CB in the Classroom: Q&A with Zack Lischer-Katz, University of Arizona

By Julia Stone; Zack Lischer-Katz | April 2, 2024
Tags: teaching

As part of our CollectionBuilder in the Classroom Q&A series, Assistant Professor Zack Lischer-Katz shares how he incorporated CollectionBuilder into his Introduction to Digital Curation and Digital Preservation course at University of Arizona. Zack Lischer-Katz was one of the participants in the 2023-2024 CollectionBuilder Curriculum Development Program.

1. Please describe the course you taught in which you incorporated CollectionBuilder.

I used CollectionBuilder for the first time in my Fall 2023 course, INFO/LIS 671 Introduction to Digital Curation and Digital Preservation at the iSchool at the University of Arizona. This is a required course for the Digital Curation certificate and a popular elective in our ALA-accredited, MA in Library and Information Science program.

If you are interested in seeing what the final project for this course entails, check out this open educational resource (OER) created by Zack Lischer-Katz: INFO/LIS 671 Final Project Assignment Sheet.

2. Why did you decide to integrate CollectionBuilder into the course?

I had been looking for ways of introducing new preservation or curation technologies to my students and the CollectionBuilder Fellowship program was brought to my attention. It seemed like a great opportunity to provide my students with new skills working with an emerging platform for creating digital collections.

I also thought CB would provide an interesting opportunity for exploring course topics such as curating digital objects, creating descriptive and preservation metadata, and how collections software and curatorial decisions shape the meaning of collections and the ways in which users can engage with them.

3. What were some of the benefits and/or successes of incorporating CB in the classroom?

It provided an open-source tool with a fairly gentle learning curve that enabled students to work in teams to quickly build collections, develop metadata schemas, and reflect upon their curatorial and access decisions, making connections to concepts learned in class.

In the process of building their projects, students also learn important skills working with git, GitHub, CSV files, html, and other digital tools and formats that will likely be useful for their future careers. It was also helpful for me to see the value of the CB approach versus other systems, such as Omeka, which require additional IT support for advanced collection building. CB was easy to get going “out of the box,” following the helpful video tutorials and extensive supportive documentation created by the CB team.

4. What were some of the challenges you faced while incorporating CB in the classroom? How did you navigate these challenges?

Library science students come from a range of different fields, and some of the students lacked technical skills or had not worked much with Github or used text editors before. By working in small groups, students were able to support each other, share their knowledge, and learn together. I was also learning to use CB at the same time, so I was not always able to troubleshoot all the problems that would emerge in each project. Sometimes I had to draw on my experience editing html to identify errors in their code.

I worked with the CB team to offer multiple office hour sessions with them, in which students could drop in for help on the technical glitches that they were encountering in their projects. Timing these office hours was tricky, since each student group seemed to work at different speeds, such that they were at different points in the projects when office hours were offered. Having tech support / office hours at the start, middle, and end of the project timeline was helpful to support groups who are working at different paces or have different skill levels.

I wasn’t sure how quickly the students would learn CB and the associated technical skills, so I started introducing the CB-based final project starting in the middle of the semester, far in advance of the final project timeline, giving them examples of existing CB projects and having them analyze and critique them, requiring them to watch tutorials, and providing discussion questions that encouraged them to think about their projects and develop proposals early on.

I think in future iterations, I will create my own collection alongside the students, so that I can follow along with them and see what challenges develop as they are carrying out various phases of the project. I think a CB-based course project would also fit well in a digital libraries or digital humanities course.

5. What advice do you have for other instructors wanting to integrate CB into their curriculum?

Instructors should get their feet wet and try building their own collections well in advance of introducing it to their students. They should work through the tutorials and get comfortable troubleshooting a range of problems that come up. Then, go and develop your own project with digital objects that are meaningful to you, from your own collections or from sources found on the Digital Public Library of America or other collections.

It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with the various settings on GitHub before setting up groups for your students. Working on your own project alongside the students is something that I would like to try the next time I teach the course, since this will help me better understand where students are in the process and offer them examples of how to design and build their projects along the way.

Working with the CB team has been a real pleasure, so instructors using CB for the first time shouldn’t be scared to reach out to them with any questions or concerns that come as they integrate CB into their curriculum. Plus, there is a growing community working with CB, so you should follow the discussions, look at other projects, and post your own challenges and successes on the CB GitHub discussion board.

Want to share how you incorporated CB in the Classroom? We welcome you to contribute! Please reach out to collectionbuilder.team@gmail.com to participate in a Q&A.