iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities, a volume on AI and DH in the long-running Minnesota Debates in DH book series. To be co-edited by @zentralwerkstatt.org, @laurenfklein.bsky.social, @lnakamura.bsky.social, and myself. Deadline Nov. 1. Please share widely! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-gen...

dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities

Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Had a great time reminding drivers to pay attention and yield to pedestrians at CP2’s crosswalk action! This crossing at Tower Grove Park has a new flashing light, but no stop. Cars ignore the light and fly through. So many walkers told us they find this crosswalk scary and hostile. #stl #stlouis

Across a 3 lane street, three people wearing safety vests hold signs that say “yield to pedestrians”

Across a 3 lane street, two people wearing safety vests hold signs that say “yield to pedestrians”

Crossing guard chic! A selfie of me in a safety vest and a red city if St. Louis baseball cap

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I’m hangry about pointless, counterintuitive vending machine “upgrades” today: - fragile, inaccessible touchscreens - weird door that requires two hands to operate and grab your snacks - among the new snacks, a chocolate dough-flavored protein bar that is sneakily non-vegetarian #AccessibilityFail

A fancy new SIUE-branded vending machine with a touchscreen instead of buttons, and a door that you have to push down on (rather hard!) with one hand to access your snacks with the other hand

A Barebells chocolate dough protein bar. Vegetarians beware! For absolutely no good reason, it includes bovine collagen.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It’s World Car-Free Day! Pretty much every day is car-free for me, but I celebrated anyway with a bike commute. As someone on insta suggested, maybe the better goal to strive for is Car-Free World Day. #CarFree #CarFreeSTL

A Strava screenshot showing my route from south St. Louis to Edwardsville (30.48 miles)

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

They desperately want people talking about the danger of their dogshit extruder gaining sentience, and not the fact that it is currently actually factually poisoning Black people in the poor regions where they build data centers. Or convincing people to kill themselves, etc.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Four weeks in, and I am really enjoying my students' reflection notebooks. I teach #DigitalHumanities courses, so these haven't replaced technology in the way that I've seen others using them. Once a week, we take ten minutes to free-write, doodle, or whatever else in response to a prompt.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And now homeward bound with the help of Amtrak and @roopikarisam.bsky.social

A bike hanging vertically on a rack on an Amtrak train

Roopika Risam’s book Data Empire on a train table, next to an iced coffee

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My second Door County Century is in the books! Century rides (100 miles in one go) are such a head game. You’d think the last few miles would be the hardest, but it’s somewhere in the 60-70 mile range that you need the most willpower. After that, you can lie to yourself that you’re almost there.

A picture of me riding through the finish line arch, giving a thumbs up

A Strava screenshot showing a circuit of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. Total distance was 101.48 miles in 7 hours, 26 minutes, and 26 seconds. Elevation gain was 2513 feet.

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Calling all storytellers! Emplace, a new digital publication, invites community members to contribute stories about how they build community, relationships, and a sense of place in the St. Louis region. We welcome established and emerging voices and a wide variety of formats. #stl #DigitalHumanities

Call for Community Storytellers

Emplace, a new digital publication, invites community members to contribute stories about how they build community, relationships, and a sense of place in the St. Louis region. We welcome established and emerging voices and a wide variety of formats.
Emplace centers placemaking through storytelling as a creative practice. The term emplace evokes intentionality, care, and action in relation to the work of strengthening communities through sharing local stories. Stories have the power to create change.

Stories shape who we are, how we understand the world around us, and how we imagine the future. Through storytelling, Emplace advocates for spatial justice, in which people have access to healthy living environments, equal access to resources and services, and the ability to contribute to the identity and future of their homes.

Emplace supports its contributors with developmental editing and community-based review, creating a genre of public scholarship that values the works of diverse contributors. The interactive story genres on Emplace include data visualization, video production, podcasting, mapping, graphic networks, and scrollytelling, a technique that dynamically reveals multimedia content as a reader scrolls through a narrative.

Contributors don’t need to have technical expertise, just a story to tell. SIUE’s IRIS Center for Digital Humanities will support contributors in bringing their digital stories to life, including technical and editorial support. Contributions will be reviewed prior to publication, and accepted authors will receive honoraria of $500 per piece.

