We’re pleased to welcome our new Community Advocate, Beth Mitchell, after a competitive national search.
Beth brings with her a terrific skillset both technical and personal, with expertise around evaluating and offering improvements toward DH accessibility and usability. She has a strong technical background in JavaScript (particularly in data visualization) and Omeka/Neatline, and also has experience teaching both of these to undergraduate students.
As Community Advocate, Beth advocates for the users of our DH projects, working on documentation, design, development, and project management approaches to champion user needs. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Architectural History, and previously worked as Scholars’ Lab Community Project Manager and as a research assistant on the NEH-funded Neatline project.
Beth’s work will include advocating and building for users of our NEH-funded Neatline project, LYRASIS-funded work developing tools for campuses to respond with digital collecting to community crises (PI Kara McClurken), and work with the Documenting the Now project (ethical design for social media research and preservation) co-PI—UVA Media Studies Professor Meredith Clark—bringing DocNow tools and ethical social media research to the classroom and community. Beth’s activities will include:
- creating technical documentation for both developers and non-technical users
- leading workshops and teaching modules on our projects
- refining existing documentation through user testing and community feedback
- responding to requests for technical support related to our grant projects
- other support for our staff doing design and development work, such as organizing and commenting on existing code, designing and coding proofs of concept, and participating in code and design reviews
Welcome, Beth!