Exterior photo of Smathers Library (formerly Library East) at the University of Florida, photo from the University of Florida Digital Collections

LAURIE N. TAYLOR, CURRICULUM VITAE

Interim Director
Digital Library Center
Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
P.O. Box 117003
Gainesville, FL 32611
P: 352.273.2900
F: 352.846.3702
email: laurien@ufl.edu
website: laurientaylor.org
blog: library.gameology.org

Quick Links:

EDUCATION

PhD in English, University of Florida, April 2006

Focus: Digital Media, Visual Rhetoric, Game Studies

MA in English, University of Florida, May 2002

Focus: Digital Media

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

Interim Director, Digital Library Center, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, November 2008 - present

Creation and administration of digitization programs. Digital project and collection development; technical development for the UF Digital Collections (UFDC); collaborating with collection managers, curators, and partners to leverage technologies to optimally represent digitized materials and collections. Administration of digitization, digital collection development, grant development, and outreach and promotion for UFDC (and maintaining collection entries in various registries, including FDLP). Researching information architecture, information visualization, and digital innovation.

Digital Projects Technologies Librarian, Digital Library Center, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, May 2007 - November 2008

Developed digital projects: planning, preparation, digitization, and creating new projects from digitized materials for the UF Digital Collections (UFDC). Digital projects included those from the University of Florida Libraries, University of Florida faculty, and partners. All projects involved liaising with subject experts for the content, the reference and research support unit for usability testing and training, the public information officer for promotion, and the systems unit for ongoing upgrades and changes as dictated by project or technological need.

Projects included developing materials for the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and others. Project development and support included answering reference questions for the Digital Collections, creating internal and external documentation for using and building collections, creating visualizations of materials using mapping software and KML, producing exhibits, creating marketing materials, and establishing additional channels for promotion including writing the Digital Library Center blog, creating the (UFLibraries Channel on YouTube, creating the UFDC Flickr Collections), and many others. Chaired the Library 2.0 Working Group for investigating new technologies into the University of Florida Libraries overall, including games and other technologies.

Associate Director, Flexible Learning in the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Florida, December 2006 - May 2007
Academic Coordinator, Flexible Learning in the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Florida, May 2006 – December 2006

Directed overall organization of Flexible Learning/Correspondence Study credit and non-credit print and online courses. Hired and trained instructors, assisted with instructional design and in creating faculty resources. Oversaw the release of the first open enrollment WebCT courses, including all aspects of instructor, instructional design, support, and student management. Ensured consistency across marketing, support, and development materials with University rules, regulations, and with Division’s goals. Managed the academic support team and directed overall student support. Developed various marketing materials for the program. Acted as a liaison between various academic units for the departmental approval of courses. Evaluated the overall effectiveness of courses and programs for future development planning and budgeting purposes. Represented the department and Division on state and University-wide committees.

Instructor, University of Florida, August 2000 – May 2006

English Department, August 2000-April 2003; August 2005 – April 2006
Constructed and taught courses in composition, game studies, visual rhetoric, and media studies.
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Instructional IT Liaison, April 2003 - August 2005
Liaison between the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Networked Writing Environment (NWE). Trained new graduate students in NWE technology. Provided pedagogical aid for NWE Instructors. Administered MOOville, the local MOO. Built documentation for the Instructional Media and Graphics Environment (IMAGE) lab; also maintained and expanded NWE documentation. Taught several short courses on technology to help instructors best use technology in their teaching.
University Writing Program, August 2005 – December 2005
Taught course in college composition with an emphasis on professional writing.
Dean of Students, August 2006 - December 2006
Taught First Year Florida course to prepare incoming University students for academic work and college life, collaborating with a student Peer Leader for the course.

Journalist, GamesFirst! and The Gainesville Sun, Fall 2004 - Spring 2008

Wrote gaming reviews, previews, news articles, and articles on gaming culture.

ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies Managing & Reviews Editor, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Florida, Fall 2003 – May 2006

Communicated with the Editorial and Review Boards to manage submissions; oversaw the copyediting, layout and design of the issues; determined and assisted authors with necessary copyright clearance; and handled individual and institutional inquiries regarding subscriptions, submissions, and event reviews.

Recess! Assistant Producer, Center for Children's Literature & Culture at the University of Florida, April 2002 - April 2003

Wrote for the program, interviewed writers, developed and maintained the Recess! website, and served as media and technical support.

PUBLICATIONS

Edited Collections

Playing the Past: Video Games, History, and Memory. Eds. Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP: 2008.

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

Book Reviews

Encyclopedia Entries & Other Print Publications

Newspaper Articles, Radio Publications, & Online-only Publications

Journalistic publications include over four dozen articles written for The Gainesville Sun newspaper, two and a half dozen radio publications (writing and recording radio pieces and interviews), and over three dozen articles for GamesFirst!, an online gaming magazine. Other journalistic activities include blogging (games and digital libraries, contributing to many collaborative sites including contributing to Wikipedia (on digital libraries, the University of Florida Digital Collections, materials in the Digital Collections from UF and partner institutions, on the University of Florida Libraries, and more). The page listing all journalism publications includes links to any available online components.

Projects & Grants

Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library (2009-2014)

Technical Director for the Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library, a cooperative digital library of historic through current newspapers from the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. Partners include newspaper publishers, national libraries, national archives, university libraries, individuals, and other types of institutions. All newspapers would be digitally preserved and available via an Open Access online digital library. More >

Florida Aerial Photographs / From the Air: the Photographic Record of Florida's Lands, Phase III (2009-2010)

Part of the project support team to digitize, load, and archive Florida aerial photographs to complete the project begun in the earlier two phases and bring the cumulative total to over 100,000 Florida aerial photographs; develop and refine a simpler interface and collateral supports like help pages; and to integrate the collection as a resource for the State of Florida as a whole, including integration with the Ask A Librarian reference service. More >

America's Swamp: the Historical Everglades (2009-2011)

Co-principal investigator for a National Historic Publications and Records Commissions funded project to digitize approximately 99,690 pages in six archival collections. The collections selected for this project document early plans for draining the Everglades in the 1880s and 1890s, the dredging of canals and subsequent development of the destroyed wetlands at the start of the 20th century, as well as early attempts by conservationists to preserve the natural resources of the Everglades. Of the 99,690 pages, approximately 9,040 pages are letterbook pages and 250 are photographic prints.

ASERL's Intellectual Underpinnings of the American Civil War (2009-2011)

ASERL Implementation Committee Member for the George A. Smathers Libraries and UFDC, which will contribute 100 or more digitized items in support of this project by January 1, 2011 for inclusion in this collaborative project. Potential materials may include Civil War era documents from one or more of UFDC's existing digital collections (possibly children's books from the Baldwin, related materials from the Florida & the Civil War Collection, James Patton Anderson Papers, and/or battlefield maps or other materials)

Florida Digital Newspaper Library (2008-present)

Technical Director for the State of Florida's Florida Digital Newspaper Library, hosted by the University of Florida Libraries. The University of Florida Libraries previously microfilmed newspapers for preservation, but that process has been moved entirely to digital after requesting and being granted permissions from newspaper publishers to digitally archive and host their newspapers. Ongoing efforts include moving more of the current newspapers to a born-digital ingest process for collecting printer files instead of digitizing form paper; and, developing projects to migrate existing microfilm holdings to digital.

Digital Library of the Caribbean (2008-present)

Technical Director for the cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. More >

Digital Library Center Blog (2007-present)

Created and regularly wrote entries for the Digital Library Center to promote activities and collections. Loaded collections materials into YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, SketchUp, Google Earth, and others to drive users to the Digital Collections.

Picturing Text: Comics and Other Imagetexts (2007-2008)

Principal Investigator for George A. Smathers Libraries mini-grant, funded for $2,880 to digitize 20,000 pages from Fun magazine (53 volumes, 1861-1901, approximately 15,900 pages), all issues held by the University of Florida of P*S: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly by Will Eisner (approximately 60 issues and 3,700 pages), and several significant imagetexts selected from the Penny and Sol Davidson Collection materials including the Imagerie d'Epinal, three volumes of The Comic Almanack, and the science-fiction fanzine containing the first appearance of Superman. The project includes integration of existing comics materials, including military comics like Droopy the Drew Field Mosquito by Harry Lampert (co-creator of the Flash) which was published in the Drew Field Echoes newspaper in the 1940s (proposal details).

Games in the Library (2007-2008)

Worked on several groups investigating games in the Libraries, including Second Life, the information literacy training game "Bioactive," and other projects using the concepts of simulation and procedural rhetoric from gaming.