Submit a Proposal
View the full call and submit a proposal at https://emplace.siue.edu/call-for-storytellers.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

My greatest footnote has gotta be a toss-up between the tangled webs of early modern Irish lordly families and the time I fell in a creek for research. #skystorians 🗃️

A note on naming conventions: There is a great deal of name overlap and ambiguity among the major figures in this case. Not only do Sir Finghin O'Driscoll (of Ballyisland and of Dún na Séad/Baltimore) and Finghín Carrach O'Driscoll (of Dún na Long/Sherkin Island) share a name, but both Finghins had eldest sons named Conor and younger sons named Donnchadh, the latter of whom litigated on their fathers behalf. Both Finghins were also sons of two different Conors: Conor mac Finghin, father of Finghin Carrach, and Conor mac Conor, father of Sir Finghin. For that reason, Sir Finghin of Ballyisland is always referred to as Sir Finghín, and Finghín Carrach always carries his epithet.
Occasionally, there are ambiguous references to Finghín, in which case the name given is that in the text. Where there is potential for ambiguity, Donnchadh Carrach also carries his epithet. Both Conors always carry their patronymics. See Figure 1 for a family tree.
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3 The pollution of Cowmire Creek today is underreported. Historic newspaper articles detail sewage effluent, and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods have shared video of runoff from the West Lake Landfill (a poorly contained radioactive site) leaking into the creek. See for example, Margaret Gillerman, "Farmer, Suburbanites Clash on Runoff," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 26 July 1979; Loré Hayes Szcepanski, "Releasing rainwater from Westlake Landfill into Cowmire Creek. I'm not okay with that & you shouldn't be either." Facebook, 23 July 2023,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/630852290258112/posts/683530686647
92591. As anecdotal evidence, 1 (Smith) can unfortunately attest that, after taking an unintentional dip in the creek, I attracted swarms of flies for the rest of my hike and had an infected wound.

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Erin A. McCarthy @erinannmcc.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Possibly my favorite answer to "What is DH?" yet. 🍩

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Living in Shaw, I was always a World’s Fair devotee. I felt a little bad shifting my donut allegiances when I moved, but Donut Drive-In rocks. There are some bad choices for donuts in St. Louis, but there are also many, many good ones.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Week 1 is always a little strange in a DH course, because students are trying to wrap their heads around what exactly DH is. And that’s fair, because today, #DigitalHumanities is transporting 2.5 dozen donuts across state lines for the @siueiris.bsky.social open house. (1 bike, 3 buses, 1 train)

The back of a bicycle, with three boxes of donuts strapped to the rack

The top of a donut box from Donut Drive-In, sitting in a metro car

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If you’d like to shop at some bookstores that are actually in the heart of the city, might I recommend… • Leviathan (new, S Grand) • Dunaway (used, S Grand) • Left Bank (both, Central West End) • Read a Book (used, Dutchtown) #stl #stlouis

Quote from an article about Half Price Books opening a new St. Louis location: "We've been in the St. Louis market since 2014 and think we have found the perfect location for a new community of readers," Kathy Doyle Thomas, president of Half Price Books, said in a statement. "Our stores in Chesterfield, University City and St. Charles are performing well. We know it is the right time to brin the unique Half Price Books experience to the heart of the city."

The 6,700-square-foot bookstore at th Southpoint Plaza shopping center at 4491 Lemay Ferry Road will be the company's sixth store in Missouri. The three other existing St. Louis-area locations are in Chesterfield, University City and St. Charles. It also operates in Kansas City and Independence.

A Google Maps screenshot showing the new location, which is in fact not in the city at all. (Neither are any of its other locations.)

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Clodagh Tait @clodaghtait.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Came across Vance Packard's The Waste Makers today. I never realised the idea of 'planned obsolescence' was so old. And I guess we took none of his advice.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Thanks @trailnetstl.bsky.social for another great community ride, celebrating Juneteenth! Lots of new-to-me Black St. Louis history, fantastic entertainment, and a good chunk of roads I hadn’t ridden before.

A Strava ride summary for the Trailnet Juneteenth Community Ride. The ride itself was 11 miles, but since I rode to and from it, it shows 24.4 miles.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Yeeessss. I assigned this one for the digitization unit in my Digital Curation and Storytelling class last fall. I have to confess, though, that the youths were mostly not impressed.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

What kind of doofus would wear wide leg pants in a torrential downpour? The same kind that would manage to slip into two giant puddles and soak both their shoes before even making it out the alley #stlwx

Sitting on the metro platform with both of my legs raised up so you can see that my shoes and the bottom 6-8 inches of my pants are drenched

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I saw a vanity plate BGTD this morning, and that’s probably “Big Ted” or something. But I might gently suggest workshopping that one next time.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

A few months ago, I noticed this scam #DigitalHumanities journal, with AI articles attributed to fake or stolen author names. They've now replaced those articles with new ones by seemingly real authors. Same vol, same issue, totally different pubs.

