COMPUTER SCIENCE
& THE HUMANITIES

BUILDING
BLOCKS

Steering Committee Meeting

November 10, 1998, 1-4pm
ARL Conference Room
21 Dupont Circle, Washington DC

MEETING REPORT

Summary Report | Proposed Meetings Schema | Proposed Organizational Structure

Present: Brenda Bickett, Bill Davis, Sandria Freitag, Eric Hoffman, Marilyn Lavin, Katherine McGinnis, David Green; Guests Worthy Martin, John Unsworth, Willard McCarty.

 

I SUMMARY REPORT

The steering committee met November 10 together with guests, Worthy Martin and John Unsworth from the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia and Willard McCarty from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College, London.

In the opening discussion about the sample set of questions we had developed, committee members felt that these were very much on target (Professor Lavin had actually answered them and had discovered useful insight into the way she worked with resources). The fact that the questions emphasized a bottom-up, practical underpinning to the project was seen as key to the success of the project with practitioners. Members emphasized the importance of balancing the 'bottom-up' practical realities against the 'top-down' implementation that would facilitate nationalization and standardization of efforts throughout the project.

An outline for proceeding was generally agreed upon. The results of an initial information gathering questionnaire (the questions cited above) would be used to start the conversations in an opening set of exploratory field-based workshops designed to identify particular topics for further discussion and follow-on activities. (For details, see Meeting Scheme below)

Following the exploratory workshops, plenary sessions will be organized to bring together exemplary projects and experiences from humanities computing and computer science. These plenary sessions will be an integral component of the first of the "best practice" conferences, also organized by the Steering Committee for Computer Science and the Humanities.

These plenary sessions will fulfill the dual related functions of providing a forum for discussing several presentations on new models for thinking about humanities computing as well as for jointly constructing an outline research agenda that will be informed both by the preceding set of workshop discussions and by the presentations made at the plenary session.

The field-based workshops will then resume to consider how the research agenda will apply to particular fields. They will describe the particular, exemplary problems that new advances in computing could help with. They will consider how computing could transform activity within and beyond their fields. They might propose activities specific to their field.

Several outcomes will result from these activities:

  1. They will assist higher education leaders and funders to determine new directions and unmet needs;
  2. They will help societies chart future activities on behalf of their fields (separately and collaboratively); and
  3. They will lay the groundwork for future collaborations between humanists and computer scientists by creating a shared vocabulary, identifying "grand challenge" problems to be tackled, and working through the best strategies for focusing intellectual and monetary resources on these challenges. To this end, a summary document will describe the process, key issues and, above all, a number of "grand challenge" problems that need to be worked on with computer scientists.

 

 

II MEETINGS SCHEMA

 

A. INFORMATION GATHERING

  1. Development of questions on discipline-specific knowledge creation and knowledge representation, given the set of tasks humanists regularly tackle. ("What is it operationally and intellectually, that humanists do, in different fields?"). Based on a preliminary set of questions already designed, these will be professionally refined by a sociologist to elicit deeper understanding of the ways that scholars, teachers and others work with their resources.
  2. Selection of respondents by individual workshop steering committees for each field (see Governance Structure below).
  3. Distribution to respondents
  4. Answering and return of questionnaire
  5. Analysis and reporting of responses by workshop steering committees, with assistance/guidance by sociologist and by Building Blocks Steering Committee.
  6. Selection of workshop participants from pool of respondents and others (include librarians, publishers, computer scientists)

 

B. WORKSHOPS - FIRST ROUND.
EXPLORATION OF TOPICS; NEEDS & POTENTIAL

 

  1. Discussion of questions, answers and analysis: towards methodological self-awareness, field by field.
  2. Consideration of how computing and information science and technology might assist with and transform the tasks and problem-sets that each field tackles.
  3. Initial identification of key topics to be explored and discussed (and possibly leading to other follow-up activities) arising from discussion of questionnaire.
  4. Development of agenda for rest of workshop and initial exploration of larger research agenda.
  5. Discussion of topics (will include both "bottom-up" and "top-down" issues and topics, ensuring balance between individual in-the-field problems and solutions and overall implementation, nationalization issues, such as broadening campus projects to be accessible to, and designed to serve, national needs and audiences, and to fit within national or international policy initiatives.
  6. Aim for prioritized list of problems and opportunities and outline reseach agenda for each field. ("What do we need to know in order to achieve what we think we want?")
  7. Building Blocks Steering Committee meets to discuss principal themes and directions.

     

 

C. PLENARY I: Component of Computer Science and Humanities "Best Practices" Conference.

  1. Workshop attendees participate in forum discussing presentations on new models for thinking about humanities computing.
  2. Review of principal themes and directions of workshops to date: commonality and difference
  3. Mixed group discussions by topic: towards the creation of an overall research agenda.
  4. Participants respond to "Best Practices" and "Lessons Learned" presentations at conference.
  5. Formal meeting of Working Group (or of expanded Building Blocks Steering Committee) to outline the "big picture" research agenda, informed by practical realities and needs identified in first set of workshops.

 

D. SECOND ROUND OF WORKSHOPS (Open-ended series, by field)
PRACTICAL ISSUES & IMPLEMENTATION
THE NEAR AND THE FAR (what can be done now; what needs further research).

  1. Taking topics and discussion results from first round, begin discussion of implementation procedures, in light of plenary discussions and using expanded pool of resource people. Work again simultaneously from "top-down" and "bottom up" to ensure comparability and creativity.
  2. Within fields, develop national, "society-based" projects that individual societies, perhaps working collaboratively, can develop and implement themselves, not necessarily as part of the continuing linear development of this overall project.
  3. Identification of larger, broader issues, problems, concepts that need across-field development in collaboration with computer scientists: the "Grand Challenge" problems.
  4. Develop and clarify vocabulary.

 

E. CONCLUDING PLENARY: BRIDGE TO NEXT STAGE

  1. Workshop reports on field-specific projects and "Grand Challenge" problems.
  2. Consolidation and refinement of Grand Challenge problems.
  3. Initial responses from computer scientists: imagined ways forward.
  4. Consideration of what has been learned in this process.
  5. Issues and Models in Humanities Computing.

 

III ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

 

 

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