Digital Projects Specialist
GIS & Data Specialist
How to Use This LibGuide
This LibGuide is a resource for students, faculty, and staff looking to save and share digital scholarship on the web.
The tools and practices recommended here provide a place to get started. The Digital Projects Lab (DPL) does not administer the process for publishing to any specific journal or peer review process. Rather, the DPL provides consultation and shares resources for students, faculty, and staff who want to author digital scholarship and share it online. For specific questions, please reach out to the Digital Projects Lab staff.
What do we mean by digital publishing?
Digital publishing is the process of saving and sharing digital scholarship publicly on the web. This content may include research, creative writing, art, and media, exhibits, and more. Digital publishing can showcase virtual representations of physical people, objects, and places, as well as content that has no real-world counterpart. From Digital Publishing at Robert E. Kennedy Library: Project Blueprint:
“For Cal Poly, publishing digitally encompasses any story made available online."
Benefits and Drawbacks
Publishing to the web lets authors
- Incorporate interactive and multimedia elements into their publication.
- Maintain their own publication timelines.
- Share dynamic information.
- Work imaginatively and develop new digital skills.
- Work outside of traditional publishing modes, allowing them to disseminate knowledge without having to justify its place or validity within an institution.
However, publishing to the web can also present barriers to authors, including
- A significant labor commitment needed to learn a new digital platform.
- A cost-associated storage solution, depending on the size of the website.
- Potentially sustained buy-in to a proprietary platform to keep the website live, depending on how the website is deployed.
- A software and/or domain fee, depending on the platform(s) used.
- Issues of privacy and copyright when sharing others’ information or work.
Due to this, it's important to understand the scope of your project before getting started.
Tools for Digital Publishing
Click on each tab name below to show options for that category.
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Collaboration Support | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Pages | Free hosting for static websites for GitHub users. Commonly combined with static site generator Jekyll. | Free with account | Moderate-steep, requires knowledge of Git & command line | Available using GitHub | 1GB per site, 1 site per repository |
| WordPress.com | Cloud hosting offered by WordPress, a website builder and content management system (CMS) | Free tier available | Minimal, no coding is necessary. | Plugin available | 1GB per site |
| Google Sites | Website builder app offered in the Google app suite. | Free with Google account | Minimal, no coding is necessary. | Real-time collaboration, like Google Docs | Unlimited, but individual media files are capped at 20MB. |
| Wix | A popular free website hosting platform and content management system. | Free tier available | Minimal, no coding is necessary. | None | Users get 500MB of storage with up to 1GB of bandwidth. |
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Collaboration Support | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Omeka.net | Cloud-hosting offered by Omeka, a website builder and content management system for sharing collections and metadata. | Free tier available | Moderate | Groups can work together on a collaborative site. Instructions here. | |
| CollectionBuilder | An open-source framework for creating digital collections and exhibitions through static websites. Unlike Omeka, not a web application, but instead a template to which users can input data and metadata for their own collection. Can be used with GitHub Pages to generate websites. | Free | Minimal to start, but customization requires time and coding knowledge. | Available through GitHub | 1GB of storage per repository with GitHub Pages. |
| Scalar | An open source authoring tool for creating multi-page or multi-chapter scholarship. Supports integrating media and provides functionality for authors to annotate media objects. Flexible structure supports user-driven discovery. | Free | No coding necessary, but the range of available tools requires time to learn. | Groups can collaborate on projects |
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Collaboration Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StoryMapJS | An open-source tool to build digital stories that incorporate geospatial data. Metadata is stored in Google Sheets. | Free | Minimal to make a basic story, but can use coding knowledge to make a highly customized story. | Users can collaborate on Google Sheets in real time to update metadata. |
| TimelineJS | An open-source tool to build digital stories that incorporate temporal data. Metadata is stored in Google Sheets. | Free | Minimal to make a basic story, but can use coding knowledge to make a highly customized story. | Users can collaborate on Google Sheets in real time to update metadata. |
