Last weekend (November 13-15, 2014) a few of us (Sandy Stelts, Linda Friend, Carlos Rosas, and me), all involved with the “Learning as Play” project, attended a Digital Scholarship conference held at Bucknell University. Bucknell is a private liberal arts university located alongside the historic Susquehanna River in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Only about an hour and fifteen-minute drive along a scenic road from State College, it is a different world. The town and university are historic, small, and exquisite.

Suiting the elegance and size of the location, the conference was small as well (about 150 attendees). There were several keynote talks, all held in the Terrace Room, a dining and meeting room with full-length windows providing a panoramic view of the campus. Notably, the first was given by Chris Long from Penn State, in a talk called “Performing Collaborative Scholarship” on Friday. The theme was constant throughout the sessions. Because we were all interested in everything, we were pleased that the conference arrangers scheduled only two parallel sessions at a time.

We were part of a poster session: It was a material and digital poster session. I had never heard of the term “digital poster” before, and it seemed to me to be an oxymoron. What is it? It turned out the session was a bit like an ongoing booth, with objects and computer technology and people. Linda made a good-sized material poster outlining our project, which served as an entrance area to introduce people to our website. Carlos brought iPads to demonstrate some of the newer digital constructions and moving prototypes that his undergraduate students have made, as well as projecting the latest version of the interactive site on a larger screen. Sandy brought color facsimiles of a lovely 18th- century homemade religious turn-up book that Special Collections had recently acquired. I came and talked!

Amongst the four of us, with the combination of material and digital artifacts, the session was a success. The two-hour pre-dinner period passed swiftly as the other participants milled around, talked, and asked questions about all the of the fascinating projects. The congenial effect of the session was reinforced by the clever conference organizers, who by merging the “cocktail hour” with the “poster session,” set the casual yet engaged tone.

https://dsconf.blogs.bucknell.edu/schedule/