Introduction | Agenda | Previous Work | Current Best Examples | Proposal Writing

PREVIOUS WORK

Building Blocks builds on two seminal projects conducted by the J. Paul Getty Trust

1985-1988: Getty Trust/Brown University:

Object, Image, Inquiry: The Art Historian at Work

In 1985, while discussing areas of mutual interest, the Getty Art History Information Program and the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) at Brown University realized that there was no study of how research was actually done that might guide the application of computer technology to research in the humanities: "if our [mutual] aim is to foster procedures, systems, and user environments that will enhance the way scholars work in the future, should we not know a great deal about existing research practices? How can we aspire to satisfy the needs of scholarship and to marshal automated resources without better knowledge of what researchers do now?"

The resultant study, an in-depth examination of the research process of a small group of art historians, was published in 1988 as "Object, Image, Inquiry: The Art Historian at Work," and showed its participants "immersed in a rich matrix of interactions (with objects of study, with colleagues, with institutions, with resources and professional tradition) as well as portraying the obstacles and contradictions, the attitudes, intellectual strategies and emotions" of doing research.

There were many lessons in the study and its directors trusted that they would be wisely considered. They understood the temptation for those responsible for technical development would be "to focus on discrete applications that conform to today's computer tools or that affirm developers' existing directions." Rather what seemed more appropriate to them was an understanding of the overarching objectives and thinking that condition research practices, the contexts of researchers' subject matter, attitudes and politics and the different dynamics at work at different stages of a scholar's work. What was needed was software that could promote the transfer of knowledge through various stages of research.

This study was an "initial exploration of the ways knowledge can be acquired and communicated" and called for further work "to inform and guide us in applying new technology to the work of scholars."

That report surely inspired much of the subsequent work of the Getty Information Institute in developing digital tools for art historians, although no specific ostensible follow-up was made to that study. We believe that Building Blocks takes up many of the lessons and challenges of that study--extending them across the academic disciplines.

1995-1996. Getty Trust:

Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage

Almost a decade later, the Getty Information Institute attacked this issue in a different way and with a more ambitious scope by orchestrating a call to scholars to consider what should be on a research agenda for arts and humanities computing. Eight critical areas were selected and papers were commissioned on each of these. The papers were then opened for discussion online to a private list and then to an open list in the summer and fall of 1995. A Report, "Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage," edited by David Bearman, was then published by the Getty Trust in 1996. The eight papers, organized in chronological order from the beginning of the scholarly or creative process through to the archival life of its products, were as follows: "Tools for Creating and Exploiting Content" (Robert Kolker and Ben Schneiderman); "Knowledge Representation" (Susan Hockey), "Resource Search and Discovery" (Gary Marchionini); "Conversion of Traditional Source Materials into Digital Form" (Anne Kenney); "Image and Multimedia Retrieval" (Donna Romer); "Learning and Teaching" (Janet Murray); "Archiving and Authenticity" (David Bearman); and "New Social and Economic Mechanisms to Encourage Access" (John Garrett).

Again, although the papers and the report were broadly influential, and certainly captured the state of research on these critical issues at the time, no research agenda was actually created and no specific follow-up to this extensive investigation was undertaken. However, there is much valuable material in this report, and much that can be built on as Building Blocks works to create its own Research Agenda.

It is particularly interesting to note the following observations made as part of several "Research Agenda Issues" in the editor's "Overview and Discussion Points" introduction to the essays in this volume:

1997-1998. Council on Library and Information Resources/American Council of Learned Societies: Scholarship, Instruction and Libraries at the Turn of the Century

In 1997-98, the Council on Library and Information Resources together with the American Council of Learned Societies established five task forces to "understand how technology is changing the nature of scholarship and teaching" by looking at the special requirements posed by different media: visual materials; manuscript materials; audio materials; monographs and journals; and area studies materials. The focus of the sessions and of the conclusions, however, was primarily directed at present needs and how they could be served by librarians. The five basic conclusions of the study can be summarized as follows:

1. There is a need for a national collaborative collections development program to counterbalance the trend towards collections that resemble each other, to the detriment of unique, special collections.

2. Institutions must invest fiscal and other resources to make unique or special collections more broadly accessible. Faculty are urged to make increased use of primary source materials to develop critical thinking in students.

3. Library organizations, universities and learned societies should explore the possibilities of exploiting and managing intellectual property to yield greater benefits to the scholarly communities.

4. Institutions of higher education and research should place more emphasis on training and support for faculty use of information and instructional technologies.

5. Better communications between the library and scholarly communities can enable the scholarly community to participate in the philosophical and policy issues arising from the use of information technology in research and teaching.

1998-1999. Arts and Humanities Data Service:

Scholarly Exploitation of Digital Resources: Identifying & Responding to End-Users' Information, Support and Training Requirements <http://ahds.ac.uk/old/users/study.html >.

Similar in focus to the CLIR/ACLS Study was a report published by the Arts & Humanities Data Service (AHDS) in 1999 on a series of five workshops conducted by AHDS on defining the needs of users of digital resources in the humanities. Five discipline-specific workshops were held (in archaeology, history, literary and linguistic texts, the performing arts and the visual arts) together with a "National Expert Workshop."

Recommendations were similarly cast in present-day terms: For example the Visual Arts workshop report recommended increased infrastructure investment to allow for greater use of digital resources; long-term investment in national agencies that support digital resource creation (as institutional support is rare); co-development of print and digital resources; an awareness of the slowness of information culture and of academic research and teaching to embrace the digital; the need for widely available examples of the use of digital resources to provide practical exemplars of use; good documentation of projects to enable future resource creators the benefit of their wisdom (and mistakes); the need for academic recognition of, and standards for, the development of scholarly resources in digital form. There was a strong call for training and a recognition of the different kinds of training (skills-based, discipline-based and resource-based) and information about where to obtain such training.

Both of these last two investigations were about improving current services and activities. Still needed are explorations of deeper and more long-term needs of researchers and teachers. It is the ambition of the Building Blocks project, while conscious of such present-based studies, to build on the deeper investigations of the earlier Getty reports cited above in creating a workable research agenda on which humanists and computer scientists can collaborate in a concerted and far-reaching way.