The Afterlife of Alice in Wonderland (2007)

Exhibit in the Exhibit Gallery Smathers Library (East). George A. Smathers Libraries, Curated by Rita Smith, University of Florida, Oct. 15 - Dec. 15, 2007. Digitized images from various versions of Alice for the physical and online exhibits; set up the online exhibit; helped Rita Smith set up the exhibit and worked with two student interns on setting up the visual structure of the physical exhibit and of the video compilation within the exhibit; helped to promote the exhibit.

Gameology (2004-2007)

Regularly wrote blog entries on all aspects of game studies and gaming culture, including several book and game reviews and articles, developing resources like reference information, and answering reference questions on game studies.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Materiality of objects (archives, issues of digital representation, visual display and representation, digital libraries); digital collections and libraries (collection management, promotion, exhibit creation, interface, display, issues of digital representation, archives); media studies (game studies, comics and animation, science-fiction film and literature, archaeology/history of media and technology, horror and the gothic in relation to technology); gender studies (especially in relation to technology and in terms of representation online); history of the library (intellectual/academic commons, Open Access, Open Source).

PRESENTATIONS

Older Presentations are on the full presentation list.

COURSES DEVISED AND TAUGHT

Digital Library Center, internships
Established and coordinated the Digital Library Center internship program where students learned the full workflow for digitizing materials for digital preservation, digital collection development, and digital initiatives related to supporting digital collection development. (Fall 2007; Spring 2008)

First Year Florida, freshmen introductory course
Covered study techniques and general information for new college students. Collaborated with Peer Leader Evan Lauteria on all aspects of the course. (Fall 2006 with class project)

Gaming Cultures, senior literature course (LIT 4930)
Explored digital games as textual and literary artifacts. In particular, studied recent video games as part of a longer history of games and gaming - including word games, puzzles, board games, card games, computer, console, portable, and mobile games. The course emphasized critical analysis and production, conducting close readings of games to study how games both draw upon and represent culture and cultural artifacts, including film, comics, and literature. Used Rules of Play (Salen and Salen) along with other readings and games as guides to abstract principles of gaming as well as gaming specifics. Course projects incorporated game studies and game development with projects ranging from book reviews to designing paper prototypes for games. Class collaboratively created a small ARG to explore multi-space games and to explore games for advertising. (Spring 2006 with class project)

Advanced Business Writing for Accounting, graduate writing course for accounting students (ENC 5236)
Coursework focused on the conventions of business writing for documentation, proposals, correspondence, presentations, websites, and others while also emphasizing the principles of good writing across disciplinary boundaries. Used various readings on writing and accounting as guides for scholarly and professional writing in accounting. (Spring 2006; Fall 2005)

Argument and Persuasion: Invoking the Professional Voice, introductory writing course (ENC 1102)
Introduced students to scholarly and professional writing. Used Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum (Behrens and Rosen) as guide for scholarly writing in the disciplines. (Fall 2005)

Writing and New Media: Interface and Writing Spaces and Places, writing with new media course (ENG 1131)
Explored the emergence and rhetoric of new media. Students explored the development of narrative, argument, and image in the context of aesthetic innovation and research. In the fall 2002 interface-themed version of the course, course projects asked how interface metaphors could serve as a model for writing in different media- blogs, web sites, list-serves, MOO - and genres - analysis, critical, definitional, technical, and personal; the spring 2002 version projects did the same for the spatial construction and place orientation. (Fall 2002; Spring 2002)

Argumentative and Expository Writing, introductory writing course (ENC 1101)

Training Courses Devised and Taught
In addition to academic for-credit courses, I have also taught a number of training courses to help instructors use technology in their teaching and research. These included courses on developing a professional web presence (setting up a standard design, adding basic research information, conference abstracts, dissertation abstracts, CVs, teaching portfolios, syllabi, and using these as part of their online portfolio and web presence); courses on various technologies to use in teaching, research, or multimedia production (including Inform, Flash, blogs, wikis, CSS, web design, and more); and introductory courses to familiarize users with different technologies and aspects of those technologies (general training courses on the NWE, the IMAGE Lab, Unix, and more).

For syllabi, see: www.laurientaylor.org/teaching

SERVICE

Older service is included on the full service work list.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

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