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Intro to Digital Research for Students

This guide is for AU students and anyone interested in digital scholarship and humanities. This guides offers definitions, AU library tools on creating projects, along with other various programs and tools to gain skills in digital scholarship.

Websites & Digital Exhibitions

For some digital research projects, the best way to publish your work is through an academic website, digital exhibition, or digital portfolio.

The AU Library provides two web-publishing platforms for students to use to build websites: EdSpace (powered by WordPress) and Omeka S. These platforms can support text, multimedia such as videos or images, and interactive elements. If these platforms don't suit your needs, many platforms like WordPress, Weebly, and Wix also allow you to build a website for FREE!

For more assistance in designing websites to publish digital research projects, check out the Library of Congress' Digital Scholarship Resources guide, which provides more resources and a list of potential local and nationwide groups that work on digital scholarship for you to explore. You can also make use of many free tutorials in getting acclimated to digital scholarship: 

  • Programming Historian
    This website provides various "how to" tutorials to gain technical skills.
  • Tooling Up for the Digital Humanities
    This website from Stanford University is a beginner-friendly guide for people interested in tools for digital projects, programs, and other tips to encourage and foster people's skills in digital research and digital humanities.
  • Library Carpentry lessons
    Technical lessons designed for people working in library and information-related roles. All lessons are freely available under a CC-BY license, meaning that reusers may distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator.

Video Essays

The components of a video essay are not far from those of a traditional essay, containing a thesis and supporting arguments, evidence, and analysis. However, the video format provides you with an extra element of creativity and the ability to use visuals to help deliver your message. 

While your topic and supporting arguments can be developed in the same way you would for a written essay, your arrangement and delivery may be different. Completing a storyboarding exercise can help you visualize how you want your video to flow.

Storyboarding can help you think through which of the following features you may want to include in your video: 

  • Pictures 
  • Animated graphics
  • Music
  • Captions
  • Voiceovers

Additional elements to consider: 

  • The order in which you want to introduce the parts of your topic 
  • How you plan to cite your sources (verbally, via text, etc.) 
  • How you might use voice vs. text 

Other useful resources for editing your video essay: 

  • If you'd like to add background music to your video essay, you can learn more about how to find music that can be used freely under a creative commons license here.
  • LinkedIn Learning is a place to find tutorials on how to use some of the free editing software AU has available to you 

Photo Essays

A photo essay which is another type of visual storytelling is a project type within digital humanities that encourages the creator to build a narrative through images. 

Below are various websites with media tools that can help with creating the perfect photo essay: