Seifried, Rebecca

Job Title

Geospatial Information Librarian

Last Name

Seifried

First Name

Rebecca

Discipline

Anthropology
Geographic Information Sciences

Expertise

Archaeological Survey
GIS
Landscape Archaeology
Remote Sensing

Introduction

I am the Geospatial Information Librarian in the Digital Scholarship Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, and I have a PhD in Anthropology. My main role is to help folks at UMass learn about GIS and use different geospatial resources in their research and teaching. My own research focuses on the interaction between marginal, rural regions and expanding empires in the medieval and post-medieval Eastern Mediterranean, using a combination of archaeological data, archival sources, and remotely-sensed imagery analysis.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 13

Figures accompanying the manuscript "Mapping the Leigh Fermors’ Journey through the Deep Mani in 1951"
(2021-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M; Gardner, Chelsea A.M.; Seifried, Rebecca; Seifried, Rebecca
Figures accompanying a manuscript co-authored by Rebecca M. Seifried, Chelsea A.M. Gardner, and Maria Tatum called "Mapping the Leigh Fermors’ Journey through the Deep Mani in 1951." Creators/authors for each figure are included in the figure list.
GIS data for mapping the Leigh Fermors’ journey through the southern Mani Peninsula, Greece, in 1951
(2021-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M; Gardner, Chelsea A.M.; Seifried, Rebecca; Seifried, Rebecca
GIS data created by mapping Patrick (Paddy) and Joan Leigh Fermor's journey through the Mani peninsula in 1951. The zip file contains 6 layers (in GeoJSON format) that can be used to display least-cost models of portions of their route, the hikes we carried out to recreate them, and our final interpretation of their route from start to finish.
Georeferencing the MacConnell Aerial Photo Collection
(2021-11-17) Heilmann, Alex; Martin, Matthew; Barchers, Camille; Bowlick, Forrest J; Seifried, Rebecca M
In the 1950s, Professor William P. MacConnell from the University of Massachusetts Forestry Department began working with his students to map the land cover in Massachusetts via the state’s earliest aerial photography program. These individual photographs are now part of the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, and although they have been digitized and made available online, they have not yet been georeferenced. In Spring 2021, our team (Alex and Matthew) began manually georeferencing the photos in ArcMap 10.8 software onto USGS 2019 color orthoimagery of Massachusetts available from MassGIS. Ideal ground control points include building corners, intersections, and any other distinctive features that have not resulted in much change between the historic and contemporary aerial photos. Some challenges we have faced include varying angles in which the photos were taken, cliffs that offset height in parts of the photo, or photos with a heavily forested area that makes georeferencing difficult to pinpoint ground control points. The goal of the project is to georeference the approximately 4,800 individual photos from the 1951-52 series, which spans the entire state of Massachusetts, in order to make them available to the general public as downloadable GeoTIFFs. This result will allow anyone to access the photos and use them to analyze land-use changes in Massachusetts spanning the last 70 years. Manual georeferencing has come with its own challenges when encountering heavily forested aerial photos or aerial photos dominated by mostly urban areas. We find that future research into the potential automation of the georeferencing process would help alleviate the challenges associated with manual georeferencing.
Assessment Data for "Envisioning the Future of a Mature IR"
(2022-01-01) Atwood, Thea; Jerome, Erin; Radik, Melanie; Seifried, Rebecca
This dataset contains two spreadsheets: 1) an in-depth functionality assessment of Digital Commons based on the University of Pennsylvania's "Platform Functionality Review" (https://penntrl.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/scrip-appendices/); 2) a running list of required functionality for an institutional repository platform. The spreadsheets accompany a forthcoming book chapter, "Envisioning the Future of a Mature IR: A Midlife Assessment of ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst".
Supporting Big Data Research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
(2021-01-01) Atwood, Thea P.; Radik, Melanie; Seifried, Rebecca M.
This project aimed to examine the research support needs of faculty who employ “big data” and data science methodologies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The study was conducted by the University Libraries and was part of a larger suite of parallel studies of big data researchers at institutions of higher education across the U.S. The study was coordinated by Ithaka S+R whose goal is to “help academic and cultural communities know what is coming next, learn from rigorous and well-designed research studies, and … improve their performance and further their missions.” Under the guidance of project coordinators from Ithaka S+R, librarians at 21 participating institutions—including Boston University, Northeastern, Texas A&M, and several University of California campuses—interviewed researchers across our campuses and compiled independent research results and recommendations for creating or enhancing local services and supports. In addition, participating institutions contributed their findings to a final capstone report by Ithaka S+R. The Ithaka capstone report provides a cumulative view of the evolving needs of big data researchers and includes recommendations for how the Libraries and campus research support structures can most effectively and strategically grow our support for this rapidly expanding area of research needs.
Seascapes and Fresh Water Management in Rural Greece: The Case of the Mani Peninsula, 1261–1821 CE
(2019-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
