The Digital Research Centre is home to the digital initiatives program at the University of Saskatchewan. We are committed to advancing research, teaching, and engagement via three core activities: digitizing resources, improving the digital experience, and supporting digital scholarship.

This combination of services facilitates digital humanities research specifically, and digital scholarship more broadly, by cultivating partnerships with scholars, GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), and other groups residing at the intersection of computers, information resources, and cultural heritage. Our goal is to harness new and emerging opportunities in the digital environment to engage with diverse academic and public audiences.

This combination of activities makes research and artistic works more visible and useful through digital platforms, facilitates collaborative and community-engaged scholarship, and streamlines academic research.

Digital Asset Management

We assist faculty who propose to collect or create a large number of digital research objects including documents, images, datasets, audio, or video. Our digital asset management system permits a distributed research team to upload, share, and describe digital objects of all kinds. Privacy settings allow team members to share objects within the team or openly on the web.

Exhibits and Discovery

We provide researchers with web spaces to help exhibit research and/or search and provide access to digital objects in the digital asset management system. As resources and expertise allow, we support the use of other tools for exploring research questions related to interface and search.

Digital Preservation

This service area provides options for researchers who are ending projects. Several scenarios exist at this stage, from simple storage solutions to full digital preservation strategies that ensure long-term access to content. We work collaboratively with humanists, programmers, and librarians who are studying these challenges in archivable ways and developing best practices to ensure the durability of digital data, metadata, and interfaces.

Digitization

We support the production and delivery of a wide range of digital collections. Our staff has expertise digitizing a variety of media including books, manuscripts, photographs, artwork, microforms, maps, posters, slides, and audio-visual resources. We have partnered on a number of successful grant applications and have a long history of working on interinstitutional projects. We welcome collaborations with faculty, students, and community partners.

Space

The newly renovated space in Room 228 on the 2nd floor of the Murray Library provides faculty and grad students with software, hardware, collaborative tools, and workspace to help support successful digital scholarship. Open from 10am-4pm, the space will operate on a come-and-go basis, except on certain days where the space may be closed for functions. Events that showcase faculty and student research activities will be scheduled throughout the year. Researchers working with undergraduate and/or graduate students can conduct workshops and/or disseminate their research through lectures or classroom sessions in the digital scholarship studio. Our software and equipment will suit a range of disciplines and presentation styles.

In order to accommodate this wide range of activities, some equipment and services may need to be booked in advance. Contact drc@usask.ca to book an appointment.