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COMPUTER SCIENCE
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21 Dupont Circle
Washington, DC
11 February 2000
Introduction and General
Discussion
Workshop Planning
Workshop Participants
Other Notes
In attendance:
Promey began the morning with a short welcome and icebreaker during which meeting participants were paired off to discuss their best and worst technology experiences. These experiences were then shared with the group. This activity began the conversation for the day.
Promey articulated the goals of the meeting (see agenda) and provided a brief overview of the project. She clarified the project's commitment to real collaboration between computer scientists and humanists (as opposed to a model in which computer science simply serves the humanities). The group was unanimous in suggesting that additional computer scientists be invited to the workshop.
Hays started off the discussion session by clarifying the project's intentional "two-way" structure, with discipline-oriented field groups representing both bottom up information (in re individual constituents) and top down information (in re member societies and disciplinary arenas). The workshops will reiterate this structure in terms of exchanges among the three sorts of sessions (field-specific, topical, and plenary).
Kolker suggested that computer science is grant-driven and that this may create disincentive for working with humanists. Alexander mentioned that, even within the humanities per se, individual issues and institutional issues are not always the same&emdash;discrepancies often result in a lack of funding to accomplish things humanists need. Kolker remarked that his greatest challenges relate to the lack of facilities. He needs greater technical support. He knows what he wants to do but he does not have the resources or access to the people developing. Who are these people? IBM, the military. He is interested in a good program for visual retrieval. He'd like to do searches other than those based on textual cataloguing.
Cohen prepared for the meeting by going to faculty on his campus and asking them what they would want. They expressed the need for greater access to a range of materials. They need to conduct searches by specific criteria potentially unique to an individual's or discipline's research. There was a general consensus that we are using a fraction of the technical capabilities that might be relevant to visually oriented disciplines.
Promey raised the related issue of identifying what is out there to be searched and remarked on copyright as a major roadblock. Collaboration might be a possible response to this roadblock. There was an agreement that the problem with some of the projects already underway (such as AMICO and MESL) is that they provide access to limited numbers and sorts of images. Increasingly, Promey noted, historians need access to a wide range of visual cultural materials. Cohen specified the need for cross-disciplinary access.
Kolker suggested that the question for us, as humanists, is "what do people in our field need to search." The question for computer scientists, on the other hand, is "what capabilities exist." Poole raised the issue of the serendipity of research; how do you make sure people know what's there and how do you allow them to browse. The serendipity of search results means we need access to everything, but the effort required to catalogue everything is a problem.
Stewart concurred, and clarified the perspective of the content provider. The amount of cataloguing labor required is immense. There are extra steps in entering data and glitches in the databases that result in backlogs.
Promey suggested the possibility of working with identifiable collections in different kinds of institutions rather than regarding museums as the sole content providers. Poole suggested that we take the research-driven approach. There should be some recognition of the parameters of a specific project. We should respond to a real need. Alexander agreed that, as a place to start, research needs should determine the way material is prioritized.
Promey expressed concern that there is a lack of incentive for the majority of faculty to get "technical." Cohen agreed that tenure is the reward system and setting up shared resources is not rewarded. How can we get pedagogical projects into this system?
All this discussion led to the idea that what we need is a new model for the exchange of content which recognizes that universities as well as museums are content providers&emdash;and which ceases to see museums (negatively) as hoarding content. Collaborative response is the ideal. Can we avoid limiting projects to a single campus? Working with a variety of groups yields greater potential. Information can come from a range of places, from multiple sources. Is there a technical model for collecting content (image and text) from a variety of sources?
The need for some type of editorial moderation was recognized. Suggestions included an editorial board for peer review and vetting by multiple small groups of people with different focused interests. There was discussion of different structures for accomplishing peer review in terms of centralization and decentralization in particular.
The group seemed interested in identifying a structure with some balance between decentralized authority and "quality" moderation. The two most pressing concerns were providing some framework for acknowledged standards while at the same time avoiding the authorization of any one particular disciplinary perspective or method. The model proposed would accommodate both the moderation of the database and multiple sources of materials and information.
Discussion of the 3-day workshop led to many suggestions.
General: Ambivalent reaction in the group except for Stewart who preferred fall. Cohen suggested that May workshops would allow us to maintain momentum. We all agreed, however, that we could use the extra time if the workshops were delayed. Cohen suggested that if there is a delay, perhaps this group could occupy itself with making a list of the projects that are already out there, what he called an annotated link list, for projects such as the Academic Image Consortium and the Digital Library Foundation, etc. The group agreed to add the task of an "annotated link list" to longer term to-do list. If the meeting is to take place in the fall, late September scheduling would be necessary.
&endash;we deferred conversation on this subject.
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