Developing Shared Resources for Digital Research
in the Arts and Humanities
27-28 July 2009, e-Science Institute, Edinburgh
(report by Torsten Reimer, August 2009)
1 Participants
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Don Gourley, Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO), Dublin
Dot Porter, DHO and Digital Medievalist (via Skype)
Jamie McLaughlin, Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Sheffield
Laura Molloy, Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), Glasgow
Leif Isaksen, University of Southampton and Antiquist
Lydia Horstman, Centre for e-Research (CeRch), King’s College London
Richard Deswarte, History Data Service, Essex
Siu-wai Leung, University of Edinburgh
Sarah Middle, CeRch and UCL
Seth Denbo, CeRch and DARIAH
Simon Mahony, Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London,
and Digital Classicist
Stuart Jeffrey, Archaeology Data Service, York
Torsten Reimer, CeRch and arts-humanities.net (organiser)
2 Focus of the workshop
This workshop brought together members of several communities of practice in the (digital) arts
and humanities with members of the emerging UK Network of Expert Centres (NoC) and staff
from the arts-humanities.net project. The main focus of the two day event was to think about how
online resources such as arts-humanities.net could best support the wider digital arts and humanities community – in terms of technology, content, services and models of collaboration.
We discussed issues such as the needs of the community, as we understand them through our
work and contacts; usability of arts-humanities.net; community input in the development of such
resources; models for collaboration and data sharing between projects; and plans for future work.
A particular focus was to establish how the NoC can use arts-humanities.net to develop joint projects and services to support the community of researchers and practitioners engaging with the digital arts and humanities and e-science.
3 Identifying the needs of the community
The workshop started with a discussion of the needs of the community in terms of virtual support
as could be provided through a project such as arts-humanities.net. A general observation was that
it may be more beneficial to ask what the community actually needs than what they think they
need as the awareness of important issues was often not that high – at least beyond a small
number of digital arts and humanities specialists. This right away lead into the central issue of
whether the site is most useful as an authoritative information source, or as an online community,
lead by users, as addressed in section 5.
Awareness-raising was identified as the first and perhaps most important need: guides to good
practice, exemplars, introductions to existing tools (to keep people from reinventing them and to
encourage use) and all sorts of materials that can help researchers and practitioners to learn and
profit from the experience of others. However, it was seen as important to not only provide these
materials, but to ensure their visibility beyond the core group of digital arts and humanities
practitioners that are well embedded in the field.
Another related issue was access to support and advice; while there are useful resources available
online, they were often hard to find, and it was seen as important to provide an easy way to such
information, perhaps in the form of an extended ICT map. Another 'gap in the market' was a clear
and up-to-date guide to funding available for digital research and related activities.
In terms of technology, an easy to use and reliable video-conferencing suite to support teaching
and collaboration was seen as one of the greatest needs. While it was felt that Skype works very
well for small groups, more scalable systems are difficult to set up and often not reliable. Many
participants reported problems with virtual meetings or teaching activities that could not take
place because the technology failed. Some reported that Second Life has been used as an alternative for supporting larger meetings. It was agreed, however, that this was not a task for arts-humanities.net or the NoC to undertake, especially as it may just be a few more years before the
current systems would be good enough.
Participants also expressed a need for increased provision of online tools for text-encoding and
editing/analysis, for instance through providing and packaging up what open source tools are
available.
4 Community: what communities should the site serve?
One of the most important issues discussed during the workshop was that of community. Should
the main purpose of arts-humanities.net be to support an existing community or to help build a
new one? How should/could that community be defined and what would its relationship to the
site be?
arts-humanities.net was originally developed to support a community of users interacting with or
interested in the AHRC ICT Methods Network, while the core ICT Guides community were the
contributors who provided information on their projects. Currently, membership of the site is
open to anyone with an interest in digital arts and humanities. Workshop participants considered
whether the project should now focus on those actively involved in digital arts and humanities or
try to address the much wider group of those potentially interested in digital approaches to their
practice/research/teaching.
