Bridget Moynihan

Sensory storytimes and other similar sensory programming and services, are those which have been specifically designed to respect the needs of autistic children and/or children with sensory processing disorders, even while also being open to a range of neurodiverse attendance. These programs and services are important ways in which public libraries can work to become more inclusive spaces. Nonetheless, sensory storytimes and other sensory programs and services are not as widely offered at Canadian libraries as they could be. In order to concretize and draw attention to this gap, this paper describes our content analysis research, conducted in July 2021, of Ontario Public Library (OPL) websites and their sensory programming and services listings. Although we found that some OPLs are offering sensory storytimes, as well as other sensory programming and services, we emphasize that offering and advertising these programs and services effectively remains an area of growth potential within Ontario.

This paper introduces two digital prototypes, the Colour Collage and the Constellation visualizations, which we developed to represent eight pages from the scrapbooks of Scottish Poet Makar Edwin Morgan (1920-2010). We understand these prototypes as experiments within our research through design process, rather than as stand-alone digital objects, and so this article presents the theoretical pursuits and design decisions that motivated, and were motivated by, these prototypes. We begin by establishing our theoretical framework, which focuses on the roles of inscription technologies in archives and is guided by Bruno Latour's concept of a mediator (1993). We then discuss scrapbooks as polyvocal and hybrid mediators, which are nonetheless often pushed to the fringes of reading practices and material histories. In unpacking the fringe status of the Morgan scrapbooks in particular, we outline the copyright restrictions that complicate their digital publication. Reconceptualizing these restrictions as creative constraints, our prototypes experiment with forms of representation that go beyond the facsimile, drawing on detailed metadata and generating new visualizations that are inspired by the scrapbooks' materially-specific grammars. Our aim with these prototypes is to open the scrapbooks to new forms of play and discoverability in online contexts, while using digital tools and methodologies to better understand the scrapbooks' multifaceted modes of meaning creation. We conclude by discussing some of our prototypes' limitations, as well as future directions for our research through design process for the Morgan Scrapbooks.

Although recent research acknowledges the potential of visualization methods in digital humanities (DH), the predominant terminology used to describe visualizations (prototypes and tools) focuses on their use as a means to an end and, more importantly, as an instrument in the service of humanities research. We introduce the sandcastle as a metaphorical lens and provocative term to highlight visualization as a research process in its own right. We argue that building visualization sandcastles provides a holistic approach to cross-disciplinary knowledge generation that embraces visualization as (1) an aesthetic provocation to elicit critical insights, interpretation, speculation, and discussions within and beyond scholarly audiences, (2) a dynamic process wherein speculation and re-interpretation advance knowledge within all disciplines involved, and (3) a mediator of ideas and theories within and across disciplines. Our argument is grounded in critical theory, DH, design, human–computer interaction, and visualization, and based on our own research on an exceptional literary collection. We argue that considering visualizations as sandcastles foregrounds valuable insights into the roles of visualization as a mindset, methodology, and praxis within humanities research and beyond.

In this paper we exemplify how information visualization supports speculative thinking, hypotheses testing, and preliminary interpretation processes as part of literary research. While InfoVis has become a buzz topic in the digital humanities, skepticism remains about how effectively it integrates into and expands on traditional humanities research approaches. From an InfoVis perspective, we lack case studies that show the specific design challenges that make literary studies and humanities research at large a unique application area for information visualization. We examine these questions through our case study of the Speculative W@nderverse, a visualization tool that was designed to enable the analysis and exploration of an untapped literary collection consisting of thousands of science fiction short stories. We present the results of two empirical studies that involved general-interest readers and literary scholars who used the evolving visualization prototype as part of their research for over a year. Our findings suggest a design space for visualizing literary collections that is defined by (1) their academic and public relevance, (2) the tension between qualitative vs. quantitative methods of interpretation, (3) result-vs. process-driven approaches to InfoVis, and (4) the unique material and visual qualities of cultural collections. Through the Speculative W@nderverse we demonstrate how visualization can bridge these sometimes contradictory perspectives by cultivating curiosity and providing entry points into literary collections while, at the same time, supporting multiple aspects of humanities research processes.