The Ryerson Library and an MFA Documentary Media student helped create an experience based on remembrance project
A Stolperstein, or stumbling stone, which is a remembrance project by German artist Gunter Demnig. Each stumbling stone contains the names, date of birth, date of deportation, and date of death or destiny of the victims of the Holocaust. They are located at the entrances of buildings that were the last freely chosen home of the individual named on the stumbling stone.
If you walk down certain cobblestone streets in Europe, you might come across a Stolperstein (stumbling stone) at your feet.
The Stolpersteine are commemorative cobblestones that are placed in front of houses that were the last freely chosen homes of people who were victims of the Holocaust – imprisoned, displaced or murdered. German artist Gunter Demnig started the project in 1996 and has so far installed more than 70,000 brass plaques in 21 European countries.
In May 2020, the German Consulate Toronto approached Ryerson Library with the idea to jointly create a virtual experience based on the Stolpersteine memorials and a year later this creative partnership produced “Stolpersteine: Stories Through Generations.” The project brings the stories of four Canadian families alive through the narrative of audio interviews and private family images.
Last year, shortly after the province-wide lockdown, the Library put out a call to Ryerson community members asking for contributions to a digital archive.
The COVID-19 Community Archives project was born as a way to help the Ryerson community collectively record lived experiences during a global pandemic that swiftly altered the way we studied, attended class, worked, bought groceries and visited with family and friends.
One year later, we are now living through a third wave that has continued to push us to establish new routines. Students and faculty have nearly completed a full year of online, remote learning. Researchers have sought new ways to access materials and conduct research. Events and workshops have brought people together virtually to share discussions and knowledge online. Libraries have set up study space booking systems and ways of delivering print items without contact, while increasing digital collections and research help services.
Now, as vaccine rollout increases, there is some light but continued concern as variants spread.
Throughout the pandemic the Library has continued to collect images, photographs, writing and poetry from our community, documenting the ways we have come to experience the world. “We’ve received essays and audio journal entries reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on student life, as well as our relationship with outdoor space and technology,” says Special Curatorial Specialist, Olivia Wong.
Bangkok sunset. Photo courtesy of Sarick Chapagain
Wong notes that in addition to local experiences, students have also provided their global perspectives. “Some submissions are from international students who documented their journey flying home early in the pandemic and shared their experience attending classes while being in a completely different time zone than Toronto,” says Wong
The COVID-19 community archives is a growing repository of grassroots primary source documentation which provides access to a collection of first-hand accounts of the pandemic experience for researchers who will investigate and study this time. “Through this archive, we’re collecting the first-hand experiences of our community, and making these valuable primary sources available to students, researchers, and historians in the future,” says Alison Skyrme, special collections librarian.
Photo courtesy of Sharah Haque.
“With the majority of our learning and working happening in private, our individual experiences have become invisible, particularly for students,” says Skyme. “Our sense of community has changed dramatically. The way we learn, teach, and socialize is completely different, and it’s still unknown how this experience will change us or alter our “normal” moving forward.”
For more information on the project and how to submit content, visit the Archives and Special Collections Covid-19 Community Archives
Open Education at Ryerson highlights the work that’s being done at Ryerson University in support of open education. This includes the use of open educational practices and open pedagogy in the classroom, and the creation and adoption of open educational resources.
Learn what support is available, from grants and funding to publishing tools, find about upcoming workshops and events, and connect with other Ryerson community members working on open.
Open Education Week events:
Open Images for the Digital Classroom and Beyond
Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
This Library-led workshop is an overview of how to find online open images, how to use open images in teaching or projects, and how to advise students on the use of Creative Commons images in social media or web projects.
Join us to learn more about this learner-driven, experiential, and inclusive pedagogy, and how it can be applied in both the virtual and face-to-face classroom. Bring your course outlines, activities, or assessments so we can discuss how they could be transformed through open teaching principles.
Open Pedagogy Tools: Pressbooks, H5P and Hypothes.is
Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
An overview of Pressbook, an online book publishing platform hosted by the Library, and some of the new interactive features that have been released recently in Pressbooks. We will also look at H5P and how Hypothes.is can be used with Pressbooks and other web content.