Participants agreed that although the first group was easier to define and engage with, it was still
difficult to imagine as a coherent community. While those involved with a digital centre could be
seen as a distinct digital arts or digital humanities community, many researchers or practitioners
did not place themselves in these categories and see themselves simply as using a particular digital approach or technique as part of their work. These users might not even be aware of the existence of a field like digital arts/humanities or might see it as something too broad to be interested
in. This is problematic both for effectively marketing the site and for knowledge transfer across
subject areas or between arts and humanities in general. However, this was also seen as a chance
for defining the mission of the site: to help bring the field together by encouraging an interdisciplinary dialogue through showcasing its benefits using concrete exemplars. This should be in line
with the focus of funding bodies, nationally and internationally, to encourage and demand interdisciplinarity. Information on tools, methods and funding were seen as having the greatest potential to cross over domains.
Participants also concluded that computer science should be an integral part of this discussion,
and the project should try to engage more with this domain. Input from computer scientists would
help to raise awareness of new methodologies and technologies.
It was argued that the community should not be focussed on just the specialists as this would
make it difficult to get a critical mass of users together and also because a wider community
would give the site more relevance and impact. When we discussed the national focus of the site
there was a consensus that it should be international because: research funding in this field is very
international; it would widen the potential user base; and it was difficult to imagine how the UK
community could be effectively supported without close international links. An international perspective was described as 'a selling point' of the site.
While it was assumed that the core community would probably still mostly come from those actively involved with the field, it was also suggested that the site should open more to the general
public; both to increase the number of visitors, members and contributors and to raise awareness.
Students and early career researchers were another group that participants felt we should more
specifically engage with.
5 Mission of the project
In the relationship between arts-humanities.net and the NoC, the site is primarily seen as an outreach tool to showcase resources and the work of the Network and to help those interested in digital arts and humanities to find the right partner among the Network's members.
In this role, arts-humanities.net would:
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encourage the (re-)use of digital resources
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support research and teaching through demonstrating exemplars and best practice
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help to find partners and support
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serve as a communication channel to distribute information on news, events, funding etc.
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raise awareness of digital arts and humanities, both with a wider audience and with funders.
Participants also saw this as the general mission of the project beyond its engagement with the
NoC. The project should also aim to actively encourage collaborative working.
Part of the discussion considered whether arts-humanities.net should be primarily a reference site
or a site that was about the community. While there was some uncertainty at first, it did eventually become clear that the community was understood to be at the heart of the venture and that it
was difficult to imagine where the critical mass of content could come from if not from the community. We saw both missions as interlinked.
6 Engagement with the NoC
The overall role of the NoC was not yet seen as clear; it was felt that the Network was still emerging [and that the relationship to arts-humanities.net would have to be developed with the Network]. For the time being the project’s role would be to feature the activities of individual centres
and of the Network as they develop. Starting in the next few months and regularly after that, artshumanities.net will contact all member centres to ensure that
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all relevant projects of the centres are featured on arts-humanities.net
all relevant events the centres are involved in are included in the events calendar
important publications of staff are included in the arts-humanities.net bibliography
the centres' profiles are up-to-date
We will work together to identify collections and datasets hosted by the centres that should be
featured on arts-humanities.net to increase their use. It would also be helpful if the centres would
pro-actively alert arts-humanities.net about resources and materials that they would like to see
featured.
As staff from the centres travel a lot and attend various conferences and events, including subject
specific events, the project will provide them with arts-humanities.net publicity materials to take
with them to these events.
The idea of building a 'clearing house' for support and help was also discussed. This would connect people to services/centres that can provide support. However, judging from the experience of
existing web-support fora/services we had some doubts about how much such a service would actually be used and whether it was not more efficient to provide more content and better guidance
to existing services and the NoC centres. It was noted that there was a difference between giving
direction and providing actual support. However, we saw the development of an extensive FAQ
on ‘how to do digital arts and humanities’ as a promising idea for a service that could use wiki
functionality. This FAQ should be linked to the methods section, which could also be transformed
into a how-to guide. stackoverflow.net was mentioned as a model for a successful forum/Q&A
site.
4 Relationship with other sites/communities/projects
Representatives of communities such as Antiquist, Digital Classicist and Digital Medievalist explained that these groups are very informal and evolve mostly through certain activities such as a
seminar series or exchanging ideas on a mailing list. Because of their nature, these groups could
not be partners for formal collaborations such as exist between institutions. It was felt that the
most useful contribution arts-humanities.net could make was to help with outreach and promotion, for instance in the way the collaboration with Digital Classicist was already set up. arts-humanities.net should also explore developing closer relationships with centres outside the NoC, for
instance the OII.
