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ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
e-Science in the Arts and Humanities
7 July 2006
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme
• includes the creative and performing arts
– practice-led research
• £3.8m for 5 years from October 2003
• Part of a uniquely centralized system of public support for ICT
in the arts and humanities
– but precarious...
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
Existing provision
• AHRC Research Panels
– Up to 2003, about 50% of £100m of research projects have
some kind of digital output and/or input
– What kind of projects?
• Support services funded by AHRC and JISC
– Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)
• creation, curation, preservation, and on-line
dissemination of digitised research materials
– Resource Discovery Network (RDN: now Intute)
• gateways for the discovery of online resources
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
ICT Programme’s aims:
• to build capacity nation-wide in the use of ICT for arts and
humanities research
– complementing existing provision
• to develop, promote and monitor the AHRC's ICT strategy
– later...
• strong infrastructure in place on which to build up e-Science
activities
– despite arriving at the table very late
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
Main activities:
• ICT Methods Network: £1m for 3 years from April 2005
– use of advanced ICT methods
• Projects and methods database (with support from JISC)
– methods taxonomy
– will be part of a unified on-line resource: ICTGuides (AHDS)
• including training materials at all levels
• register of experts
• list of centres
• ICT Strategy Projects (£1m)
– knowledge-gathering: needs, uses, scoping surveys
– resource-development
• Problems of funding tools development
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative (EPSRC?)
• e-Science vs e-Research
– Oxymoron?
• Agenda rather than a methodology, still less a subject
• As developed in the natural sciences and technology
– Infrastructure of advanced technologies for collaboration and
resource-sharing across the Internet
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Grid technologies
– Computational grid
– Data grid
– Access grid
• Associated technologies
– Visualization
– Data mining
– Security
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
e-Science
• Why is it important for the humanities?
– Money
• tools and generic resource development
– Injection of new technologies
• collaborations between computer scientists and arts and
humanities researchers
– Dispersed and heterogenous nature of typical humanities data
resource
• the typical AHRC-funded resource
– Not an instant solution
• Combination of top-down and bottom-up developments to integrate
resources
– But not just the data grid
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Now
– Scoping survey (later)
– JISC A&H e-Science Support Centre (King’s: 2006-8)
• based in AHDS and Methods Network
– AHRC A&H e-Science Research Workshops
– EPSRC e-Science demonstrators
• This Summer/Autumn
– six 4-year AHRC e-Science postgraduate studentships.
– AHRC-JISC e-Science research projects (£1.2m +
EPSRC?)
• varying emphasis on tools development and research
findings
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Scoping survey: Scoping e-science and e-social science
developments and their value to the arts and humanities
(Sheila Anderson, King’s College London)
– Identify, collate and analyse information on e-science
technologies, projects and outputs
– Match these against methods and challenges in the arts
and humanities – series of expert seminars
– Create an on-line information base for consultation by arts
and humanities scholars
• Draft report end July
• Final report mid-August
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
Expert Seminars on….
• Library and Information Studies
• Archaeology
• Literary and Textual Studies
• History
• Visual Arts
• Performing Arts
• Linguistics and Languages
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
Workshops in e-Science for the Arts and Humanities
•
Alan Bowman
User Requirements Gathering for the
Humanities
•
Paul Ell
Geographical Information System eScience: developing a roadmap
•
Angela Piccini
Performativity/Place/Space: Locating
Grid Technologies
•
David Shepherd
The Access Grid in Collaborative Arts
and Humanities Research
•
Gregory Sporton
Building the Wireframe: E-Science for
the Arts Infrastructure
•
Melissa Terras
ReACH: Researching e-Science
Analysis of Census Holdings
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
Workshops in e-Science for the Arts and Humanities
•
Melissa Terras
ReACH: Researching e-Science
Analysis of Census Holdings
– cross dataset searching (across complex and fuzzy data)
and developing a configurable tool to undertake record
matching
• not merely limited to historians and census material
• physicists and astrophysicists working on the
Astrogrid
– to track and trace different entities in space
across massive datasets
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
e-Science Demonstrators (EPSRC)
•
Peter Ainsworth
Virtual Vellum: Online Viewing
Envionment for the Grid and Live
Audiences
•
Charles
Crowther
A Virtual Workspace for the Study of
Ancient Documents
•
Sarah-Jane
Norman
Motion Capture Data Services for
Multiple User Categories
ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
e-Science and other current issues:
• Sustainability, standards and quality assurance of eresources
– quality
– reusability
– harmonization and interoperability
• The added value of ICT for the quality of research
– achievements to date
– possible quantum leap resulting from grid technologies
• Need for interagency collaboration