Digital Humanities Observatory
Ireland’s Window on
Humanities E-Scholarship
Humanities Serving Irish
Society (HSIS)
• funded under cycle four of the Programme of
Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI)
• developing an all-island inter-institutional
research infrastructure for the humanities
• building a platform for the coordination and
dissemination of humanities research, teaching,
and training at an all-island level
• coordinated by the Royal Irish Academy
multiple research/
training clusters
•
An Foras Feasa
– National University of Ireland,
Maynooth
– Dublin City University
– Dundalk Institute of Technology
– St. Patrick's College
•
The Global Ireland Institute
– University College Dublin
– Institute of Technology, Tallaght
– Queen’s University Belfast
•
Texts, Contexts, Cultures
– National University of Ireland,
Galway
– Trinity College Dublin
– University College Cork
•
Unaffiliated HSIS Partners
– National College of Art and
Design
– Royal Irish Academy
– University of Ulster
Digital Humanities
Observatory (DHO)
• a central component within HSIS
• established to:
– manage and co-ordinate the increasingly complex eresources created in the arts and humanities
– enable research and researchers in Ireland to keep
abreast of international developments in the creation,
use, and preservation of digital resources
Mission Statement
The Digital Humanities Observatory
is an all-island digital humanities collaboratory
working with Humanities Serving Irish Society (HSIS),
national, European, and international partners
to further e-scholarship.
The DHO is a knowledge resource providing outreach
and education on a broad range of digital humanities topics.
It provides data management, curation, and discovery services
supporting the long-term access to, and greater exploitation of,
digital resources in the creation of new models, methodologies,
and paradigms for 21st century scholarship.
DHO Staff
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Susan Schreibman, Director
Paolo Battino, Web Developer
Roisin Clarke, Administrative Coordinator
Shawn Day, DH Specialist
Don Gourley, IT Manager
Faith Lawrence, DH Specialist
Dot Porter, Metadata Specialist
Bruno Voicin, Programmer
deliverables
• to serve as a knowledge base in Ireland
– via consultations with project partners;
– developing, delivering, and coordinating
educational activities (broadly conceived)
– setting national standards to ensure the
interoperability, preservation, and long-term
accessibility of digital resources;
DHO Deliverables
• Portal (public face of the DHO)
– Information
– Community spaces
• Digital Research and Projects in Ireland (DRAPIer)
– Project & methods database
– modeled on the UK’s ICT Methods Database
• repository
– Access and preservation
Featured Topics
DHO Portal
Home Page
Upcoming Events
Announcements
Forum Activity
Partner News
DRAPIer
Events
Event Details
Interactive Calendars
Partner Events
DHO
Announcements
Forum
Highlights
Community Forums
Forum Index
Upcoming
Events
Your
Contributions
Digital Research and Projects in Ireland
database (DRAPIer)
Search Projects
Browse Projects
Annotated
Project
List
Browse by
Subject
Browse by
Method
Featured
Project
Browse by
Temporal
Period
DRAPIer Project Details
Project Detail
Relate by
Subject
Relate by
Method
Relate by
Content
Relate by
Time Period
Relate by
Location
Project
Contact
Browse by
Keywords
DHO: Digital Repository
• based on Fedora Architecture
• provides sustainable technologies to create, manage,
publish, share and preserve digital content
• wide and varied communities of practice who have
adopted Fedora include scholars, artists, educators, Web
innovators, publishers, scientists, librarians, archivists,
records managers, and museum curators
Partnering with Irish Centre
for High-End Computing
• developing an IT infrastructure based on grid
architecture
• our repository development is being used as a
model for other disciplinary data curation and
discovery needs such as Bioinformatics
digital archiving a research
rich environment
– The management and curation of data is one of the most stubbornly
difficult infrastructural issues facing the research community
– Expensive
– Unsure of best methods: migration, emulation, bit-level preservation
– Plethora of standards, many non--interoperable, many proprietary
– Need professionals with new skill sets to manage: Data Curators
– We want data that can be re-sused,to be re-used it must be
• Well preserved
• Well documented
• Conforming to standards and best practice
– To badly paraphrase TS Eliot, in Data’s beginning is its End
• Unlike the analogue world, the long-term management of digital data must be
part of its lifecycle from womb to tomb
www.dho.ie
s.schreibman@ria.ie