Project Manager, Essex

December 19, 2008 at 3:57 pm · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) Project

This major new project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and located in the Department of History at the University of Essex, in collaboration the UK Data Archive. In conjunction with key commercial partners, the project will create an enhanced census data collection for Great Britain covering the period 1851 to 1911. An experienced manager is now being sought to play a leading role in this high-profile, path-breaking project.

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What is Geoparser?

December 17, 2008 at 4:20 pm · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing, tools

The GeoParser demonstrator is a tool that allows users to upload web pages, text files, metadata records, xml etc., which can then be parsed for geographical names. These are then checked against GeoCrossWalk to obtain explicit geographical coordinates for the location referred to , in order to “geo-tag” the uploaded document. In other words, it demonstrates a tool that would be key to geo-enabling metadata, resources and services within a JISC Information Environment (link).

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Google: global search trends

December 14, 2008 at 3:26 pm · Filed under governance, internet, open access, political communication, technology, web2.0

Google has released some of its search results. Releasing results like this is extremely important as it gives citizens access to some of the ‘meta-narratives’ that influence our lives. If large corporation such as Google only have acesss to these ‘meta-narratives’; it means that they can manipulate these trends and patterns to their own advantage (link)

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Bloggers pan Government’s ‘e-democracy’ bid

December 11, 2008 at 11:25 am · Filed under blogs, political communication

Prominent Australian bloggers have lashed the Federal Government over its first attempt at public consultation via a blog, which has already been hijacked by critics of its plan to censor the internet.

In a move dubbed “e-democracy”, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner announced this week they would be taking feedback from Australians for two weeks on a new blog canvassing Australia’s digital economy (link to the Melbourne Age)

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Keynote speakers announced: Digital Humanities 2009

December 4, 2008 at 3:52 pm · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing, web2.0

The speakers for Digital Humanities 2009 have been announced.  And what a refreshing change to the Digital Humanities agenda. The first is Lev Manovich, Professor of New Media at UCSD, who wrote the brilliant ‘Language of New Media’ back in 2001. And the second is Chrsitine Borgman, Professor of Information Studies at UCLA who wrote Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (in my mind one of the most critical and scholarly enquiries into the CyberInfrastructure movement).

Also check out Lev’s new book ‘Software takes command‘ that he has generously released online for free (although the online formatting is appalling (it isn’t written for the medium; I can’t wait for the physical book) plus his web site needs a good re-build.  What do others think?

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Grant Funding Call: JISC Information Environment and e-Research

December 4, 2008 at 1:49 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, eresearch, humanities computing

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) invites institutions to submit proposals for projects in two areas of JISC activity; the Information Environment (IE) and Support for Research.

In summary, there is a total of £10,600,000 available in grant funding. Projects vary in length from 6 months to 3 years, and from £30,000 to £1,350,000 in terms of grant available. Further information can be found in the documents below (please note the main body of the Call is a long document so please consider carefully if you wish to print the whole documents).

The deadline for receipt of proposals in response to this call is 12 noon on Wednesday 11th February 2009.
A Town Meeting will be held on 15^th December at Woburn House, London which will enable potential bidders to find out more about the funding opportunities associated with this Call. Further information regarding the event, including how to register can be found here http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2008/12/callbriefing.aspx

A full version of the Call can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2008/12/grant1208

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News from the Office of the Digital Humanities (US)

December 4, 2008 at 11:52 am · Filed under digital humanities, humanities computing

1) Guidelines for Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities

Would your institution like to host a summer training institute or seminar on a topic in the digital humanities? If you have some local expertise, why not share with your colleagues from around the country? Deadline for this program is February 18^th and the guidelines are available now. In our Library of Funded Projects, you can find a description of the winning IATDH grants from last year. Check out our website for more information on the IATDH program. [Read More on the ODH Website].

