Digital Initiatives Librarian, Writer and Artist

Photo of the Author with a bad pandemic haircut

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Contents: Workshops and Presentations | Scholarly Publications | Other Writing | Exhibits | Digital Scholarship Tools | Student Fellowship Projects | Press

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Andrew Weymouth is the Digital Initiatives Librarian at University of Idaho, primarily focusing on static web design to curate the institution’s special collections and partner with faculty and graduate students on fellowship projects. He has also created digital scholarship projects for the universities of Oregon, Washington and the Tacoma Northwest Room archives, ranging from long form audio public history to architectural databases and network visualizations. He writes about labor, architecture, underrepresented communities and using digital scholarship methods to survey equity in archival collections.

Workshops and Presentations

  • University of Idaho VERSO Guide Introductory presentation for students, staff and faculty engaging with University of Idaho Library's VERSO institutional repository platform. The guide walks through how VERSO functions, how to create a profile if data harvesting hasn't done so already, how to add scholarly work, edit your author profile and hide any work you don't want to have public. Fall 2024.
  • Using OpenRefine to Standardize Metadata Language Practical guide to using OpenRefine for metadata language standardization intended for faculty, staff, patrons and students at U of I. The focus of this workshop is to provide only the steps you need to perform to work through language standardization and not the many other OpenRefine capabilities. Fall 2024.
  • College of Agricultural & Life Sciences Liaison Introduction Reference site for introducing undergraduate students of the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences to myself, how my work corresponds with their studies and the various library resources on hand that they can use for producing scholarly work. Fall 2024.
  • Aerial Time Lapse Tools Survey Survey of five platforms that researchers can use to generate aerial time lapse visualizations, highlighting their unique strengths, weaknesses and the technical skills required for each. Created for the 25th annual University of Idaho GIS Day Short Talk series, Fall 2024.
  • Using Python Tools and Obsidian to Connect and Visualize Research Presentation on using custom Python tools to correct optical character recognition layers and extract annotations from digitized text and contextualizing these notes with Obsidian detailed tagging methods to enrich scholarly research, Fall 2024.
  • Distant Listening, Seven Minute Scholarship Presentation Presentation on text mining oral history collections created for the Seven Minute Scholarship segment of the 2024 Loyola Marymount University Digital Commons conference, Fall 2024.
  • Distant Listening: Using Python and Apps Scripts to Text Mine and Tag Oral History Collections Workshop on using Python and App Script to create subject tags across complete oral history collections and empower student workers to run, modify and expand these tags during the copyediting process. Created for the 2024 U of I Tech Talk series, Fall 2024.
  • Presenting Research in Five Ways to Increase Understanding and Uncover Connections Workshop for history undergraduates on framing research five different ways using various digital scholarship approaches. Created for Alyssa Kreikemeier's HIST 320 course, Fall 2024.
  • Analytics Workshop Introductory workshop for U of I library faculty about how GA4 is set up across the library site, getting access to analytics, reading and refining the series of Looker Studio templates I created for the many library teams and the limitations and misconceptions of what this data can tell us. Co-created with Digital Infrastructure Librarian Evan Williamson, Fall 2024.
  • Digital Geolocation Tools for Archival Research Workshop teaching geolocation tools and methodologies to identify archival photographs lacking metadata to enrich resources. The presentation covers text analysis, landmark identification and creating aerial time lapse videos. Created for the U of I Information Landscape series, Fall 2024.
  • Humanizing Nature Research History with Static Web Technology Presentation for UCLA Library's Captivity: Assembling Nature’s Histories detailing my experience creating interpretive materials for the Taylor Wilderness Research Station digital collection, Spring 2024.
  • Collaborating with Community Archives to Increase Access to Collections Created for the 2024 Northwest Archivist conference, this presentation details my experience collaborating with the Filipino American National Historical Society to create an article on the Alaskero migratory laborers, and explores being mindful of bias when engaging with community heritage spaces that don't look or function like institutional archives, Spring 2024.
  • The Tideflats: Distance and Environmental Psychology Presentation for the Society of Architectural Historians 2024 conference on the history of land use in the industrial Tacoma, Washington Tideflats, exploring themes of urban development and environmental psychology, Fall 2024.
  • Using Digital Scholarship to Conduct and Present Historical Research A revised version of the Humanizing Nature Research History presentation for Ellen Kittell's History 209 class, to introduce undergraduate students to digital scholarship concepts. University of Idaho, Spring 2024.
  • Sourcing Copyright Free Media Workshop Workshop created for Exploring the Information Landscape series, hosted on customized CollectionBuilder Workshop template. University of Idaho, Winter 2024.

