July 13, 2009. CCNMTL is pleased to announce their upcoming presentation at the EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference this November. CCNMTL Senior Program Specialist Mark Phillipson and Columbia University’s Deputy University Librarian Patricia Renfro will co-present on Columbia’s Digital Bridges Initiative, which supports learning through student manipulation of curated digital collections.

Phillipson and Renfro will present projects currently in use at Columbia University such as the Black Radical Archive pilot project, which uses the unique library collections donated by black activists such as Hubert H. Harrison, C.L.R. James, and Amiri Baraka. Other Digital Bridges projects that will be highlighted in the presentation include Southside Chicago Documentation Project, the Virtual Forest Initiative, Mapping the African American Past, and Project Vietnam.

“Today's students enjoy an abundance of information, but, at the same time, they learn in a networked environment prone to distraction, hype, and even hostility to curated or edited information,” said Mark Phillipson. “Digital Bridges projects use technology to connect faculty, librarians, and students directly to authoritative material, providing them new forms of editing, annotating, and collaboration within scholarly contexts.”

The presentation is entitled, “The Digital Bridges Initiative: Student Transformations of the Library.” EDUCAUSE 2009 will take place November 3–6, 2009 in Denver, Colorado.