2) Announcing Next Round of JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grants

Last year, we had a wildly successful grant program with our colleagues at JISC in the UK. So guess what? We’re doing it again! But this time, bigger and better than before! (I hope this doesn’t sounds like I’m advertising a cleaning product or something). Seriously, though, if you are keen to work with colleagues in the UK on a digital humanities project, please read more about this program on our website. The deadline will be in March, 2009. [Read More on the ODH Website]

3) Papers from NEH/CLIR Symposium Now Available

On September 15th, the NEH and CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) co-hosted a symposium entitled “Promoting Digital Scholarship: Formulating Research Challenges in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Computation.”  At the symposium, we invited a group of some thirty leading scholars to brainstorm about research challenges for the digital humanities. To read the wonderful papers that came out of this symposium, please read more on our website. [Read More on the ODH Website]

4) Announcement of NEH/DOE Supercomputing Grants!

As many of you know, we’ve been working with the Department of Energy to explore how high performance computing (supercomputing) can be used for humanities research. I’m happy to say that we just announced the three winning projects from our joint NEH/DOE program! I made the announcement last month in front of an enthusiastic crowd at the Supercomputing 2008 conference in Austin, TX. To read about the winners, please check out our website. [Read More on the ODH Website]

5) Wanted: Workshop Participants

Two NEH-funded workshops are seeking participants. They are:

1) The University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab is hosting a conference on “Visualizing the Past: Tools and Techniques for Understanding Historical Processes.”

2) The Institute for the Future of the Book is holding three brainstorming meetings–in history, music, and media studies.

For more details, check out our website. [Read More on the ODH Website]

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Wikipedia gets grant to lure new writers

December 4, 2008 at 11:12 am · Filed under collaboration, social media, web2.0

Wikimedia Foundation says it has won an $US890,000 ($A1.37 million) grant to create ways to make it easier for people to add their knowledge to its widely-used Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

US-based Stanton Foundation is giving the non-profit foundation the money to make the website’s writing and editing tools more inviting to people new to making entries in the communally-crafted compendium.

“Wikipedia attracts writers who have a moderate-to-high level of technical understanding, but it excludes lots of smart, knowledgeable people who are less tech-centric,” said Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner.

“One of our key priorities is to attract those people and persuade them to help write and edit the encyclopedia.” (from the Melbourne Age…Link)

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Launch of U-Compare: an integrated text mining/natural language processing system

December 4, 2008 at 10:46 am · Filed under projects

(Thanks to Tobias Blanke for the link)

U-Compare is an integrated text mining/natural language processing
system based on the UIMA Framework, which provides access to a large
collection of ready-to-use interoperable natural language processing
components.

U-Compare is currently the world’s largest UIMA component repository. It
allows users to build complex NLP workflows via an easy drag-and-drop
interface, and makes visualization and comparison of the outputs of
these workflows simple.

U-Compare is the result of a collaboration the Tsujii Laboratory at the
University of Tokyo, the Center for Computational Pharmacology at the
University of Colorado, and the National Centre for Text Mining at the
University of Manchester.

For more information, please see the U-Compare website:
http://www.u-compare.org/

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Where to for Web 2?

December 3, 2008 at 1:15 pm · Filed under political communication, politics, social media, web2.0

Internet censorship is back again on the agenda; most notably in Australia where the government plans to install a Chinese-style firewall to block certain sites. Australia has often taken a draconian lead in this area and research and experience suggests that filtering doesn’t work on a state level (for a whole bunch of reasons). Filtering should only happen at an individual or community level.

There is a complaints-based system in Australia at a community level that appears to work fine i.e. if an Australian ISP hosts a site that is deemed offensive through a certain number of complaints; then the site may get taken down (this didn’t apply to international sites of course).

Small countries like Australia are often ‘innovative’ (for better or worse) and many of the policies of Australia (ie. the immigration system etc.) have been taken up by Britain, so it is worth being aware of the developments. Plus the UK in particular has some pretty lax privacy regulation so I can see some battles looming. If ‘civil unrest’ is one of the results from the economic downturn (as it has been in the past), then the Web 2 world could become yet another battle ground and states may respond with many of the tools their disposal (i.e. censorship and monitoring).

