Data and Digital Scholarship

The UTSC Library is proud to celebrate Tamil Heritage, not just in January, but year-round through our physical and digital collections, as well as unique opportunities for students. A few Tamil initiatives in the library are celebrated below!  

Kongu Nadu Collection 

Social Anthropologist Prof. Brenda Beck has dedicated her career to researching the folklore of TamilNadu. She has donated the digital versions of her research archive to the UTSC Library. The archive consists of photographs, audio, animations, comics, field notes, and  research publications.  

Between 1964 and 1966, she lived in the village of Olappalayam (ஓலப்பாளையம்), 6 miles East of the town of Kangayam in Tamil Nadu. During this time, Dr. Beck collected a wealth of primary research materials with the assistance of K. Sundaram.  

This collection, curated and described in collaboration with a postdoctoral Fellow at UTSC (Shanmugapriya) makes available images, documents, and digitized recordings describing festivals, ceremonies, and rituals. In particular, the collection of folksongs and folk tales  are distinctive to the Kongu Nadu region. Together, this collection provides a window into the cultural landscape of Kongu Nadu in the mid 1960s.

Explore the collection. 

Tamil Digital Symposium Event 

Hosted by the UTSC Digital Scholarship Unit, the Digital Tamil Studies Virtual Symposium on January 21, 2023, was open to the public and attended by individuals from across the globe!  

Digital Tamil Studies is a wide-ranging field of digital scholarship that engages interdisciplinary scholars, computing experts, and the public in the production of open research and resources in Tamil. 

This virtual event brought together our research and collections development community to promote projects and discuss the intersection of Tamil language collections and digital research.  

Presented in both Tamil and English, the symposium featured a series of speakers, as well as a workshop on Historical/Counter-Mapping QGIS.  

The recorded sessions will be made available online soon!  

Sophia Hilton Storytelling Fellowship 

The UTSC Library Storytelling Fellowship provides up to three students the opportunity to spend eight months immersed in the art and practice of storytelling. 

Our 2022-2023 Fellows, Senthujan Senkaiahliyan and Bhargavi Arora are currently planning this year’s story, to be released late-spring 2023.  

Senthujan Senkaiahliyan is a graduate student at the University of Toronto currently enrolled in the Masters of Health Administration program at the Dalla School of Public Health. He is also pursuing a masters specialization in South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute within the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He previously completed an undergrad in human biology and socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. He works in the field of using artificial intelligence for health systems improvement and increasing access to quality and efficient health care. Furthermore he is passionate about Tamil studies exploring topics related to oral histories, generational migration patterns, and kinship relations. He hopes to promote storytelling methods to inspire Tamils in the diaspora to reconnect and preserve narratives within their own families. 

Bhargavi Arora is a psychology specialist co-op student currently in her second year. Even though she is from North India, she has always had a sense of admiration for the traditional Tamil culture which led her to learn Bharatanatyam professionally. She is a voracious reader and likes to explore classical literature from different parts of the world. Interacting with people from different cultures and learning about them is one of her favourite things to do. Bhargavi shared, “I am very grateful to UTSC library for providing this opportunity to learn from esteemed anthropologist Dr. Beck and for giving me a chance to exhibit my passion for storytelling and script-writing". 

Are you interested in storytelling? Applications are now open for the 2023-2024 Fellowship!  

Apply for the UTSC Library Storytelling Fellowship 2023-24

Interested in more Tamil collections? Check out our digital Tamil collections. 

The UTSC Library is proud to be hosting a virtual, public symposium on Digital Tamil Studies.

January 21st

• 8:00 AM -12:00 PM (Toronto time)
• 6:30 PM-10:30 PM (Chennai, Jaffna, Colombo time)

Digital Tamil Studies is a wide-ranging field of digital scholarship that engages interdisciplinary scholars, computing experts, and the public in the production of open research and resources in Tamil.

The Digital Tamil Studies community at UTSC invites you to a series of presentations and a workshop that brings together our research and collections development community together to promote projects and discuss the intersection of Tamil language collections and digital research. Registration is free. The event will be held in a combination of Tamil and English on Zoom, with interpretation available. Further details, including an agenda of events, is available on the Library's Digital Tamil Studies site. 

Register now!

Funding for this event was provided by the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto. 

International Open Access Week, October 24-30, 2022, is an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around how open can be a means for climate justice.