Seth Denbo reported on the current state of the DARIAH project and that it seemed likely that
arts-humanities.net would play a role here, either through becoming a DARIAH resource or by
serving as a model for similar, interlinked websites in other partner countries.
Interlinking resources or exchanging information via RSS were generally seen as a good way for
arts-humanities.net to proceed. This might lead to duplication of information, but this would not
necessarily be a disadvantage as it would increase the chances of information actually being
found. It would also encourage sharing as the partners would not feel that they are giving something away to be hosted on the site. Furthermore, this approach might also be good for the resiliency of the community and increase the sustainability of information.
Torsten Reimer also reported on ongoing discussions between arts-humanities.net and projects
and groups such as Bamboo, CenterNet and ADHO, especially how responsibility for services
and resources could be shared and/or divided between international partners. Currently, there is a
risk of these groups developing similar, overlapping resources. The importance of getting the
whole community involved in arts-humanities.net was stressed, especially ADHO.
5 Usability and development of arts-humanities.net
Expanding the scope of outreach for the project was seen as a key priority, both within and outside of academia. This would make the project more attractive to funders; encourage participation; increase quality of content; and help to raise awareness, especially beyond the specialised
digital arts and humanities community.
5.1 Front page
While a review of the content showed that there was already an impressive amount of material
available through the site, it was felt that presentation could be improved, especially on the front
page. The front page should focus on a few key elements presented in a way to draw the visitor
into the site more easily – by using more images; emphasizing the community element; and hu-
manising the content.
The following changes were suggested:
− redesign the front page as a splash page based more around visuals than text; make it
more streamlined and rely less on a column layout. At the moment, there is a lot of information which is great for return visitors but makes it harder for first time visitors, especially those that do not have experience with the field
− emphasise the extent of the user community who make up the site, for instance by prominently featuring the number of registered members as well as featuring individual members on the front page. This would help members to identify with the site; make it more
obvious who is behind it and stress the benefits of joining
− the front page should also be humanised more by featuring methods or other content
through concrete examples of people who have used them in their research or practice
− the front page could also give access to several different browse/search pages tailored to
different user groups: registered users (with more personalisation); first time visitors;
users who have specific tasks in mind (network; find support; learn more about a certain
method); it was seen as important to address the audience at different levels
− to focus more on disciplines, in order to help users navigate through the site. Only a
minority of researchers see themselves as 'digital', whereas a majority think of themselves
as related to their particular discipline or a particularly 'tribe' (such as TEI or geo-spatial)
first. The content is already on the site and categorised, the presentation should draw more
attention to this.
− content that is more likely to draw people into the site should be featured on the front
page; jobs were seen as a key example; featured content could also be rotated
− welcoming registered users with their own picture makes the site more familiar; this approach is working well and should be extended.
Other suggestions:
− look at the Wiki section and either make the whole site more editable as a wiki, wikify it
(and then move the Wiki content to where it belongs best) or perhaps rename the wiki as
'encyclopaedia'
5.2 Registry of resources
Another field for development could be the setting-up of a registry of digital resources that would
be interlinked with the methods taxonomy and with tools. This could be build up manually, for
instance through the ‘featured resource of the week’. This is something that could be taken forward with the NoC.
In order to encourage both the NoC and the wider community to contribute, this registry might be
developed as an outreach service: all resources entered into arts-humanities.net would, through
the site, automatically be announced through various search engines and web 2.0 dissemination
channels (something that already happens to a certain extent but that could be further developed
and better promoted) as well as relevant mailing lists and other distribution channels such as RSS.
This resource directory would have a simpler input form than the one used for projects in order to
encourage more input. It was also suggested that we could use this or something similar for capturing information on projects that would not warrant a more detailed ICT Guides entry, smaller
projects for instance, and that it could be run more like a self-registry.
5.3 Tools for project management
We also discussed whether arts-humanities.net could provide a project management suite. This
would be linked to project records on the site and include features such as a project blog and
wiki, a file store and tools for collaboration. While technically more advanced researchers would
probably not need this, it was seen as a useful feature for those who lacked time, resources or interest to set up their own websites. The key for this service would be that it would be well designed, easy to use and well integrated as well as effectively marketed. Offering such a service
would help the projects with outreach and basic project management, while at the same time increasing usage of the site and encouraging more researchers to engage with the community.