| Twine | An open-source tool for creating interactive “choose-your-own-adventure" stories. Twine stories are published as HTML files and freely hosted through borogove.io (interactive stories) and itch.io (interactive games). | Free | No coding required to make a story, but can be customized with CSS and JavaScript. | Not supported. |
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Collaboration Support | Storage/CPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub | An online platform that hosts version control through Git. Users can store their code, work collaboratively, and share it publicly on GitHub. Many open-source software projects are published to GitHub. | Free with account | Moderate, requires use of command line and Git. | Supported via version control. | |
| Jupyter Notebook | Web app created by Project Jupyter which combines segments of code with text and data. Well-suited for scientific computing, creating educational resources, and anywhere that users might want to share code alongside explanations. Notebooks are created as .ipynb files, which can be shared online through GitHub. | Free | Moderate, requires knowledge of at least one programming language, but language-agnostic | Can be used with GitHub for version control. | |
| Shiny apps | Similar to Jupyter Notebooks in that they combine code and text, but they also allow end-users to interact with data shared by the author, all from within their web app. Shiny apps can be coded in R or in Python. Shiny apps provides free hosting for users. | Free, with account to publish | Moderate, requires knowledge of R or Python. | Can be used with GitHub for version control. | See the breakdown here. |
| Google Colab | A cloud-hosted Jupyter Notebook that provides free access to computing in a browser. Mostly useful to run single projects, whereas Jupyter Notebook can be used to run multiple scripts/more complex computations. | Free with Google Account | Moderate, requires knowledge of at least one programming language, but is language-agnostic. | Google Colab allows users to share notebooks via Google accounts. | |
| Posit Connect Cloud | Code stored in GitHub, Jupyter Notebooks, Shiny apps can be published (the code itself will run) online using Posit Cloud Connect. This is helpful for sharing a program in its final form – not just the code itself. | Free with account | Moderate, requires knowledge of at least one programming language, but language-agnostic | Can be used with public GitHub repositories for version control. | 4GB storage, 2 CPU, 20 active hours. |
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Collaboration Support | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jupyter Book | A template that uses Jupyter Notebook to structure scholarly content. A Jupyter Book can be published as a website using GitHub Pages. | Free, with GitHub account to publish | Moderate, requires knowledge of MyST Markdown | Can be used with GitHub for version control. | 1GB if using GitHub Pages. |
| Bookdown | An open-source R package that can be used to write books with R Markdown. Books created with Bookdown can be published to bookdown.org or as a website using GitHub Pages. | Free, with GitHub account to publish | Moderate, requires knowledge of R Markdown | Can be used with GitHub for version control. | 1GB if using GitHub Pages. |
Below are tools that can be used specifically to take a final product and save and share it on the web.
| Tool | Description | Cost | Technology Learning Curve | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dryad | A scholarly data repository to which users can freely submit and publish their data. All published data receives a DOI. Submission requirements are here. | Free for individuals | Minimal | |
| Figshare.com | A data repository that allows users to freely store, manage, and share their datasets, using the Figshare repository software. All published data receives a DOI. | Free, with paid tier availale | Minimal | 5GB per upload, 20GB per user. |
| Zenodo | Multidisciplinary repository for data, papers, and other scholarly works. All published work receives a DOI. Versioning and private/draft storage are available for uploads. Zenodo is hosted and funded by CERN and OpenAire. | Free | Minimal | |
| Knowledge Commons Works | Multidisciplinary repository for data, papers, and other scholarly works. All published work receives a DOI. Versioning and private/draft storage are available for uploads. KC Works was created by the MLA and is now hosted and maintained by Michigan State University. | Free | Minimal |
Digital Projects Gallery at the Digital Scholarship Studio
Visit the Digital Scholarship Studio in Kennedy Library (35-115) to view a rotating showcase of digital projects created at Cal Poly, in both digital and print formats.
Submit a Project
Students, faculty, and staff who have a digital project that they would like to share with campus members are welcome to submit their project for display through the Digital Scholarship Studio. Fill out this form.
Preservation
Robert E. Kennedy Library can offer preservation of your website in the University Archives through a tool called ArchiveIt.
Please contact Special Collections and Archives archives@calpoly.edu for more information.
