Digital technologies have the potential to transform the types of research questions that we ask in the Humanities, and to allow us to address traditional questions in new and exciting ways. Supporting the Digital Humanities will be a forum for the discussion of these innovations, and of the ways in which these new forms of research can be facilitated and supported.

It is important to make this distinction explicit; that new infrastructure development must support digital scholarship (ie. the digital humanities) and not simply be about storage and publication (like older style digital projects).  Infrastructures should support processes such as annotation, text encoding, mining and text analysis, and programmatic access (trough APIs) to the underlying structured data. In this way new questions may be asked or old questions asked in new ways. Often, this promise of the Digital Humanities is evoked more than it is actualised, but still I think there are enough honest researchers in the field who care enough about truth in research, that the potential research findings from these large public investments will be substantial (link).

As a component of the NCRIS process, the National Research Infrastructure Council (NRIC) has been established to administer a programme called ‘Landmark Infrastructure Needs‘. Responses have been called for; here is a response from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA). And here is the response from the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH).

And if you don’t know what Cyberinfrastructure is; it is like a big electronic brain that connects researchers together so they can share data and work on it collaboratively and answer big questions! Here is an example from the Earth Sciences called AuScope.

I am just reading Professor Robert Darnton’s new book titled ‘The Case for Books’. Darnton is a well know book historian, especially of the French Enlightenment, and made the bold career move to become Harvard’s Librarian. Admittedly ‘the Case for Books’ is not that good, especially for those who have been involved in academic publishing debates for quite some time. In the quest to reach larger audiences, the book appears to have lost some rigour and Darnton’s first-person monologue is a little too personal at times (he should keep a blog). Still, there is a lot of information on the Google Book project, especially as it relates to the looming legal decision in which I am admittedly not on top of.

Here is a initiative from the UK’s JISC (The Joint Information Services Committee) who have attempted to create a ‘social software’ solution for broader public consultation. Almost always these social software solutions do not work (as it the case here) as the sites lack of community feedback. Still there there is an excellent summary of the case and key issues (link to JISC’s site).

The manuscript is one of a number published online to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, and can be accessed at www.royalsociety.org/turning-the-pages (from the Age)

(Posted to that wonderful Digital Humanities list, Humanist).

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:22:57 +0100
From: Jockers Matthew <mjockers@stanford.edu>
Subject: Possible Text Mining Opportunity at Stanford

Friends,

As I’m sure many of you already know, Stanford has been closely
involved with Google’s book scanning project, and we (Stanford) are
currently preparing a proposal for the creation of a text mining /
analysis Center on campus. The core assets of the proposed Center
would include all of the Google data (approx. 30 million books) plus
all of our Highwire data and all of our licensed content. We see a
wide range of research opportunities for this collection, and we are
envisioning a Center that would offer various levels of interaction
with scholars. In particular we envision a “tiered” service model
that would, on one hand, allow technically challenged researchers to
work with Center staff in formulating research questions and, on the
other, an opportunity for more technically advanced scholars to write
their own algorithms and run them on the corpus. We are imagining the
Center as both a resource and as a physical place, a place that will
offer support to both internal and external scholars and graduate
students. We are looking at creating fellowship opportunities and
post docs as well as other ways of encouraging and supporting
scholarship.

I am writing to you specifically because I think this will be
something you are interested in but also because at this stage of the
proposal we are looking for some external validation that this corpus
would be of value and that the research it would support would inspire
new questions and new knowledge. I have already polled our Stanford
faculty, and the response (especially in the humanities and social
sciences) has been very enthusiastic. My hope is that you might be
able to send a few words (at most a short paragraph) that I could add
to a section of our proposal that is titled “Scholarly Interest and
Research Potential”.

Hope you are all well and getting your abstracts polished for London
in 2010.

Matt

–
Matthew Jockers
Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/~mjockers

Previously unpublished recordings of Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
talks from the 1980s online go online today at the JISC-funded Archival
Sound Recordings website of the British Library at <http://sounds.bl.uk>

Featuring talks and debates with top cultural, artistic and political
figures of the day, this latest addition the archive offers a chance to
explore in detail cultural directions in the UK from 1981 to 1994.

Alistair Dunning, JISC’s digitisation programme manager, said: “The rich
intellectual heritage embedded in the spoken word is an often neglected
source for research and learning. JISC is delighted to support the British
Library to release the vivid ideas, resonant discussions and crucial issues
that make the ICA Talks such a powerful library of ideas.”

The talks comprise over 880 recordings, over 1000 hours of audio, on
subjects including art, literature, performance, fashion, film, music,
philosophy, psychology, biology, feminism, AIDS and politics.

Kristian Jensen, Head of British Collections at the British Library, said:
“Anyone interested in cultural, artistic and political change in
contemporary Britain will want to listen to this collection of talks from
the ICA. The British Library’s Sound Archive is in many ways like a Tardis -
this new collection transports us back 20 years through cyberspace to the
meatiest debates of the 80s – at the mere click of a button.”

Ekow Eshun, Artistic Director of the ICA, said: “The ICA has always been a
centre of debate, whether literary, artistic or political, and we are proud
to have welcomed some of the leading figures of our time to present and
discuss their ideas here. We are delighted therefore that through this
collaboration with the British Library we can now preserve and make more
widely accessible this rich history of dialogue.”

The recordings feature a kaleidoscopic range of leading cultural figures
debating the social and artistic currents of the 1980s, such as:

- Salman Rushdie and Tariq Ali discuss Rushdie’s novel ‘Shame’ and swap
improbable anecdotes from Pakistan.

- Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London and head of the Greater London
Council (GLC), describes the GLC’s radical approach of involving women’s
groups, ethnic minorities and gay, lesbian and bisexual groups in the
governance of London in the 1980s.

- Socio-biologist Richard Dawkins defends the more controversial aspects of
sociobiology which attempts to explain human behaviour in terms of genetic
make-up (1984).

Visit the archive at <http://sounds.bl.uk>

3 February 2009 – The text of Dot Porter’s talk, “Reading, Writing, Building: the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch,” including accompanying slideshow and example videos, are now available on the DHO website. Ms Porter, Metadata Manager at the DHO, presented this paper at the Royal Irish Academy on 26 January, and it was simultaneously webcast as part of the Culture and Technology European Seminar Series sponsored by the Humanities Advanced Technology And Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow. Her talk focused on the expression of physicality in digital projects, proposing a new model for editions of text-based objects.
(thanks to Dot P for the link)

This workshop will review and address the making of tools for collaborative scholarly editing over the web. The workshop leaders joins partners in the COST-ESF Interedition project (http://www.interedition.eu), which is focussing – as is the JISC-funded Virtual Manuscript Room project — on Europe-wide creation of infrastructure and tools for collaborative scholarly editing. The Australian Aust-e-Lit project will bring advanced experience of the making and working of collaborative tools with in for a national scholarly digital library. The workshop will allow key participants in Interedition, Aust-e-Lit, and in similar enterprises outside Europe to exchange information with UK scholars active in the area, and to explore common problems and possibilities for further collaboration (link).