From Judy Thomas, Director of Faculty Programs:

Research Sprints, hosted by the University of Virginia Library, give faculty the opportunity to partner with a team of expert librarians on a project representing any phase in the scholarly life cycle of research or teaching projects.

All parties benefit: faculty receive help in moving their projects forward; library staff hone and expand their skills in ways that help the recipient and ultimately the faculty at large.

All of this year’s recipients are engaged in projects exploring how to conduct successful research during a time when physical spaces and materials are inaccessible. Teams will investigate digital collections in many different forms and media types and will lay the groundwork for ongoing research once the physical world is again open to us.

2020 RESEARCH SPRINT RECIPIENTS

Derrick Alridge, Curry School of Education & Human Development: Provide research support for a book project about the role of African American teachers in the civil rights movement. The project will draw on oral histories, teachers’ personal papers, and various archives to discern teachers’ activism inside and outside the classroom.

Library team:

• Christine Slaughter (project manager), Research Data Services and Social, Natural and Engineering Sciences
• Ashley Hosbach, Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Sony Prosper, Special Collections
• Keith Weimer, Arts & Humanities
• Penny White, Special Collections

Kirsten Gelsdorf, Batten School: Engage in research that will result in a book or that will include discourse, data, and case studies arguing for the global humanitarian imperative. The sprint will develop a research plan, including published scholarship, gray literature, and archival sources.

Library team:

• Jenn Huck (project manager), Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Molly Schwartzburg, Special Collections
• Christine Slaughter, Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Keith Weimer, Arts & Humanities
• Trillian Hosticka, Information Services & Spaces

Adrienne Ghaly, Arts & Sciences New Curriculum, English: Provide research support for both a book project and a digital humanities collaboration with JSTORLabs to create visual essays tracking the cultural processes contributing to manmade species extinction in materials of everyday life.

Library team:

• Sherri Brown (project manager), Arts & Humanities
• Beth Blanton, Collection Management
• Jeremy Bartczak, Metadata & Discovery
• Jeremy Boggs, Scholars’ Lab
• Ricky Patterson, Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Molly Schwartzburg, Special Collections

Jonathan Kropko, School of Data Science: Tech companies, from local startups to giants like Facebook and Google, have programs that use the expertise of tech and data professionals to work on projects to benefit the “social good”. We study the rich history of collaboration between UVA researchers and the city of Charlottesville on community-involved projects and we use this history to generate recommendations and guidelines to help projects for the social good be ethical and successful.

Library team:

• Erich Purpur (project manager), Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Rebecca Coleman, Arts & Humanities
• Jenn Huck, Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Maggie Nunley, Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Heather Riser, Special Collections
• Regina Rush, Special Collections

Heidi Nobles, College of Arts & Sciences, English: Expand archival materials for a developing course on writing processes and products by discovering additional archives, negotiating copyright issues, and creating innovative formats for publishing/producing course material.

Library team:

• Maggie Nunley (project manager), Research Data Services and Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences
• Brandon Butler, Scholarly Communications
• Sherri Brown, Arts & Humanities
• Brenda Gunn, Special Collections
• Cecelia Parks, Teaching & Learning