recommending to me a short
list of candidates. Once the short list has been determined, the search
committee will be expanded to incorporate the relevant department chairs as
necessary, so that the likely home departments are included in the process
early on, and in a fully consultative manner. After the candidates have
visited the campus early in the Winter quarter, the search committee will
make a final recommendation to me regarding the appointment of a particular
candidate. This appointment will have to be made within one (or more) of our
existing departments, and will therefore have to be approved in a formal
vote by the faculty of the department(s) in question.

If you have further questions about this search, please don’t hesitate to
speak to me or consult with Todd Presner (presner@humnet.ucla.edu).

Tim Stowell
Dean of Humanities
==================

UCLA College – Division of Humanities – Digital Humanities

The University of California, Los Angeles, invites applications for an
open-rank faculty position in Digital Humanities beginning July 1, 2008.
Specializations may include, but are not limited to: new media and
cultural/literary studies, computational sciences and culture, globalization
and media, visual studies, GIS and cultural mapping, advanced visualization,
Internet culture, and media theory. The successful candidate will have a
demonstrated ability to work across disciplines on broad-based humanities
projects that build bridges between humanists and technologists through
interdisciplinary collaboration. Applicants should demonstrate a strong
commitment and innovative approach to teaching and research. Administrative
experience working with technology staff and funding agencies is desirable.
The successful candidate will be appointed in one or more academic
departments. He/she will work closely with interdisciplinary centers,
including the Center for Digital Humanities, and is expected to assume a
central role in UCLA’s vibrant digital humanities community. Please note
that UCLA is conducting two additional searches in the field of Digital
Humanities, as follows: A search by the Department of English in the area of
New Media and a search for a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital
Humanities. For more information, please visit:
http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu
<http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/>

A Ph.D. is required by July 2008. To apply, please send an application
letter, CV, three letters of recommendation, and representative research
publications by November 20, 2007, to:

Chair of Digital Humanities Search Committee
2300 Murphy Hall, Box 951438
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1438

Position subject to final budgetary approval. UCLA is an Affirmative
Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are especially
encouraged to apply.

Two very successful and celebrated teams at CDH are the Departmental Technology Analysts (DTAs) and the Instructional Technology Consultants (ITCs). Each team supports the Humanities faculty, staff and graduate students. However, the two groups play different roles that complement each other and sometimes overlap.

The DTAs are full-time career employees who provide technical support in all areas of computing and are the center point for all technological assistance. Each DTA is assigned to a specific administrative unit, such as the Dodd Group or the Royce group, and spends 80% of their time as the primary contact for all technology related concerns. The DTAs are skilled PC and Apple hardware/software technicians and handle all matter of desktop support issues. They each have a wide variety of experience utilizing networking and communication protocols, graphic design concepts, and data management stratagems. The other 20% of DTA time is spent working on special projects, such as, website design, and the bi-weekly home computer support clinics.

If a DTA can’t help you directly, they know how to find help. So it is always a good idea to start with your DTA!

Clockwise from top left, the DTA team members are Alastair Thorne, Bronson Tran, Bryan Jung, Calvin Tong (DTA Coordinator), Dave Nguyen, Frank Lee, Joseph Fahs, Roozbeh Kavian and Steven Lee.

The DTA web page is http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/dta.html

By contrast, the ITC team consists of ten part-time humanities graduate students hired for a tenure of up to two years and based in the “ITC Lab” (1041 public policy). The focus of the ITC team is to assist instructors with the best use of technology in instruction and learning. Like DTAs, ITCs are assigned to support specific departments. However, they work very collaboratively to share their various disciplinary, pedagogical, and technical skills wherever needed. ITCs are most often associated with course websites, but they know and consult on a variety of other technology tools, including presentation software, media processing, blogging and wikis, Wimba, scanning and OCR. The ITC Lab is equipped with high-end digitizing equipment — available to instructors to use by appointment or on a drop-in basis.

The 2007-2008 ITC team. Front row, left to right: Huan Wang, Yoshiko Fukuyasu, Eva Sobolevski, Jonathan Jones, Chris Shaw, Yasu Imao, Kim Mack
Back row, left to right: Innhwa Park, Ted Liu (Foreign Languages IT Coordinator), Randall Gordon, Austin Payne, Annelie Rugg (ITC Coordinator)

The ITC web page is http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/itc/

(Thanks to Linda Holmes for drafting this article).

As some of you already know, 2007-08 will be a year of important and exciting change for the Humanities in the area of course websites. After many years of using Ecampus, we will transition to building new Humanities course sites on the UCLA Common Collaboration and Learning Environment, or CCLE. The CCLE is a campus-wide initiative that CDH has been involved in for the last year and has the goal to

A Department Technology Analyst (DTA) was recently discovered spamming his department. When confronted about his monthly mass e-mails titled “Frank’s Tech Tips”, Frank Lee, the DTA for the Royce Humanities Group, denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was sending out “educational e-mails” or “tech tips” in the interest of his clients. Digital Odyssey correspondent Frank Lee was able to get an exclusive interview with the accused… um, Frank Lee.

Q: What’s the point of each issue? Do you expect your readers to become a technical genius like you?

A: [Laughs] Well, these aren’t complete lessons on certain topics, as I don’t expect anyone to take time from their already busy schedule to become a pro on a certain topic. I do hope to raise awareness about certain security issues and provide helpful tidbits on productivity. The key is small doses. I also intentionally leave out some details because another goal is to get the reader curious about the topic and encourage them to consult me about the issue. Different people have different situations and instead of making each issue a reference for all, I prefer people come talk to me, where a casual personal consultation would be more effective. That also keeps each issue concise, which I’ll address in my response to your next question. Oh, and another reason for the creation of these tech tips is to regularly remind my clients that I exist and I’m available to help them. A DTA is useless if his or her existence is unknown.

