Digital Classicist/ICS Work in Progress Seminar, Summer 2007

July 31, 2007 at 6:59 pm · Filed under conferences, digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

Friday 3rd August at 16:30, in room NG16, Senate House, Malet Street,
London

Melissa Terras (University College London)
‘Can computers ever read ancient texts?’

Researchers in the Centre of the Study of Ancient Documents, and the
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford (and now UCL
SLAIS), have been attempting to build a system to aid historians in
reading damaged and deteriorated texts, specifically those from
Vindolanda. But to what extent can computers ever hope to “read”
ancient texts, and how can computers aid (not replace) historians in
propagating readings from hard to read documentary material?

ALL WELCOME

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk or
Simon.Mahony@kcl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2007.html

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Powerpoint slides online with Web 2.0

July 24, 2007 at 11:41 pm · Filed under web2.0

This is a presentation that I have last month at the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) in Urbana-Champaign; Illinois. This publishing application is pretty neat huh?

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Gutenburg Bible online

July 24, 2007 at 7:18 pm · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing

If you were thinking that the Internet was not a significant medium, then think again. The question is not what significant documents are online, but what significant documents aren’t already online.

On this site you will find the British Library’s two copies of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, the first real book to be printed using the technique of printing which Gutenberg invented in the 1450s (link).

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Research Assistant in the use of ICT in Archaeology

July 23, 2007 at 11:34 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing, web2.0

JISC-funded Research Project, VERA: Virtual Environments for Research
in Archaeology

Applications are invited for the part-time post of Research Assistant
in the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at UCL to
work on VERA: Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology. This
project will research the development and use of a virtual research
environment designed for archaeologists by the Roman Silchester
Project at the University of Reading (our research collaborators).

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Tools available to the classics community

July 21, 2007 at 1:09 am · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing, tools

The following tools have been made available for members of the Classics community. Most are free (and therefore unsupported). Where possible, we have included purchasing information and whether or not these tools have been tested (link…thanks to digitalclassicist.org)

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Texts into databases: The Evolving Field of New-style Prosopography

July 20, 2007 at 8:12 pm · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing, internet

This is a paper delivered by Harold Short and John Bradley at the ACH/ALLC conference Athens Georgia 2003

At King’s College London, we are embarked on three major historial projects that violate almost all of the guidelines evidently considered to be fundamental by Townsend, Chappell and Struijyé for an appropriate application of relational database technology. The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (PBE) (recently renamed Prosopography of the Byzantine World — PBW), the Prosopography of Anglo-saxon England (PASE), and the Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCE) (All are funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Board) run as collabroative projects between King’s Centre for Computing in the Humanities and discipline specialist at King’s and elsewhere. The goals of these three projects are ambitious. PBE’s goal is “to record in a computerised relational database all surviving information about every individual mentioned in Byzantine sources during the period from 641 to 1261, and every individual mentioned in non-Byzantine sources during the same period who is ‘relevant’ (on a generous interpretation) to Byzantine affairs.” (from website, see references). PASE’s aim is “to provide a comprehensive biographical register of recorded inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon England (c. 450-1066).” (from website). CCE intends to create a “database of clergymen of the Church of England between 1540 and 1835″. (from website). These three projects, then, are all broadly prosopographical in orientation and, if we apply Digitising History’s guidelines, seem inappropriate for relational database technology, indeed for PBW and PASE perhaps extremely so (link).

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Oxford University spies on Facebook profiles…

July 20, 2007 at 6:44 am · Filed under political communication, social media, web2.0

Thanks to the Melbourne Age. I wish that I was important enough that King’s College would spy on me!

For students at the University of Oxford, Facebook is a great way to keep posted on gossip and parties. For campus officials, it’s a new way to find - and fine - troublemakers.After exams, students at the venerable English university traditionally drop their serious ways and indulge in a spasm of “trashings” - rowdy revels that include dousing classmates in foam, eggs and flour.In recent years, students have taken to posting photos of the mess on Facebook, a popular online social networking site (link).

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A Blog Philosophy

July 20, 2007 at 12:33 am · Filed under art, blogs, collaboration, communuity informatics, digital humanities, humanities computing, hypertext, internet

If a blog can have a philosophy, then the philosophy of this blog is that there is nothing particularly radical about the new. The new may be radical to some, but the new can only be new in the context of the old (or their ‘old’). Some of the old may be threatened by the new, but then again if the new isn’t new, the the old is only threatened by what it already knows, or what it has already learnt the hard way (remember Nuremberg). The new never follows what is new, the new leads in the context of ‘olds’ and what it keeps is a sign of how civilised it is, and what it discards, is often a sign of how lazy it is.

Few things are truly new and even the ‘new’ has a history of ‘newness’. Thus finding what is new and applying it to positive and progressive tasks, is far from a walk in the park. A blog is not an end in itself, it is a way of gaining perspective over-time, a cognitive perspective on what is new, what is useful, and how this can progress our knowledge (and make it new). Fundamental to the advancement of knowledge, is moving through knowledge, sharing knowledge, and imparting an alternative perspective to those who don’t look for it and to those who should.

What is new about new media, the Internet, and hypertext? It depends who you ask. In that famous line from 1972, Henry Kissinger asked the Chinese Foreign Minister, Zhou Enlai, for his views on the French Revolution of 1789. He responded, “It’s too soon to tell.”

Blog on, we might learn something.

