COMPUTER SCIENCE & THE HUMANITIES BUILDING BLOCKS

Project Update

October 27, 1999

A. OBJECTIVES:

1. To enable societies to determine how best to serve their fields in the networked digital future
2. To convene humanists, computer and information scientists and technologists in an organized, national forum to articulate needs and design projects that answer those needs.
3. Through an initial set of exploratory workshops, to define some compelling "Quick-Win" collaborative projects for humanists, computer scientists and information technologists that can be submitted by societies to the National Science Foundation (and other foundations) by next summer.
4. To articulate teachers' and researchers' well-thought-through intellectual and practical needs so as to develop a longer-term research agenda of major issues for scientists and humanists to collaborate on to create the next generation of software, tools and digital environments that will themselves enable the production of more deeply usable networked cultural resources.

B. FUNDING

$105,000 awarded by Rockefeller Foundation, $50,000 very likely from NSF.

C. PARTICIPANTS

Twenty-four (and growing) societies and associations in seven fields:

History	Chair: Lindy Biggs, Society for the History of Technology
Interdisciplinary Studies	Chair: Anne Betteridge, Middle Eastern Studies Association
Language & Literature	Co-chairs: Elaine Martin, American Comparative Literature Association & Steve Olsen, Modern Language Association
Performing Arts	Chair: Katherine McGinnis, Society of Dance History Scholars
Religion & Philosophy	Chair: Eric Hoffman, American Philosophical Association
Social Sciences	Chair to be decided
Visual and Media Arts	Chair: Sally Promey, Univ. of Maryland, for CAACollege Art Association

D. PLANNING REFINEMENTS

• Reconceptualized the first set of workshops so that all seven take place at the same time and place with field-specific sessions; interdisciplinary topical sessions and plenary sessions
• Recognized the centrality of teaching in the project
• Understood the importance of talking and working with computer scientists earlier in the process to ensure a mutuality of interest
• Accepted that we would not develop a full-scale preliminary questionnaire but would develop our initial set of questions to mentally prime participants
• Incorporated the first plenary session and its functions into the first 3-day workshop and an afternoon session of the CAO
• Working on a half-day program for the Fall 2000 CAO Meeting at Carnegie Mellon University that would focus on:
  • questions within the academy about the relationship between intellectual trajectories and developing digital technologies (especially as these were identified and illuminated at the May workshops); and
  • a discussion with funders of humanities new-technology projects on the larger public policy issues that such support poses.

E. NEXT STEPS:

1. November 1999: finalizing of field committees (to include representatives from each national organization involved, computer scientists and additional advisers)
2. Dec. 1999-Feb 2000: face-to-face meetings of the 7 field committees to plan the workshop sessions, refine the questions to be used as "primers" etc.
3. April 2000: second teleconference meetings of each field committee
4. May 2000: 3-day workshops with three kinds of sessions (field-specific; topical (across-fields); and plenary) -- all fields to meet simultaneously and in the same place
5. Summer 2000: development of initial round of projects and collaborations
6. Nov. 2000: CAO examination of issues raised and discussions with potential funders

BUILDING BLOCKS