Q: Wise words. How do you decide on what content goes into each issue?

A: I have two priorities whenever I write an issue. One, the topic must be relevant. Whatever I write about needs to relate to the readers somehow, usually an aspect of security or productivity that affects most readers. Two, the article must be concise. If I want the article to be read, it better not be long. To me, anything that takes longer than two minutes to read risks being delegated to the “read later” pile indefinitely.

Q: Should I subscribe to your tech tips?

A: Well if you currently do not subscribe to or are an author of the tech tips, I recommend signing up. I write each issue so it will be easy reading, yet I try to include something technology-savvy readers may find new. Directions for signing up are included at the bottom of this article.

Q: Huh? Anyway… Can I make suggestions?

A: Sure, I appreciate any feedback from my readers. If it’s negative, make it constructive. If it’s positive, I’d like to know specifically why so I can keep those aspects. I’d also be interested in hearing what topics you would like covered.

Q: This Digital Odyssey article itself is really long. And you spent the whole thing talking about yourself. Is that what the tech tips are like?

A: … No. I promise.

To subscribe to or get more information on Frank’s Tech Tips, e-mail Frank at frank@humnet.ucla.edu.

Example “Back Issues” (PDF format)

• Is Your Password Safe?
• Save Time and Trouble. Use PDFs.
• Backup Your Data
• Computer Maintenance, Part I: Speed

By Calvin Tong

A department’s website is a very important resource in promoting and distributing information about the department and its individuals. Users will often look at the department

Background:
Enterprise Messaging (EM) is an email and calendaring system that is part of the recent UCLA IT initiative. So far all of UCLA Administration and several other departments, including the Library, School of Nursing, OIT, ATS, School of Arts, Summer Sessions, Society & Genetics, and CNSI Administration, have all migrated to EM. EM uses the same Microsoft Exchange 2003 server and supports the same email clients (e.g. Outlook, Entourage, MacMail, Eudora) as CDH currently does. Part of our Technology Infrastructure Fee (TIF) goes towards the support of EM. The Humanities Departments are projected to pay about $22,000 for FY 2007-2008 towards EM.

History:
CDH Network Services had met with Communications Technology Services (CTS) back in Spring 2006 to discuss the possibility of migrating our Exchange service to EM. At that time EM did not meet our expectations in three major areas; single sign on, directory services integration (Active Directory), delegated administration to local units, and could not offer mailboxes to graduate students.

Present:
CDH Network Services have met with CTS twice recently to discuss these hurdles to see if we could move forward. EM services seem to have evolved to better accommodate customers needs. CTS has come up with Kerberos solution which would enable customers to use single sign on. CDH is currently looking into this. EM now offers delegated administration including reset passwords, lock/unlock accounts, create distribution lists, add/remove contacts to DL’s, remove DL’s, and view Barracuda (user access) setttings to name a few. Active Directory integration is still something that CTS has not provided a solution for. We discussed the issue of graduate student mailboxes and they don’t see this as road block anymore. They are willing to create these mailboxes and we both agreed that they will treated as a specialty mailbox.

In September Stacey, Joseph and I met with Reem and the Humanities MSOs to discuss the possibility of migrating to EM and it was well received. Reem asked the MSOs to go back to their departments and chairs for feedback. Meanwhile CDH Network Services will be testing Kerberos and the test accounts for functionality.

Future:
At our next meeting with CTS (TBD), we will determine whether to move forward with EM or not. More to come…

Link: Enterprise Messaging Home Page

Moving from ad-hoc programming towards structured execution of small and large instructional technology projects the CDH Instructional Technology Programmers Group (CDH-ITP) has taken many baby steps in that direction over the past few months. These revolve around developing a software development / project execution life cycle and follows simple steps of planning, doing, testing and delivering Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) products.

To start with we successfully implemented a project tracking system so that projects can be planned and individual tasks allocated, tracked and closed to completion. This system called CDH Project Tracker has been in use since many months now and other managers within CDH have started using the same. This sure has simplified Kathy’s work and may be complicated Joseph’s a bit.

Starting with Hypermedia Berlin all projects within CDH ITP are being moved onto subversion configuration management system. The programmer team has quickly learned how to use subversion and they are starting to like it, I guess. Network services group, especially Denise, has been of great help in setting this system up and running.

A defect tracker system is being tested and piloted which will be used to track application defects and help quantify and thus improve quality of delivered products.

The process to call for projects is being improved to bring clarity about the deliverables that should be expected within each project that is accepted by CDH for the academic year. This will help improve communication and bring some structure to the chaos of software development and maintenance projects.

Overall the last academic year has been an interesting one. The current year will see these processes mature and place CDH in a position to take up bigger and better challenges in instructional technology projects.

This message came over from the Library.

From: Farb,Sharon

Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007, 12:13pm

The UCLA library is interested in gathering input from UCLA faculty and graduate students working with undergraduates regarding two databases aimed at interdisciplinary undergraduate uses. Please share this announcement with any faculty or graduate students you think may be interested. All comments welcome. Deadline is October 31, 2007.

————————

The databases are:

Academic Search Premier
Indexes and abstracts articles in more than eight thousand arts and humanities, social sciences, and life and physical sciences journals; offers access to full-text articles in more than 4,400 journals

Academic Search Complete

Indexes and abstracts articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese; full-text available for more than 5,300 journals; coverage spans all disciplines and area studies

Academic OneFile
Indexes and abstracts articles in more than eight thousand journals in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, theology, and literature; includes NPR, CNN, and CBC transcripts and podcasts and the full text of The New York Times from 1995 to the present

Learn more at http://www2.library.ucla.edu/electronicresources.html