Michael Zarafonetis (Haverford College)
The Haverford College Digital Scholarship Fellows program launched in the fall of 2014, and is set to enter year two in the fall of 2015. The program is a collaboration of Haverford Libraries Digital Scholarship, the Office of Academic Resources, the Center for Career and Professional Advising, and the Writing Center. Up to eight fellows fellows are selected each year from the sophomore and junior classes who participate in a strictly voluntary co-curricular program. The main goals of the program are for students to develop skills in the use of technology for researching and exploring scholarly questions, and to collaboratively plan, develop and build a digital scholarship project over the course of the year. This is done through a combination of lessons, self-guided workshops, and lab time. Fellows emerge from the program with a toolkit for doing digital scholarship as they approach senior thesis work, a more critical approach to digital media, and a better understanding of the affordances and drawbacks of digital modes of communication. The 2014-15 Fellows took an active role in designing and planning the Monument Lab, a public project exploring history, culture, and public memory in the city of Philadelphia. This short paper will reflect on the experiences and lessons learned from the 2014-15 program, and talk about the first months of the 2015-16 DS Fellowship.