Provided that arts-humanities.net could be sustained long enough, this service would also help to
preserve project outputs and make them more accessible. Participants felt that, despite competition from organizations like Google, such a service could be useful because it could be tailored to
meet the needs of academics; a university as a host would have more credibility than a company;
we provide not only tools for working but also for outreach as well as a connection to the community.
6 Outreach activities
Outreach, promotion and publicity activities were identified as key factors for the success of the
project. Concentrating effort on expanding the group of members and visitors beyond the core digital arts and humanities field would help to: raise awareness; encourage interdisciplinary dialogue; expand the field; and make the resource more sustainable, with more content being contributed and also by making the site more attractive for funders. In this context it was suggested
that we should go beyond academia, to encourage usage of our resources beyond the 'small digital circle'. The aim would be to make arts-humanities.net the first stop for information on digital
arts and humanities and a prominent showcase of the exciting work in this field.
Workshop participants advised working more with professional bodies and learned societies, such
as the Medieval Academy of America, as they were the best channel to reach the 'unconverted’.
Focussing more on the ‘non-digital’ JISC lists was also suggested. Twitter was seen as a potentially useful tool too; both for featuring our own tag (#ahnet) and for monitoring what topics were
popular among the digital arts and humanities community.
Another approach that we could take is finding ambassadors/correspondents that would regularly
feed back information from their own discipline or field of study. They would help us to promote
the site better; get more relevant content; and raise the profile of the project. This could be graduate or doctoral students and if there was some money we might think about offering bursaries or
similar. Updating promotion materials with more domain specific information would make it
more obvious what the benefit of being involved would be to those that do not so much associate
themselves with 'digital arts' or 'digital humanities'.
It was also suggested that a concerted marketing and publicity splash should only happen after
the update of the front page and other substantial changes have been made.
7 Students and teaching
Participants saw arts-humanities.net as a resource that should play a stronger role in teaching and
training, especially as the resources and materials already on the site would be of great use. It was
suggested that we liaise with the Higher Education Academy to ensure that relevant materials
were fed into their training events (for research and teaching skills).
The institution-independent access provided by arts-humanities.net was described as a clear advantage for its use in teaching. Institutions often restrict access to tools and content for students
out of concerns about issues such as security. However, it was not resolved whether the role of
arts-humanities.net should be to just provide content relevant for learners or also tools and a suite
that was specifically tailored to support teaching. There was consensus that, if we were to devel-
op something like this, we should not repeat what Google and others are already providing but
should focus on gaps in provision and/or integrating content and tools in a way specifically
tailored for our audience.
8 Support for events
arts-humanities.net was seen as the platform that the NoC would use to feature and support its
events, for instance through capturing outputs and providing an environment where reflection on
events can take place before and after they take place, and where appropriate also during the
event. The idea of having a joint arts-humanities.net NoC conference once or twice per year was
touched upon, but we agreed that the workshop was not the right forum to explore this idea as the
NoC should be the driving force in this. Developing stronger relationships with event organisers
was seen as important to widen the audience, better support the community and generate more
relevant content.
9 Community advisory group
The creation of an advisory group/committee was agreed upon to help build links with the community and get more feedback for the future development of the project. This group would be
prominently featured on the site and credit and recognition would be given to those who have
already contributed to the project. This would also be beneficial to the site as it would demonstrate that this project is supported by a wider community and give the project more credibility.
Furthermore, it would make the site more personal and encourage engagement.
While the speakers at the workshop and other representatives of the NoC were seen as a good
group to start with, it was agreed that the group should expand to include the wider community
and that the discussion process would be opened to the registered members of the site. It was also
suggested that we should try and include representatives of different subject disciplines (for instance linguistics opposed to digital humanities) to help us engage better with those beyond the
core group of digital artists and humanists.
10 Taxonomy of Methods as a (shared) service
We dedicated a considerable part of the second day to discussing the next steps in developing the
Methods Taxonomy. The topic came up frequently during the first day as methods were seen as of
utmost importance to the success of the site. Dot Porter and Torsten Reimer spoke about current
work on the taxonomy, which also involves the Oxford e-Research Centre, and the implementation of the taxonomy in DRAPier, the Irish directory of digital humanities projects. They described how some updates to the taxonomy have been made, including merging of a few terms
and improving descriptions.
