>> International Database of Digital Humanities Projects
Background
Introduction
Arts and humanities computing has since its
inception been hampered by the lack of an adequate means for
collecting and publishing information about activity in the
field. Its interdisciplinary scope and methodological nature,
coupled with rapid changes in the technology and long undervalued
contributions to scholarship, have so far thwarted the
development of a practical bibliography of published and ongoing
work. The lack of such a bibliography has been repeatedly and
urgently noted by researchers, administrators and funding
agencies, all of whom need to know what work is being done, by
whom and where publications from it may be found. It seems clear
from the brief attempt in the Humanities Computing Yearbook
(Oxford University Press, 1988-90) that the medium of print is
inadequate for the task. Current online publishing tools,
however, would allow an accurate survey of arts and humanities
computing to be maintained and distributed at very low cost: thus
the International Database described here.
A preliminary attempt to construct such a
Database was made at the Center for Electronic Texts in the
Humanities (Princeton and Rutgers), 1995-96, while Susan Hockey
was Director. Earlier projects include Robert Kraft's compilation
of e-text projects in the late 1980s, Georgetown's expansion of
his legacy as the "Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text
from 1989-93," and Marianne Gaunt's early compilations
accessible on the Research Libraries Information Network. To this
should be added the "Directory of Scholars Active"
printed in an early edition of the journal "Computers and
the Humanities." That included information on the
intellectual goals of digital projects. More recently the Council
on Library and Information resources published a "Digital
Collections Inventory Report," focusing on library
conversion projects.
The idea for an actively maintained,
international, collaborative database, with "deep data"
on the projects, was one early offshoot of the "Computing
and the Humanities Roundtable Meeting," organized in March
1997 by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural
Heritage, the Coalition for Networked Information and the
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research
Council (U.S.). (For the published proceedings of that meeting,
see Occasional Paper 41,
American Council of Learned Societies) Subsequently a small group
of prominent administrators and scholars in humanities computing
(listed below) have begun work on a more ambitious prototype of
the Database and have arranged for it to be developed and
maintained by centres in Europe and North America.
Definition & Scope of
the Project
The International Database is to contain
peer-reviewed information on research and resource-building
projects that make significant use of humanities computing
methods. Projects that collect, encode, analyze or present source
materials and those developing computing tools would be
considered. Project websites would as a rule be used in
documentation of projects, but the International Database aims to
go far beyond the kind and depth of information usually available
on the Web. It would not deal with electronic publishing as such,
since there are already resources dedicated to tracking and
cataloguing these.
Due diligence will be done to ensure that
this project is not duplicating other work and due publicity will
be given to ensure that others in the field know of the
development of the project. One current, related project is a
"Directory of ARL Digital Library Projects," conducted
for the Association of Research Libraries by a team at the
University of Illinois, Chicago.
Audience
The core audience for the Database would be
working scholars, administrators, libraries and funding agencies.
It would also aim to benefit scholars who are curious about the
technology but unfamiliar with the kinds of work currently making
good use of it.
Related Projects
Due diligence will be done to ensure that
this project is not duplicating other work and due publicity will
be given to ensure that others in the field know of the
development of the project. One current, related effort is the
"Directory
of ARL Digital Library Projects,"
conducted for the Association of Research Libraries by a team at
the University of Illinois, Chicago. Others include the nascent "Humanities
Computing Repository" at
Queens University, Canada and the "1993 "Survey
of Humanities Computer-Based Projects" in UK universities commissioned by the Office
for Humanities Communications.
Organization
The Database will be developed by a
geographically distributed team. Initially, Rice University and
the Office of Humanities Communication, King's College London,
will be the lead US and European institutions. (The respective
administrators from Rice and King's, Chuck Henry and Harold
Short, have expressed considerable optimism that the project will
receive funding at their institutions and from other US and
European sources.) An Editorial Board will shortly be created and
a managing editor appointed.
Timeline
A group consisting chiefly of the
participants listed below met during the Digital Resources for
the Humanities conference in 1997 at Oxford, England, to finalize
the overall concept and parameters for the project.
A prototype, based on the CETH model, using
an SGML entry form and SGML editing, was assembled jointly by
Rice University and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the
Humanities at the University of Virginia. This early prototype was
made available online for inspection and commentary by the team.
After some discussion at a demonstration at Georgetown
University, over whether to use SGML or a database model, it was
decided that, despite the greater flexibility of SGML, and given
the interoperability of most contemporary databases (using the
ODBC standard), the ease of output from one to another and the
ease of data input using web-based forms, a database structure
was the better choice. Given the recommendation to go with a
database structure, the group concluded that Dublin Core would be
a good base to use, on to which necessary additional fields be
added.
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