From Evidence to Scholarship Conference

Foundational Concepts for Working on Digital Projects: Dana Bronson, Ben Murphy & Amy Blau
At Whitman College’s Penrose Library, we teach credit-bearing library classes that introduce students to working with primary sources (physically and digitally), and also teach concepts necessary to understanding the digital, broadly construed. That is, what do students need to know about the social, political, and economic aspects of different digital tools and systems in order to use or develop them effectively? We offer three credit-bearing courses in the library, one of which is taught in the Archives and Special Collections, that do not build as a sequence, but rather allow students a range of entry points that emphasize different aspects of primary source research, and different concepts relating to digital studies. Overall, our instruction program aims to introduce crucial research skills that will help students throughout their academic careers, with attention to concepts needed for students to be efficient producers and consumers of information.