CollectionBuilder Bulletin: April 2025

By Devin Becker | April 25, 2025
Tags: newsletter

Hi Everyone,

Apologies for such a delayed update. The last couple of months, for us and for many, have been doozies, and we’re just coming out of them a bit. Unfortunately, we’ve had some funding challenges and had to readjust a few things, but overall we’re moving forward and building projects. Thank you for your support and the work you all do.

If you ever have a project and/or event you’d like us to highlight, please email collectionbuilder.team@gmail.com.

- The CollectionBuilder Team

This month’s news:

● IMLS Grant Update: Like many federal awards, our IMLS grant was terminated. We’re appealing, so we’ll see how that goes … And while this has required us to adjust our plans, we remain committed to continuing our work. We’re especially grateful for our community’s support during this transition, particularly those in our LIS and Digital Librarian programs, which are finishing up and starting up (respectively) in the next month. We deeply appreciate our participants’ willingness to continue and persevere with us through these changes.

● New Documentation: We’ve added comprehensive documentation for Adding Custom Fonts to CollectionBuilder. This walkthrough guides users through the process of incorporating custom web fonts into their CB projects, mainly focusing on Google Fonts (but the process applies widely). The guide includes step-by-step instructions and code examples for implementation. Check it out here: https://collectionbuilder.github.io/cb-docs/docs/advanced/add-font/

● Conference Presentation: Evan recently presented a lightning talk about CollectionBuilder at ACRL titled “From Spreadsheet to Showcase: Creating Digital Scholarship Projects using a Static Web Approach.” The presentation highlighted how CB enables users to transform spreadsheet data into engaging digital scholarship projects using static web methods. You can view the presentation materials here: https://osf.io/8ksrj

● Code4Lib Publications: We’re thrilled to share two recent publications in Code4Lib:

  • Our Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Idaho, Andrew Weymouth, published “Distant Listening: Using Python and Apps Scripts to Text Mine and Tag Oral History Collections” an article about processing and analyzing oral history transcripts for use with Oral History as Data.” Check out his article here: https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/18286
  • Evan and Olivia’s article “Static Web Methodology as a Sustainable Approach to Digital Humanities Projects” examines how static web development offers a more sustainable alternative to traditional CMS platforms for digital humanities work. The article hits some of our favorite CB points, discussing how the static approach reduces long-term maintenance costs while enabling rich features and providing valuable transferable skills for students. This publication was “Recommended” by DH + Lib—a prestigious recognition in our field! Read their article here: https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/18372

● Coming Soon – Full Release of Oral History as Data: If I can get through a few more pieces, we should be able to release a new version of OHD officially in the next couple weeks. This version is built on top of CollectionBuilder-CSV and will come with extensive documentation!! (If anyone wants to hear my thoughts on the pros and cons of working with AI to compose documentation, I have many …). I’m excited to get this out and working for folks.

Some MultiLingual CollectionBuilder Projects:

Just wanted to highlight a couple releases from the University of Idaho’s CDIL and note a recent addition to our Examples site:

  • Tender Spaces - This project features a multi-modal, multi-lingual essay by U of I CDIL Fellow Alicia Gladman. The project examines Gaëtane Buttigieg’s life, art, and forced institutionalization in the 1970s, using videos (in French), maps, and archival sources. We developed some ways to publish mp4s with captions and subtitles for this project, which may be useful to others.

  • Hispanic Theater Collection / Colección de teatro hispano - This digital collection showcases posters, flyers, and photographs from the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage’s Hispanic Theater Collection, donated by Nicolás Kanellos. Developed by the US Latino Digital Humanities Center at the University of Houston, it highlights Hispanic community contributions to US theater production from 1789-2000, featuring materials related to significant figures and organizations in Hispanic theater history and presents the metadata in both Spanish and English.

Get Involved / Connect with Us

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