Interning in the ISAW Library: Envisioning a digital future for ISAW Monographs

A guest post by June Ofstedal, a dual degree student at NYU and Long Island University, reporting on her experience as Digital Publications intern in the ISAW Library during the Spring 2025 semester.

This semester I had the opportunity to intern with the ISAW Library as Digital Publications intern, helping to convert print monographs to digital formats while also considering the potential role of academic institutions and libraries in supporting open scholarship and publication. I am in my first year of a dual degree program at NYU and the Palmer School at Long Island University, pursuing an M.A. in French Studies alongside an M.S. in Library and Information Science. I applied for this internship through the dual degree program as I was eager to learn about open digital scholarship while gaining technical skills.

As a library science student, I had an idea of academic libraries supporting digital scholarship by assisting with research and finding platforms for smaller projects, and I was excited to learn more about their role in  supporting open digital publication of monographs and other larger works. A conversation with Patrick J. Burns and David Ratzan at the beginning of my internship encouraged me to think about the importance of publishing and presenting scholarly research and the importance of doing so in open formats when possible.

Over the course of the semester I helped create digital versions of two ISAW Monographs, namely Ancient Taxation, a collected volume on taxation systems in several ancient states edited by Jonathan Valk and Irene Soto Marín, and Ostraka from Trimithis, Vol. 2 (O. Trim. 2), a catalog of inscribed pottery shards from the Amheida excavations edited by Rodney Ast and Roger Bagnall. The platform for creating these digital monographs is Quarto, an open-source scientific publishing platform. Prior to this internship I had thought of digital publications, including those published in open formats as fairly straightforward, perhaps a PDF or web page versions of the work. My conversations with Patrick and my explorations into Quarto books and their underlying encoding, primarily through Markdown, encouraged me to consider how digital tools can make existing works more navigable and citable through cross-references, interactive tables, and other elements.

I entered this internship with proofreading experience and some exposure to digital humanities tools, but little specific technical knowledge. Over the course of the internship, however, I became comfortable with Markdown, used regular expressions for updating content, learned what not to do when creating a CSV file, and even got an introduction to Python programming and CSS styling. Using Markdown, I was able to replicate the structure, format, and style of the print versions, such as headings, lists, and italicized text, while also adding certain interactive elements, like cross-references and dynamic data tables.

The first book I worked on was Ancient Taxation. For this volume, I started simply by creating files for each chapter, and, as I learned new skills, I added the book’s contents. I started with paragraphs, then footnotes, then tables, then images, converting information from the original PDF and XHTML versions to Quarto files and replacing tags with simpler Markdown representations. I was encouraged to take the time to understand Markdown and to test the limits of what it can do. As someone without much technical experience, I greatly appreciate Markdown’s emphasis on minimal markup and on creating human-readable files.

After working through Ancient Taxation, I applied the skills I had gained to O. Trim. 2. This archaeological volume is part of a multi-book series cataloging and contextualizing the ostraka, that is pottery shards that people used to write all manner of notes, memos, lists, receipts and more, discovered during the excavations at Amheida. It includes a catalog of nearly 500 ostraka. Whereas Ancient Taxation, in many ways a more conventional "book," allowed me to practice formatting and styling paragraphs and citations, O. Trim. 2 expanded my digital publishing skill set. I needed to incorporate many more images, tables, and non-paragraph text elements, such as its extensive catalog of artifacts. With some trial and error, I converted the data from a 51-page table(!) in the print version to a CSV file that can be read now in the digital version as a dynamic table that users can filter and sort as they read. As an archaeological catalog, O. Trim 2 also has many internal references—to chapters, figures, and tables, but also to individual ostraka. I was able to create identifiers and cross-references for each, enabling readers to click directly to the figure, table, or ostrakon being referenced.

While copying over paragraphs and checking my own work. I got to learn more about the work ISAW supports and about how this work is shared through publications. While creating and proofreading files, I learned more about ancient taxation systems and pottery shards than I ever thought I would. I had never heard of ostraka or thought of pottery shards as an object of study, but my work with O. Trim. 2 allowed me to see how studying these objects can provide insight into a place's history. My favorite ostrakon is 2.669, translated simply as "2 chickens."

Tag for chickens (O. Trim. 2.669) from Ostraka from Trimithis, Vol. 2

As a library science student, I often think about the importance of sharing scholarly work. This project allowed me to learn more about how digital publications can represent information in user-friendly ways and what different tools and techniques make possible. As I continue my studies and consider professional opportunities, I hope to incorporate the knowledge I gained during this internship—not only technical skills, but also reflections on how and why academic institutions and academic libraries can support digital publishing—into future work.