This year’s theme, "Open for Climate Justice," seeks to encourage connection and collaboration among the climate movement and the international open community. Sharing knowledge is a human right, and tackling the climate crisis requires the rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries. Read more about the theme.

Test your OA knowledge through the U of T Libraries OA Week social media trivia quiz October 24-28. The quiz highlights the OA Week climate theme and various U of T Libraries activities. Complete at least 3 of the daily quizzes and you will be entered into a draw for one of two $50 U of T Bookstore gift cards!

OA Week is also the perfect time to deposit your scholarly outputs to TSpace. Please note that TSpace accepts a wide variety of scholarly, research, or pedagogical materials such as conference papers, presentations, book chapters, not just research articles. If you don’t have time to self-deposit, you can take advantage of our mediated deposit service. Simply:

1. Complete the online Mediated Deposit Agreement, then
2. Email us with accepted manuscript versions of your publications.

Explore the UTSC Library's short video to see some of our other contributions to the open movement. Our hope is that the contributions, and the tools and systems featured in our video, plant seeds that improve openness and equitable access to knowledge over time.

Contact your Liaison Librarian or the Digital Scholarship Unit for more information or help in creating and finding open collections and resources.

Browse global Open Access Week events.

The U of T Scarborough Library is pleased to announce the launch of the UTSC Library Sophia Hilton Storytelling Fellowship under the mentorship of Anthropologist Dr. Brenda Beck. This award is open to full-time U of T Scarborough students past their first year of study. Full details are below.

The UTSC Library Sophia Hilton Storytelling Fellowship provides three students the opportunity to spend eight months immersed in the art and practice of storytelling. Successful recipients will be funded to learn about storytelling under the mentorship of Anthropologist Dr. Brenda Beck, and to hone their creativity and performance skills.  

UTSC Storytelling Fellows will work to develop, experiment, and execute a variety of storytelling delivery strategies for both online and in-person audiences (including field trips to venues in Scarborough), although in-person delivery will be limited to strategies that will be effective given evolving COVID-19 restrictions.  

In 2020-21, recipients will focus on the rich Tamil epic known as The Legend of Ponnivala (alternately: The Land of the Golden River). Fellows will explore a wide variety of teaching plans and topics for this story and will develop innovative plans and story teaching approaches. Fellows have creative freedom to explore mythical and symbolic themes, social justice issues, economic development and its impact on society, immigration, colonial settlement, aboriginal population marginalization, family descent dynamics and more. Stories will be recorded for the UTSC Library’s Digital Tamil Collections.  

To complete the fellowship, recipients will log activities and complete a final report discussing their experiences and the effectiveness of the strategies they have employed, and applicants should expect to commit time to assigned background reading and research and to collaborate with the other Fellows in the program. 

Duration 

September 2021 to late March 2022 with some flexibility depending on student requirements 

Compensation 

Students will be awarded an honorarium of $4,000 and can request funding to support some travel and equipment/supplies over the course of the program. 

Eligibility and Application Process 

• Students must be registered at the University of Toronto Scarborough as full-time students
• Students must have completed their first year of study.

Interested candidates are asked to submit unofficial transcripts, a statement of interest, and a CV to dsu.utsc@utoronto.ca by August 31, 2021. 

Statement of Interest 

In your statement of interest, please indicate: 

• Languages you can speak, read, and write 
• Instruments you can play or musical expertise you possess (if any) 
• Details of your experiences with storytelling/drama clubs or live performance (including languages utilized) 
• How you believe storytelling skills will prepare you for your future, and why.  

Students should anticipate spending an average of 10-15 hours a week dedicated to the fellowship, with hours fluctuating depending on plan of work determined in consultation with their supervisor and Faculty mentor Dr. Brenda Beck. Recipients must consent to the recording of storytelling performances and the stewardship of these recordings by UTSC Library. Familiarity with Tamil language and culture will be considered an asset, but lack of knowledge does not disqualify you from applying. Participants seeking a future in education and performance are encouraged to apply, as well as those with interest in production/digital skills and storytelling methods. Demonstrated experience with storytelling is not a pre-requisite for the Fellowship, although letters of interest should strongly demonstrate the candidate’s interest in developing these skills as well as general enthusiasm for the program. 

Students should have computer equipment sufficient to enable participation in remote meetings and performances as part of the Fellowship.  

Questions about the Fellowship can also be directed to dsu@utsc.utoronto.ca.