Scalar and Online Teaching, Research, and Programming

Events and Exhibitions
  • Hugh McHarg
  • May 26, 2020

As the USC Libraries look ahead to supporting the university community through online and hybrid approaches to teaching, research, and programming, we’re highlighting a few new and recent collaborations using the Scalar platform that demonstrate some of the possibilities of working with library people, collections, expertise, and technology capabilities.
 
Adapting programs designed for physical spaces: A Case of Hysteria
Anne-Marie Maxwell and Tyson Gaskill lead this adaptation of the physical exhibition that began in Doheny Library’s Treasure Room before the university moved to online operations. A Case of Hysteria brings together cross-disciplinary collections from the California Social Welfare Archives, Lila Berman papers, the Norris Medical Library, and others in an exploration of women’s mental healthcare in California and beyond. The Scalar adaptation of A Case of Hysteria also extends the life of the exhibition past that of the physical installation and the in-person event held earlier in the year.
 
Programs designed explicitly for digital spaces: Safer at Home
Lexi Johnson leads the development and curation of this online exhibition of items from the ONE Archives at USC Libraries. A direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition reflects on the themes of “safety” and “home” from a perspective that links past and present manifestations of those ideas through items in the archive. Safer at Home is also an experiment in revealing the curatorial process as it unfolds, as Lexi is adding new content weekly. Four contemporary artists will hold public conversations in June that respond further to the items in Safer at Home.
 
Programs developed in partnerships with faculty and students in the schools: Unpinning History—Japanese Posters in the Age of Commercialism, Imperialism, and Modernism
Rebecca Corbett, Anne-Marie Maxwell, and Tyson Gaskill lead the libraries’ aspects of this collaboration with USC Dornsife's Rika Hiro and her Art History students. Hiro and students in her Later Japanese Art course curated the materials from EAL collections, focusing on the Taishō (1912-1926) and Shōwa (1926-1989) periods. The team originally planned Unpinning History as a physical exhibition but, meeting through Zoom, quickly adapted it for online presentation.