Toronto Metropolitan University Library has partnered with the Aga Khan Museum in a creative collaboration that harnesses digital technology to create innovative experiences for the Museum’s exciting new Remastered exhibition.
The Aga Khan Museum recently launched it’s vibrant Remastered exhibition—November 7 to March 21, 2021—showcasing 11 classic Islamic manuscript paintings complemented by 40 digital interventions.
The digital interventions are the work of Library Collaboratory team members, Lead Developer Michael Carter-Arlt, Web Developer and Support Technician Jae Duk Seo, with Information Technology Services Head Fangmin Wang and Web Services Librarian Sally Wilson acting as administrative consultants on the project.
In collaboration with the Museum and exhibition curator Dr. Michael Chagnon, the Library team developed new ways to experience the historic manuscripts, introducing alternative learning opportunities through the exploration of digital technologies.
“The Remastered exhibition has given us the valuable opportunity to reimagine how we interpret classic Islamic artworks using modern technology available at the Ryerson Library,” says Carter-Arlt. “The intention of this project is to tell a story for each artwork, and in doing so provide a greater understanding through interactive digital media.”
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The Library’s partnership with the Aga Khan Museum began in 2019 when the Museum approached the Library about creating unique learning experiences using Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies.
Following initial meetings, the Library and Museum worked together on an exploratory research project, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, which sought to develop and assess digital and experiential learning resources that would help to increase classroom engagement, and expand access to collections beyond in-person visits to the Museum.
The Aga Khan Museum supplied the Library with high resolution photographs and descriptions of three objects from their collection, including: an astrolabe (astronomical instrument), an illuminated and illustrated leaf from a manuscript, and a green ceramic bottle.
The Library team then used digital and emerging technologies to create new experiences that could be tested for their engagement and educational value.
In total, four experiences for the three objects were developed. They included: an AR animation with translations and audio for the leaf of the manuscript; AR and Looking Glass (holographic) experiences for the green ceramic bottle; and an acrylic replica astrolabe, which could be taken apart and rebuilt.
Image of original astrolabe (astronomical instrument). Courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum
Acrylic replica of the astrolabe. Laser cut at the Library Collaboratory.
Library team members, Sally Wilson, E-learning and Accessibility Services Librarian Kelly Dermody, and Operations Specialist Cristina Pietropaolo then conducted focus groups to further understand the engagement impacts and potential of the digital resources for in-class learning, as well as increased access to museum collections.
“The purpose of this project was to translate select items of the Museum’s collection from their physical confines to digital formats using Augmented Reality (AR) and other technologies,” says Pietropaolo. “The long-term intention of this work is to facilitate accessible and meaningful education around these objects for both educators and their students in the classroom, as well as for members of the public in an effort to transform and enhance access to arts and culture education.”
Image of original green bottle. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum
Augmented reality image of bottle. Educators and students can use mobile devices to see, interact, learn and experience the object.
The work which began in 2019 is ongoing as Library team members continue to investigate opportunities for digital and experiential learning in the context of gallery, library, archives and museum education.
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In April 2020, the Aga Khan Museum once again approached the Library to collaborate on the Remastered exhibit, curated by Dr. Michael Chagnon.
The task: to develop digital experiences to accompany ancient Islamic manuscripts for the exhibit. To complete the project, the Library was given exclusive access to high resolution folios in order to rework and reimagine them in digital formats. The result was 40 new experiences including: seven animations, five 3D holograms, five digital restorations, and 23 interactive folios. The Library and Museum also received a generous loan from Looking Glass Factory to assist in the display of the holographic images.
Salih Takes Mah-Pervin on Board . Fol. 29r from a manuscript of Tuhfet ul-Leta’if Turkey, Istanbul, 1593–1594. Opaque watercolour, gold, and ink on paper. AKM280.11 Digital intervention by Michael Carter-Arlt.
The digital elements, now part of the Remastered exhibit, enhance the overall learning and storytelling experience for visitors through digital restoration, innovative engagement elements and new digitally enhanced explorations.
