E-HUMANITIES THOUGHTS WORKING GROUP: LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE

Ian Johnson - Facilitator

Network Structure

Humanities disciplines have expertise in analysing content of cultural objects, heritage, culture. We apply digital methods to this analysis - so we have something to contribute to computer science and they have something to contribute back.

Strengths of the Australian e-Humanities Research Community

  • Incredibly diverse group
  • Richness of content
  • Imaginative use of technologies
  • Inclusive, interdisciplinary group

Advantages of Formalising a Network

  • Cross-fertilisation between disciplines
  • The power of serendipity - if you put things together you discover new ways of doing things
  • Promotion of the craft of academic research and the tools to bring in the estimated 90% of humanities researchers who use desktop computers but are not actively engaged in e-research and need training, guidelines and encouragement.

Possible Functions of the Network

  • representation of and advocacy for e-Humanities researchers
  • practical assistance to e-Humanities researchers
  • provide point of contact and advice sharing with other relevant groups
  • collaborative cross-institutional usage of people on projects to leverage expertise and generate synergies

Defining the Scope of the Network

  • We need a realistic appraisal of capacity of the networks programme in relation to our ambitions
  • At this stage we don't have the capacity to include creative arts and new media though we recognise that there are areas of common interest.
  • We do not seek to duplicate the functions of broadly conceived infrastructural projects such as Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories, Grangenet, Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing and the proposed middleware initiative. Rather we seek to inform these groups of the actual and potential applications of core services and tools within the humanities research domain.

e-Humanities Network Organisation Possibilities

  • Spatial/geographic and/or temporal
  • By discipline
  • By format

Network Structure Needs to be Bifocal

  • On the one hand, needs to provide pastoral support for the user community of humanities researchers, as authors, creators and producers.
  • On the other, needs to manage objects and services, and answer the needs of maintainers, managers, curators and funders.

Other Issues

  • Tension between disciplinary needs and institutional funding realities - can be politically difficult to coordinate cross-institutional infrastructure and projects.
  • Creation of public digital resources needs to be recognised by ARC/DEST as valid research output

Ideas

  • Network could subscribe to international standards-setting bodies such as the Text Encoding Initiative have representation at its workgroups
  • Network could coordinate bulk software licensing (e.g. for databases) provide source of technical expertise to help set individual projects up (perhaps for modest fee)
  • The network should embrace an open source philosophy, with open content licensing where possible, with provision for confidentiality when development is proceeding.
  • Network could have a lobbying/advocacy role e.g. ARC/DEST to recognise creation of public digital resources as valid research output
  • Programmers from largescale infrastructural initiatives such as the open middleware initiative could be seconded out to work with networks to develop the middleware and work with these communities.