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GetUp: Help build a movement

December 3, 2008 at 11:15 am · Filed under web2.0

Here is a campaign in Australia at the moment from that great service GetUp. It is to prevent government censorship of the Internet. Thanks to Gabriel B for the link.

Only a massive public outcry will make the Government see sense on this issue. That’s why we’re taking a moment to ask you to help build an unprecedented community movement to save the internet from being slowed and censored.

Please take a moment to tell all anyone you know who uses the internet to add their signature to yours on our petition. Just use the module below (link).

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Transatlantic Digitisation grants

December 3, 2008 at 10:59 am · Filed under digital humanities, digitisation

The JISC and the US’s National Endowment for the Humanities are pleased to announce they will be funding a second round of Transatlantic Digitisation grants.

This pre-announcement is being made so that potential applicants can start developing the necessary partnerships. The call will be issued in mid December, with a closing date of the beginning of March 2009. Funding is available for projects starting from August 2009 with a project length of 18 months.  All projects must be completed by March 2011.

As with before, applications will be sought in the following areas

* New digitisation projects and pilot projects
* Addition of important material to existing digitisation projects
* Development of infrastructure to support US-English digitisation work

The maximum each project will be able to apply for is £200k / $300k, to be split between the projects partners.

JISC and NEH have also been in discussion with other international funding bodies about developing a separate competition to encourage international teams to explore the possibilities of large scale text and data mining overlarge corpora of digitised content. A call for this will be released in the New Year.

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What is Flock the social web browser?

December 2, 2008 at 12:05 pm · Filed under collaboration, social media, web2.0

Internet users spend a lot of time going from one site to the next, keeping up with a variety of friends and interests. Flock pulls all of your favorite people, places and content together in a convenient view and delivers a more personal experience of the web, where its users are more easily connected to what’s important to them (link)

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“SOCIAL COMPUTING IN 2020″ BLUESKY INNOVATION COMPETITION

December 1, 2008 at 3:03 pm · Filed under collaboration, communuity informatics, e-science, eresearch, humanities computing, social media, web2.0

The University of California Transliteracies Project and UC Santa Barbara Social Computing Group announce the “Social Computing in 2020″ Bluesky Innovation Competition.”

What will social computing technologies and practices be like in the year 2020?

ELIGIBLE: Undergraduate or graduate students anywhere in the world.

AWARDS: 1st prize, $3000 USD; 2nd prize, $1000, 3rd prize, $500.

SUBMISSION FORMAT: Description of an idea + Imaginative realization, embodiment, or illustration of the idea in a variety of possible formats (e.g., an essay, story, script, application sketch, fictional business plan, etc.).

DEADLINE: January 30, 2009.

FULL COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENT: Guidelines & Submission Details
http://socialcomputing.ucsb.edu/contest2020/

Students from any discipline–humanities, arts, social sciences, computer science, engineering, etc.—are encouraged to apply. The competition emphasizes visionary, thoughtful, or critical concepts rather than technical knowledge as such.

Inquiries may be directed by email to socialcomputing@lsmail.ucsb.edu.

COMPETITION ORGANIZERS
UCSB Social Computing Group (http://socialcomputing.ucsb.edu)
(A working group in the UC Transliteracies Project: http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu)

Kevin Almeroth – Department of Computer Science; Associate Dean for Advancement and Planning, College of Engineering
Jennifer Earl – Department of Sociology; Director, Center for Information Technology & Society
Andrew Flanagin – Department of Communication; Co-director, Credibility and Digital Media@UCSB Project
James Frew – Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
Alan Liu – Chair, Department of English; Director, UC Transliteracies Project
Miriam Metzger – Department of Communication; Co-director, Credibility and Digital Media@UCSB Project

With assistance from the UCSB Graduate Student Social Computing “Bluesky” Group.

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