“We are very excited to partner with the Aga Khan Museum. It has been a wonderful opportunity to bring the Library’s role in interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and digital information tools to this unique learning environment,” says Chief Librarian Carol Shepstone. “This project is an excellent example of how the GLAM sectors (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) can come together to leverage unique expertise and shared goals.”
These five students submitted their extraordinary project ideas back in March, just prior to the university’s closure due to COVID-19. When the world was trying to grapple with a global pandemic and contain the spread of a swift moving virus, these students continued to charge ahead and take hold of projects they felt passionately about.
All five projects are now well underway, each one bringing to light new ways of addressing current social issues.
The grant itself highlights experiential learning and digital literacy opportunities available to students through the Library, and provides funding and mentorship to the students throughout the development of their individual projects.
Here’s a peek at the innovative projects this year’s recipients are working on:
Sojourner San Vicente
4th year, Ryerson Midwifery Education Program, Faculty of Community Services
With the Library DME Creators Grant, Sojourner San Vicente—along with fellow Ryerson Midwifery Education Program (MEP) students Tumaini Lyaruu and Hanan Yousuf—is developing a series of educational videos on midwifery care featuring Black midwifery students, midwives and clients. As a group of Black midwifery students, they have anecdotally identified various false assumptions that have prevented Black community members from accessing midwifery care, and understanding their pregnancy care options. The videos aim to:
increase awareness about midwifery care in Ontario,
increase the visibility of Black midwives, midwifery students and clients, and
enable Black communities to see themselves reflected in midwifery care.
Through the videos, Sojourner, Tumaini and Hanan hope more Black families will become interested in considering midwifery care as an option for their pregnancies.
Takoda Kemp
3rd year, Geographic Analysis, Faculty of Arts
Having grown up on a farm in the Bahamas, Takoda has a deep connection to the natural world. Coupled with interests in Geographic Information Science (GIS) and Robotics, his project tackles issues involving food insecurity. Seeing how structural barriers can hinder people without access to arable land, Takoda knows first-hand that quality infrastructure and education can provide opportunities to create a productive and sustainable crop.
With the Library DME Creators Grant, Takoda is investigating the use of drones to provide agricultural analysis and services to farmers in Canada and the Bahamas. With a camera drone, he is creating two and three-dimensional maps that categorize soil and plant types to help facilitate manual aspects of farm labour such as seed sowing, and crop control. Takoda will then retrofit the mapping process to all dwellings and settings, including urban centres, so analysis of surroundings can clarify which crops can be grown where. An additional aspect of the project is to investigate the use of drones to sow crops that can germinate on the soil’s surface, like micro-greens and salad greens.
Niya Abdullahi
4th year, Business Technology Management and Co-op, Ted Rogers School of Management
Business Technology co-op student Niya Abdullahi is a Tech-Enthusiast and aspiring Filmmaker. Earlier this year she founded Habasooda, a media platform dedicated to sharing the richness of the Muslim experience through a variety of storytelling avenues such as videos and infographics.
With the Library DME Creators Grant, Niya is creating a documentary that explores the stigma of mental illness within the Muslim community. The documentary will explore the differences between mental illness and mental health while showcasing the realities of being a Muslim with a mental illness. “Often when one is dealing with a mental illness they are told that their symptoms may be due to a lack of faith and/or supernatural occurrences,” says Niya. The film will shed light on what a community’s denial could do to someone’s own inner battles and how we as a community can combat stigma.
Emerson Kafarowski
4th year, Performance Production, Faculty of Communication and Design
Emerson Kafarowski is an emerging lighting designer currently finishing her BFA in Production & Design at Ryerson’s School of Performance.
With the Library DME Creators Grant, Emerson is building a portable lighting console for small-scale live entertainment events, including theatre, dance, and live music. The lighting console will cater to shows and productions produced by independent and emerging artists or companies with limited budgets, as well as non-traditional performing arts spaces without existing technical infrastructure. It will also promote and incentivize industry-level lighting design and operation in a comprehensive and accessible format.