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AHRC/EPSRC/JISC eScience four-year PhD Studentship in Musicology at Goldsmiths Department of Computing (Oct 2007 - Sept 2011)

July 19, 2007 at 10:02 pm · Filed under art, digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing, web2.0

AHRC/EPSRC/JISC eScience four-year PhD Studentship in Musicology at Goldsmiths Department of Computing (Oct 2007 - Sept 2011)

PURCELL PLUS

Principal Investigator: Mr Tim Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Computational Musicology, Goldsmiths, University of London; Co-Investigator: Prof. Geraint Wiggins, Professor of Computational Creativity and Leader of the ISMS group in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London

This AHRC/EPSRC/JISC-funded eScience project, based in the ISMS group at the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, is about reconciling the needs of humanistic scholarship (in this case, a musicological study) with the demands and constraints imposed by the emerging eScience technology being brought to bear on those needs.

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Australian Conservatives give MySpace a wide berth

July 18, 2007 at 9:56 am · Filed under media, political communication, politics, social media, software, web2.0

From the Melbourne Age. And Ironic considering that MySpace is owned by the biggest Australian Conservative of them all.

The Federal Liberal Party appears to be snubbing MySpace, after the social network publicly criticised the Liberals’ response to its new Impact political channel.

The channel - which MySpace says facilitates direct communication between politicians, non-profit organisations and voters - officially launched last Thursday, with profiles for 20 individual politicians.

It is understood the Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to create his own profile page because he did not want to lend his identity to a commercial organisation. (link)

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2 A&H e-Science PhD Studentships

July 16, 2007 at 7:54 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing, web2.0

Forwarded on behalf of Prof. Vince Gaffney.

Institute for Archaeology and Antiquity
Visual and Spatial Technology Centre
Department of Computer Science
University of Birmingham

4 Year PhD Studentship
JISC/EPSRC/AHRC E-Science Programme

Medieval Warfare on the Grid
Principal investigators
Professor Vincent Gaffney and Dr Georgios Theodoropoulos

The Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (University of Birmingham) is
offering a 4 year PhD studentship as part of the JISC/EPSRC/AHRC E-Science
Programme funded project Medieval Warfare on the GRID.  The thesis will have
as its core the development of the primary behavioural model defining the
requirements and functions of a military campaign simulation using historic
data relating to the Battle of Manzikert (1071) and incorporating the wide
range of types of data from historical and environmental sources for the
battle  available at Birmingham. Particular emphasis will be placed on the
development of GRID aware simulations under the guidance of the Department
of Computer Science at Birmingham.  The award will be offered to a scholar
with appropriate historical skills and will include training in the use of
GRID-based technologies.  Dissemination of core simulation skills to the
wider Arts community will be central to the project and research. The
studentship will be part of the team managing the Medieval Warfare on the
GRID project and contribute to the activities of the wider
Birmingham/Princeton Medieval Logistics Research Group.

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A Community Platform for the Digital Arts and Humanities

July 10, 2007 at 11:27 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, humanities computing, web2.0

Torsten Reimer of the Methods Network at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities here at King’s is developing a community platform for the Digital Arts and Humanities. Although in its early stages, it is hoped that the site will become an important tool for networking and disseminating knowledge in the field. Parts of ICT Guides, the project that I work on, will be integrated into the community platform later this month (link)

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Virtual Workspace for the Study on Ancient Documents

July 10, 2007 at 11:08 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, humanities computing, web2.0

A wonderful new project from the a new generation of Digital Humanities projects.

The project will construct a virtual workspace for research involving decipherment and textual analysis of damaged and degraded ancient documents. It will provide direct access to widely scattered research resources such as dictionaries, corpora of texts and images of original documents, enabling the researcher to store, annotate and organize items in a personal workspace. The workspace will also support collaboration by allowing multiple researchers in separate locations to share a common view, working as if sat together, studying the original document. The project will deliver a working system that will enable a researcher to (link…thanks to AHeSSC).

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Museums in Libya 2.0

July 10, 2007 at 1:26 am · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing, web2.0

Dear friends,

After several months of intense and exciting work, the nonprofit research project “Museums in Libya 2.0″ (http://lamusediffuse.com/muslibeng.htm) is already available on the Internet. Now we are looking forward your feedback and interaction.

The research team lamusediffuse (http://lamusediffuse.com) proposes the use of Social Web tools for the inclusion of non-dominant cultural expressions in the scopes of culture diffusion on the Internet. Accordingly with this objective, the project “Museums in Libya 2.0″ (http://lamusediffuse.com/muslibeng.htm) is focused on two starting facts, the first is the lack of information about Libyan museums available in the website of the International Council of African Museums (AFRICOM) (http://www.africom.museum/museums/libya2.html) and the second is the apparent lack of museum websites in this country. As a consequence of this, the objective of our project has been overcoming both realities through the following actions,

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JISC Workshop: New Directions in e-Science and Visual Perceptions

July 5, 2007 at 9:19 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

The workshop forms part of the Eva London Conference (www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/2007), but outside delegates are welcome. (Eva Conference delegates who have already signed up for this workshop need not do so here.)

Enquiries:
stuart.dunn@kcl.ac.uk or tobias.blanke@kcl.ac.uk

Summary:

This half-day workshop, led by JISC (www.jisc.ac.uk) and the Arts & Humanities e-Science Support Centre (AHeSSC – www.ahessc.ac.uk), aims to stimulate discussion around the creative and research uses of e-Science tools and methods (so-called grid technologies, and technologies integrated with them such as data-mining, simulation and visualization) in the arts & humanities within the UK.

The workshop will focus on how the take-up of e-Science is developing new areas of research in the arts & humanities community, including the performing arts, and humanities research.

Three plenary sessions will introduce key topics and provide contextual background information to a variety of work being undertaken, followed by a set of presentations to offer demonstrative examples of activity by projects funded by JISC, AHRC and EPSRC under the e-Science ‘umbrella’.

The outcomes of the workshop will contribute directly to a special issue in the Digital Humanities Quarterly, and a THES themed article

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