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Cecilia Barnard @ceciliajb.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Last week, I had the honor of presenting some preliminary research at American Society of Irish Medieval Studies' panel in honor of Dr. Kieran O'Connor at ICMS 61. Thank you to @clemsondh.bsky.social and @megsmith.bsky.social for both allowing me to attend and presiding over a great panel!

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Writing! At the Bus Stop Book proposal, public transit, and thunderstorms create some extremely cozy vibes. #stl #stlwx

A view across DeBaliviere in the pouring rain, with my open laptop in the foreground. (It’s showing an excel sheet, which doesn’t seem like writing, but that’s actually my writing tracked.)

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Today I am grateful for people who share their book proposals on @kcommons.bsky.social, which mostly means I am grateful to @eve.gd! Process documents are super useful and so hard to find.

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Congratulations to @megsmith.bsky.social! Last week, she received the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award from the Saint Louis University Department of History. The award recognizes all the fantastic, collaborative work in IRIS, supporting history & the humanities at SIUE and beyond! #DigitalHumanities

Meg Smith (right) stands next to Mark Ruff, chair of the history department at Saint Louis University. Meg holds a glass award.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Who needs a blow dryer when you live in the Midwest and a storm is coming? #stl #stlwx

A picture of me walking toward a bus stop with my hair being blown all over my face from multiple directions

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Just a little over a week left to apply for this job! The application portal will close on May 1st. #DigitalHumanities #LibraryJobs #ArchiveJobs

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

More art for IRIS, courtesy of @literaturegeek.bsky.social’s @wolfproofpress.com! Critical tech, care ethics, and creative scholarship are all essential to IRIS’s ethos, and it’s so cool to see that inscribed on the space like this. #DigitalHumanities

IRIS’s welcome wall, featuring a quilted rainbow banner, a quilted public library sign, an appliqur namer that reads i-r-i-s, and two letterpress prints. One print reads “HTML is the letterpress of the digital world,” and the other features an image of a Luddite throwing something (presumably a clog), with the text “Maybe it’s just vaporware. luddites pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes since (well before) 1811. Luddites didn’t “fear technology.” They broke the machines that allowed the rich to enshittify livelihoods. Who’s your tech for? No tech’s adoption is inevitable (lol blockchain). Glitch their cistems.”

An image of a letterpress print titled “This is a printing office.” Text:

THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
Like all technology: human choice, if evil or good This place is not a place of honor but it could be a place of hope
Refuge of arts, craft, community, learning, a megaphone for justice, fearless truth slipping bit rot & digital censorship; or playing at a whitewashed past; to pretend away present fascism
The center of danger is here; the center of hope is here The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours (the possibility, too From this place you may send words of justice, liberation, reparation, collective care; or serving capital, stoking hate
A press is but its printers
Friend vou stand on ground
Myou make sacred-or not
THIS is a PRINTING-OFFICE
Remixed text (in italics) from Beatrice Warde & Sandia National Laks; & new text by Amanda Wyatt Visconti, VA Ctr for the Book
FINFUSE

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Mail day 👀 courtesy of @wolfproofpress.com🐺 These prints got a little waylaid — big shoutout to USPS for finding them again through a missing mail request! How great to have a national mail service that provides reliable support, even when they’re swamped #InfrastructureIsAPublicGood

A cardboard mailer addressed to me from Amanda Wyatt Visconti of Wolfproof Press. It’s a large envelope (maybe 18x24?) and has “Pls don’t bend” written on it in marker to protect the artwork inside

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Congrats to our SIUE presenters at the STL #DigitalHumanities Showcase! 💿 Kezia Miller, “Beautiful Dreams of the Past: Preserving Family Histories through Textual Recovery” 💿 Mauri Johnson, Rayna Sims, & Colin Strasser, “Digital Storytelling on the Hiking Trail at Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area”

A group of seven people stand outside in front of a garden. From left to right: Dr. Jacquie Shea, Colin Strasser, Mauri Johnson, Rayna Sims, Dr. Meg Smith, Kezia Miller, and Dan Schreiber

Kezia Miller gestures at a slide while presenting her digital edition. The edition shows her markup schema, an example of marks up text, and two images of handwritten text demonstrating an emendation and a misspelling

Rayna Sims presents her digital timeline of the ecology of St. Stanislaus Conservation Area

Mauro Johnson looks up at a slide while presenting his video essay on Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area. The slide offers a few images of the park and connects them to broader issues of historical interpretation

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The National Great Rivers Museum in Alton, IL has a simulator where you can try piloting a barge. It is humbling.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Hey @knightlab.northwestern.edu! My students are working on a StorymapJS assignment right now, and some (but not all) are getting an OSM error on the default basemap. Any chance this could be a quick fix, or should I have them change gears?