The Mani peninsula is a semi-arid landscape with few natural sources of fresh water, yet it supported a dense population during the Late Byzantine and Ottoman periods. This paper reviews the archaeological and historical evidence for water-management practices in Mani, concentrating on its domestic-scale hydraulic infrastructure (cisterns and saltpans) and the ports and harbours along its coasts. The data point to a critical shift in household-level social organization at the turn of the 18th century, underscoring the fact that people living in supposedly ‘peripheral’ regions like Mani nevertheless engaged in far-reaching networks of contact and exchange.
The Stone-Built Palaiomaniatika of the Mani Peninsula, Greece
(2021-01) Seifried, Rebecca M.
There are over 170 stone-built settlements in the Mani Peninsula that scholars believe were inhabited from the Middle Byzantine period (eighth to thirteenth centuries AD) up until the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. These enigmatic sites are known as palaiomaniatika, and roughly half of them are abandoned today, their massive stone walls in various stages of collapse and overgrown by olive trees and unchecked brush. This paper reviews the state of scholarship on the sites, outlining the typical characteristics of the vernacular architecture and discussing variations in settlement size and layout. A case study of the abandoned village of Koulouvades is offered to illustrate how targeted archaeological sampling and archival analysis can be fruitfully combined to illuminate the timeline of village abandonment. The final part of this paper is a call to action to archaeologists of the medieval and post-medieval eastern Mediterranean to adopt the theoretical lens of household archaeology. Through excavations of rural villages, data can be gathered that can answer questions about social process from a “bottom-up” perspective. Despite the body of art historical and architectural studies that have been carried out at the palaiomaniatika over the past 40 years, the lack of archaeological excavations limits the questions we can ask about daily life in these villages, as well as about the factors that contributed to their abandonment. Yet, they are an ideal candidate for household-scale excavations that would contribute to a wider understanding of social process in rural landscapes, not only in the Peloponnese but across the eastern Mediterranean as a whole.
Review of Digital Historical Research on Southeast Europe and the Ottoman Space, edited by Dino Mujadžević (post-print)
(2021-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
Review of Dino Mujadžević (ed.), Digital Historical Research on Southeast Europe and the Ottoman Space, Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe Volume 35 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021). https://doi.org/10.3726/b17129
Envisioning the Future of a Mature IR: A Midlife Assessment of ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
(2023-01) Jerome, Erin; Atwood, Thea P; Radik, Melanie; Seifried, Rebecca M
The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries launched its institutional repository (IR), ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst, in July 2006. To date, the IR has over 57,000 works that have been downloaded over 25 million times all over the world. Over the past six years, the content of the IR has expanded from mainly postprints and Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) to include podcasts, datasets, open educational resources (OER), and other shareable open content that has no other logical home. As continued growth has pushed the limits of the software as designed, we decided to conduct a full assessment of the IR in order to qualitatively assess whether the IR meets the needs of staff and stakeholders. The assessment involved two parts: (1) evaluating the IR according to a set of defined criteria adapted from the University of Pennsylvania’s Platform Functionality Review, and (2) soliciting feedback from stakeholders, including those who edit journals or organize conferences (a functionality that is separate from other parts of the IR) and those who manage non-journal or conference collections within the IR. While stakeholders expressed satisfaction with the service provided by the Libraries and the IR provider, they also requested additional features that would make the platform more user-friendly, flexible, and responsive to new content types and customizations that extend beyond the hard limits of the software. Editors and collections administrators were particularly vocal in requesting additional features, such as the ability to accommodate languages other than English and support for big datasets. The assessment raises concerns about the current IR’s ability to adapt to changes in the scholarly publishing landscape that are on the horizon and provides critical data to inform the next iteration of the repository. Hopefully, others can apply this strategy to their own institutional repository in order to better prepare for a flexible, robust future that supports open scholarship.
The Legacy of Byzantine Christianity in the Southern Mani Peninsula, Greece, after Imperial Collapse
(2021-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
Religion is one of the many potential mediums for emphasizing ethnic difference and highlighting group membership. Particularly in mountainous landscapes, which are difficult for imperial or state powers to control, religion may be a key means of asserting peripherality. The residents of the Mani Peninsula, Greece, converted to Orthodox Christianity during the reign of the Byzantine Empire and maintained this religious affiliation even after Byzantine collapse in 1463 CE, when the region came under Ottoman and, later, Venetian rule. This study reviews the research on Mani’s Byzantine churches to date – much of which is published in Greek – and presents new interpretations of the religious practices of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine communities of Mani. This case study sheds light on the role of religion in rural communities and the potential reasons for religious continuity in peripheral landscapes during periods of social transformation. In particular, the firm adherence of Mani’s residents to Orthodox Christianity emphasized their ethnic difference from the ruling authorities and simultaneously undermined these authorities’ ability to assert hegemonic power in the region.