Welcome back to campus and to a new year for the REL Digital Lab.
Last year was a productive one in the RELdl. We hosted class session and independent studies, supported faculty projects including digitizing scrapbooks, creating podcasts, editing videos, and analyzing texts, and began hosting a working group for Arts and Sciences faculty and students interested in the digital humanities. We are looking to build on that success as we work to further connect the RELdl with the teaching, research, and service of the Department of Religious Studies.
This year I am joined in the RELdl by Erica Bennett, a returning MA student in Religious Studies who is spending the year focused on digital and public humanities. As everyone settles into their courses and starts thinking about projects they want to accomplish, we want to make you aware of some of the ways the RELdl is available to faculty and students in REL this fall.
Lab Open Hours
Each Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm, the RELdl will be open for you to drop by, use the machines, work on your own projects, or chat with myself and Erica about ideas or technical challenges. If you are curious about the RELdl, please come by and spend some time with us – so much of DH is learning by seeing what other people are doing.
Reserve the Lab
If you are working on a project and would like to use one of the lab computers for a dedicated period of time, you can reserve the lab in 1 hour increments to guarantee access to the machine/s you need. To make a reservation, please use our Bookings page. If you need longer than an hour, you can make back-to-back reservations. If you would like to use the lab on Monday, please email Jeri (jewieringa@ua.edu) so that we can make arrangements.
Upcoming Events
We are going to hold “Basics of …” brownbag workshops this semester, designed to get you up and running with the lab equipment. These workshops will be held from Noon to 1pm on the last Wednesday of the Month. The Fall dates and topics are:
- August 31: Basics of … the REL Digital Lab
- September 28: Basics of … Digitization and Text Recognition
- October 26: Basics of … Audio Recording and Podcasting
We will also be relaunching the DH Working Group in the coming weeks – stay tuned for dates, times, and topics!
You can see all of our scheduled events (and lab availability) on the RELdl calendar.
We look forward to seeing all of the great digital humanities projects coming out of REL this year!