Emerson’s project will be open-sourced and is inspired by Electronic Theatre Control (ETC) Labs #lighthack, a community-driven project designed by ETC users and employees to share and co-develop open-source apps, programs and hardware. It is Emerson’s intention that, once complete, the details of this project including the equipment list, assembly instructions, and code, will be made available to others interested in creating and/or customizing low-cost, portable programming wings and devices of their own.
Elvina Raharja
2nd year, Creative Industries, Faculty of Communication and Design
Elvina Raharja is a second-year Creative Industries student focusing on the performing art and film industries. Growing up in Indonesia, Elvina trained as a dancer and became passionate about learning different dance styles and histories to help cultivate her voice and awareness as an artist. Throughout her training and career in dance, she has also seen first-hand the discrepancy in the representation of women of colour in mainstream media–especially plus-sized women. As an aspiring producer and creative director, Elvina is committed to pushing for safe spaces and inclusivity for everyone, especially within the dance industry.
With the Creators Grant, Elvina is creating a short dance film that highlights curvy and plus-sized women of colour. Her goal for the project is to help dismantle, through dance, pre-existing body standards and to push a body inclusive, positive narrative.
Twenty years ago, Jennifer Kwan published “Voices from the Trenches” in the student paper, The Eyeopener.
Kwan interviewed students about their relationship to Remembrance Day and their traditions to commemorate the event. The article published provides insight from students who had recently immigrated to Canada and their connections to war and conflict.
Archives and Special Collections has outlined the importance of the article and student perspectives in their recently published post, Remembrance Day: student voices from 2000
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, gathering at the Library was no longer an option but, thanks to the foresight of the Library team, students and faculty could still benefit from most of its resources and services.
“The Library has been operating seamlessly in both the digital and physical worlds for about 15 years now so we were well prepared for this unanticipated transition,” says Carol Shepstone, chief librarian. “Our existing technical infrastructure is robust and was in place to be expanded, enhanced and leveraged, thanks to the creativity, expertise and commitment of our team.”
The current need to share COVID-19 research outputs via data repositories and open access publishers is both urgent and unprecedented. According to the World Health Organisation, in their statement on Data sharing for novel coronavirus (COVID-19), “rapid data sharing is the basis for public health action”. During a pandemic, rapid access to data influences public health and policy decisions and can save lives. The pandemic has prompted a new and more pressing interest in open data, data sharing and reusing existing datasets.
Though the premise of data sharing is simple, the details can be tricky and require researchers to navigate technical, scientific, legal and ethical issues. With this in mind, the Portage COVID-19 Working Group have recently published five new guidance documents to help support rapid response data sharing and deposit for Canadian researchers:
Guide to COVID-19 Rapid Response Data Sharing and Deposit for Canadian Researchers: A straightforward guide for researchers who need to share COVID-19 related research data. Topics include: planning to share research data, making your data understandable, making your data FAIR and open, protecting the privacy of research participants and helping others discover and use your data
Can I Share My Data?: A decision tree for determining when human participant data would need to be anonymized or de-identified before being shared or deposited into a repository
De-identification Guidance: Guidance regarding removing direct identifiers and evaluated indirect or quasi-identifiers based on perceived risk, and considerations for qualitative data de-identification
If you have any questions about sharing COVID-19 related research data, or any other aspect of the research data lifecycle- such as writing data management plans, creating documentation for your data or selecting a data repository- please contact Nora Mulvaney (nmulvaney@ryerson.ca), the Research Data Management Librarian.
Open access materials are academic materials that are legally accessible and distributed online, free of cost. The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of openly accessible research, as researchers publicly share their work on the coronavirus.Open access is now a necessity. With open access, COVID-19 researchers are sharing their work more quickly to help speed up innovation and discovery.
Open Access Week is a global event held annually in October to raise awareness of the benefits of Open Access in the academic community. This year’s theme is Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion – a prompt for the academic community to consider the benefits of open access through the lens of creating systems and infrastructure to support all researchers.
Ryerson Library is hosting two events during Open Access Week: Oct. 19-25.