Scholarly Publications

Other Writing

  • North Idaho Cultural Heritage Institutions Survey Article detailing a survey I created and conducted with the participation of twelve institutions, rethinking traditional practices of archival accessions and digital initiatives and exploring the similar challenges and successes of these smaller cultural heritage centers. University of Idaho Special Collections Idaho Harvester, Spring 2024
  • UI’s Berry Fellow Once Again Breaks the Mold in 2024 Article detailing my experience working with the 2024 Berry Fellowship recipient Irene Koreski to create a digital exhibit around a rare, unpublished oral history interview with jazz pioneer and eastern spiritualist Alice Coltrane. Pullman Moscow Daily New, Spring 2024
  • Through a Filipino Lens: Washington State Cannery Workers in Alaska Article on the history of Filipino cannery workers and their movement between Washington state and Alaska. Research involved optimizing small scale photographs and using open source chronolocation and geolocation tools to identify Alaskan landmarks which added context to the industrial and social environment on Kodiak Island. Maritime Washington, Fall, 2023
  • Tacoma's Northern Pacific Hospital Article on the history of Tacoma’s Northern Pacific Hospital, the westernmost post of one of the oldest, most enduring prepaid health care systems in America. Research involved oral history interviews, text mining and data visualizations of hospital records to help shed light on the impact of ethnicity and religion on mortality rates of early twentieth century railway workers. HistoryLink, Summer, 2023
  • Lost Tacoma: Demolished and Unbuilt Local Buildings Post on the Tacoma Public Library's site about my time processing the Lost Tacoma born digital archive material, focusing on my selection process and how everyday architecture can convey deep cultural significance. Summer, 2022
  • Above the Clouds, The Tacoma Mountaineers Records Post on the Tacoma Public Library's site about my time processing the Tacoma Mountaineers archive material, focusing on a female member’s scrapbook which documented expeditions during 1906. Winter, 2022
  • Capturing the Oral History of a Historic African American Community in the Pacific Northwest Reflection on a displaced African American community south of Seattle, oral history, and equity in historic preservation, published by the Society of American Archivist's Archival Outlook. Winter, 2021

Exhibits

Digital Scholarship Tools

All tools except Read_Image developed independently


  • Read_Image Optical Character Recognition Tool Iteration of an OCR tool developed by Luke Sheneman, Director of the IBEST Northwest Knowledge Network (NKN) at University of Idaho. This extension was developed to help extract text from images files in an effort to enrich alt text metadata and make digital collections more accessible. Private repository but link is pointed to introductory presentation for Digital Collections group. Fall, 2024.
  • Trello_Export Tool Tool for exporting archived Trello cards, categorized by label to help track activity for liaison reports and annual reviews. Fall, 2024.
  • Book_Splitter Tool Python tool for quickly splitting two page scans to increase accuracy of OCR. Fall, 2024.
  • Annotation_Extraction Tool Created to help code PDF files and extract the text of those annotations to export categorically and chronologically to markdown files so they can be visualized and make connections within Obsidian. To use, add your annotated PDF to the A folder, run the script and categorical and chronological files will generate in the B folder. Adjust color values and names of categories by adjusting data in lines 63-83. Future improvements include adding annotated text, shapes or underlined text. Summer, 2024.
  • Web_Scraper Tool Created to help extract contact information across multiple areas of the University of Idaho CALS directory for liaison work. Summer, 2024.
  • Image_Extraction Tool Created to extract and name individual images from overhead scans of archival scrapbooks containing multiple photos. Summer, 2024.
  • Transcript_Mining Tool Tool developed for the University of Idaho to increase efficiency and accuracy of the Digital Scholarship and Open Strategies department Oral History as Data tagging process. This template can be iterated on by dropping new sets of transcriptions into the CSV folder and running Python within the hello.py file. Future iterations of this template will modularize the text mining categories into General, Geographic and Custom categories. Winter, 2023.

Student Fellowship Projects

  • Alice Coltrane, Jazz Spiritualism Guidance and Oral History as Data audio visualization for 2024 Berry Fellow Irene Koreski, on the life of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, singer and composer. University of Idaho, Spring, 2024.
  • Chestnut Collective Exhibit design and network visualization for Nick Koenig's CDIL Graduate Student Fellowship. University of Idaho, Winter, 2023.

Press

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