Screenshot of an error on a StorymapJS story. The error reads "Access blocked. Referer is required by tile usage policy of OpenStreetMap's volunteer-run servers: osm.wiki/Blocked

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Claudia (they/she) @claudiaeberger.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

I'm always thinking about @halperta.bsky.social's lineage activity and ways we can set visible reminders at work. I'm thrilled to have @skeuomorphpress.org and @wolfproofpress.com prints hanging in my cubicle. Love having the words of @megsmith.bsky.social and Le Guin on display with my books!

A green cubicle wall with two letterpress prints pinned to it. One is a trans gradient that says Infrastructure is something we owe to one another. The other is fiery and says in black Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Time for one of my favorite games, Is That a Grey Hair? No! It’s a Cat Hair on My Head!

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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Love to be internationally renowned for spontaneously rolling back pedestrian safety measures that were thoroughly researched, extensively planned, supported by public opinion, and implemented with taxpayer dollars

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Hey library folks! Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's Lovejoy Library is hiring a tenure track digital archivist. I'm on the search committee and happy to answer questions or direct them to the search chair! Apply at apply.interfolio.com/184021. #DigitalHumanities #LibraryJobs #ArchiveJobs

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Another big congratulations to Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt! Yesterday, she received her Distinguished Research Professor award and was recognized for her tremendous accomplishments in endangered language documentation, digital and public humanities, and innovative pedagogy. We are lucky to have her!

Kristine Hildebrandt poses wearing a VERY large medal awarded for her Distinguished Research Professor rank. She is smiling in front of a lovely background of green trees.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

The @siueiris.bsky.social glowup continues! New additions include the public library symbol for our welcome wall and some cozy tea and books for our tea corner. #DHMakes

Quilt art on a wall: a rainbow banner made of log cabin blocks, some bunting that reads “iris” on it, and a public library symbol (a person reading a book)

Quilt art on a wall: a steaming mug of tea on top of a stack of books. On the desk in front of the wall is a tea kettle and some tea bags

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Things they tell you in history grad programs: Anything can be a text! Things they don’t tell you in history grad programs: Scat can be a text? This has been another dispatch from St. Stanislaus Conservation Area. #skystorians 🗃️ (It’s not really graphic media, it’s just poop.)

A pile of as yet unidentified poop from a carnivore, maybe a fox. Photographed not because I’m a weirdo (or at least not only that), but in an effort to document the site’s current and past ecology

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Happy birthday to the driver of the 90 bus! A couple guys just sang to her 💕 If you’re not riding transit, there’s a whole community you’re missing out on #PublicTransit #stl

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Look at these numbers. Just LOOK at these goofy-ass numbers. #stlwx

A screenshot of the apple weather app for St. Louis, showing that it’s currently 55, feels like 43. The high today was 92. The low tomorrow is 38. We are just randomly throwing numbers at the wall to see what sticks. The Arch is in need of recalibration.

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The zoom for today’s zoning hearing on the Armory data center proposal is maxed out at 300 participants, with more people clamoring to get in. That means there’s still plenty of time to email your testimony to zoning@stlouis-mo.gov before the meeting ends! #stl #StLouis

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IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences @siueiris.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

IRIS now supports Manifold! Create of rich, interactive texts and facilitate reader engagement through social annotation and reading communities. It’s a great choice for OER, student projects, and public scholarship. Learn more Friday at our March Morning Bytes!

IRIS Center Morning Bytes
Introducing Manifold

Manifold is a web platform for publishing rich, interactive texts, ideal for OERs, open access research, and student projects. It facilitates engaged reading through social annotation and reading communities.
Come learn about this new IRIS-supported resource!
Friday, March 20, 10:00 AM
CFDI (Lovejoy, 2nd floor)

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Some very cool conversations unfolded across these pieces. They are all well worth the read! #DigitalHumanities

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dr. meg smith @megsmith.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Another contribution to @siueiris.bsky.social’s crafty makeover, courtesy of my mom! #DHMakes

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