We encourage faculty and graduate students to attend open access events and learn more about how open access can improve the knowledge mobilization of Ryerson research.
The Role of Open Access and Social Media in Knowledge Mobilization and Discovery.
Talk with Open Access Library Wall of Fame 2020 Award Winner: Anatoliy Grudz.
Date: Oct 19, 2020 Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m
Ideas that seem obvious today, at one point were obscure facts known only to a select few. The health benefits of washing hands, wearing a seatbelt while in a car – none of these ideas and practices were accepted immediately. In addition to needing time to incubate, new ideas also need to be accessible so that they can be tested, debated, and built upon. This presentation, which is based on my previous research and personal experiences, will highlight the importance and connection between open access publishing and the role of social media in promotion and dissemination of scholarly research.
Speaker Information:
Anatoliy Gruzd is a Canada Research Chair in Privacy-Preserving Digital Technologies, an Associate Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management and the Director of Research at the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is also a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, a co-editor of a multidisciplinary journal on Big Data and Society, and a founding co-chair of the International Conference on Social Media and Society. As a computational social scientist, Dr. Gruzd’s research broadly explores how social media platforms are changing the ways in which people and organizations communicate, collaborate, disseminate information and misinformation, conduct business and form communities online, and how these changes impact society.
Mountains to Climb: Open Access and academic libraries in 2020 and Beyond
Talk with Jon E. Cawthorne, Ph.D. is Dean of the Wayne State University Library
Date: Oct. 22, 2020 Time: 2 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Description:
Dean Cawthorne is pathologically positive! The talk will build on themes within the article Mountains to climb: Leadership for sustainable change in scholarly communication. This remarkable moment requires rethinking large ideas/systems related to organizational culture, social justice and scholarship. The talk will suggest how our noble profession may navigate the complex individual and organizational values we hold dear, while exploring how our collective leadership for higher education must meet the moment. The presentation will be enriched by interaction during the Q&A session, so please bring your questions and come prepared to engage with the speaker.
Speaker information:
Jon E. Cawthorne, Ph.D. is Dean of the Wayne State University Library System which includes the University’s School of Information Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in managerial leadership in the information professions from Simmons University and is passionate about changing organizational cultures, increasing Black, Indigenous People of Color into leadership positions in the information and publishing industry. Dean Cawthorne is the current President of the Association of College and Research Libraries and remains positive about the future. Prior to joining WSULS, Cawthorne served as dean of libraries at West Virginia University. While in Morgantown, Cawthorne led an effort to remove WVU from their Big Deal in 2016.
In 2019, I exhibited my SSHRC-Insight Development Grant-funded research, “Newspapers, Minstrelsy and Black Performance at the Theatre: Mapping the Spaces of NationBuilding in Toronto, 1870s to 1930s,” as part of RUBIX, a showcase celebration of the Scholarly Research and Creative (SRC) activity within the Faculty of Communication and Design. At this event, I met Alison Skyrme, Special Collections librarian at Ryerson who suggested that I drop by Special Collections to examine images of blackface in the Kodak Canada Archive.
I was struck by her invitation because it happens so rarely. Despite the fact that blackface was a popular theatrical form of entertainment from the 1830s through 1960s, performed not only in the professional theatre and in Hollywood films, but also in communities at high schools, athletic clubs, hospitals, at retail, and even summer camps, most people want to hide their blackface artefacts, they do not invite Black researchers to interrogate them. And so, one afternoon in the fall of 2019, I and my graduate student, Emilie Jabouin, scoured through the Kodak Archive’s blackface repertoire. While the images were new to me, I had prior knowledge of the important role that Kodak played in the development of photography.
These five students submitted their extraordinary project ideas back in March, just prior to the university’s closure due to COVID-19. When the world was trying to grapple with a global pandemic and contain the spread of a swift moving virus, these students continued to charge ahead and take hold of projects they felt passionately about.
4th year, Ryerson Midwifery Education Program, Faculty of Community Services
4th year, Business Technology Management and Co-op, Ted Rogers School of Management
4th year, Performance Production, Faculty of Communication and Design
2nd year, Creative Industries, Faculty of Communication and Design