Gathering input from the community will be crucial for further development, especially by involving experts with detailed knowledge of particular techniques and a good understanding of
how these methods are being used in different disciplines. The DHO have added terms to the associated controlled vocabularies and we are working on a model that would allow continued
shared updating of the resource without forking it. The taxonomy will most likely be made available under an open source license and the creation of a more formal consortium is planned to take
the development forward. This process will also be opened up to the wider community and we
hope to encourage its use to build an interlinked directory of resources and information for the digital arts and humanities. This directory will be used to structure content and also to increase usage of existing resources by making them more visible. This might be a way to bring a dispersed
field closer together and, through community input, keep the taxonomy up-to-date.
It was suggested that a good implementation of the taxonomy as a web service would be even
more important than releasing it under an open source license. Stuart Jeffrey mentioned the STAR
project (Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources, http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/STAR/) that offers semantic web services and tools that could be of use for
such a project. The taxonomy already exists as a SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) file and it was suggested that we should build upon that to make it available as a service.
The provision of URIs (with associated information in HTML and RDF) was seen as crucial for
this as it allows interlinking of resources. We discussed this in the context of
http://linkeddata.org/. Leif Isaksen demonstrated http://www.geonames.org/ as an example for
how such a service could work, and http://commoneras.ecs.soton.ac.uk/, an experimental project
being developed at Southampton University.
It was also suggested that we could think about enriching our information with RDF, for example
projects records. Stuart Jeffrey noted that the ADS might be interested in using a Methods Taxonomy service to classify some of its collections based on methodologies.
10.1
Sustainability of the service
It was widely agreed that the Methods Taxonomy (or better perhaps ontology) service would have
to be both well implemented and designed as sustainable resource so that people would be prepared to use it and it could be maintained in the long run. Discussions considered ways of developing the structure and expanding the terms in the taxonomy, especially for changes that were
mainly of interest to a smaller groups or just one partner of the proposed consortium. This issue
would have to be addressed through the consortium. Generally, participants wanted a web resource that would allow people to suggest additions and changes to the taxonomy that could then
be discussed by the consortium behind it.
10.2
The taxonomy and the AHRC Technical Appendix
In relation to the AHRC Technical Appendix, it was seen as potentially very beneficial if applicants for AHRC funding would have to classify their project with the methods taxonomy. This
would help us develop it further and would contribute to raise awareness among those putting in
bids as they would be required to engage with the taxonomy and think about their methodological
approach. Through visiting arts-humanities.net, they could easily find out what projects and tools
are available that they should be aware of. This would also bring more visitors to the site and increase the chances of people engaging in meaningful way with the project, all making arts-humanities.net an indispensable source for the AHRC.
11 Action items and future plans
Concrete action items for the project
− update the front page design and reduce the amount of content to make it more accessible
(done by now)
− set up a section on funding
− expand outreach activities after the changes to the design are made
− make sure that all relevant NoC resources are featured on the site; set up a regular process
to gather that information
− focus on interlinking the site more with other resources in the field
− form the group of workshop participants into a 'community advisory group'; expand that
group over time, specifically to include researchers from various subject disciplines
− bring the disciplines more to the forefront on the website to make it easier for discipline
specialists to find a way in
Options to explore
− providing access to tools, for instance for text-processing, through arts-humanities.net
− develop an extensive FAQ-style document on 'how to do Digital Arts/Humanities'
− revive the old ICT Map concept, but in expanded and more interactive form
− focus the site more on awareness raising and outreach
− integrate computer science more and encourage their collaboration with arts and humanities
− find a way to explore ‘ambassadors/correspondents’ from various subject disciplines to
help the site to stay up-to-date with recent developments in the specific fields and also to
increase outreach
− focus on facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue, especially between arts and humanities
− expand the user community beyond the 'core' digital arts and humanities field
− develop a concept for a registry of resources
− develop the Taxonomy of Methods as a service
− explore the idea of offering projects a project management and outreach suite
− explore what resources and features could be offered for students
− work closely with event organisers (conferences, seminars etc.)