Office of Digital Humanities: Search for funded projects

Posted on 2008-08-20 by dporter

Playing around on the website of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities this afternoon I came across the Library of Funded Projects, a database of projects funded through the ODH. Visitors can search by Categories (technical focus of the projects, not subject), Grant Programs, or by keyword. Project records include most information one would want including PI, award dates, funding, abstract, link to project website (when one exists), and a space to link project white papers (which are required at the conclusion of all ODH-funded projects).

The LFP is not up-to-date; searches for several of the grant programs come up empty (including those where there are currently funded projects). Even so, this could be an immensely valuable resource to help scholars keep abreast of new work being done in the field, especially the smaller projects supported through the Start-Up program.

(The keyword search, as most keyword searches, needs some working with. “Classics” turns up nothing, while “classical” and “ancient” pull up two different but slightly overlapping lists.)

UPDATE: Are there similar libraries/databases for other national funding agencies (DFG, JISC, etc.)? If so, please cite them in the comments. Thanks!

Posted in Projects | 1 Comment

How to cite Creative Commons works

Posted on 2008-08-16 by Gabriel Bodard

A very useful guide is being compiled by Molly Kleinman in her Multi-Purpose Librarian blog. As someone who licenses a lot of work using CC-BY, and who both re-uses and sometimes re-mixes a lot of CC work (especially photographs) for both academic and creative ends, I recognise that it isn’t always clear exactly what “attribution” means, for example. Kleinman gives examples of ideal and realistic usage (the real name of a copyright-holder and/or title of a work may not always been known, say), and makes suggestions for good practice and compromises. This is a very welcome service, and I hope that more examples and comments follow.

Posted in Open Source, Standards | Leave a comment

Digital Classicist Podcast

Posted on 2008-07-18 by Gabriel Bodard

The Institute for Classical Studies and Digital Classicist Summer seminar series is about half-way through, and the first several audio recordings of the proceedings are now available as part of the Digital Classicist podcast. You can find a list of all seminars in this series, along with links for those that have audio and/or presentations uploaded, at:

Or you can subscribe to the podcast feed itself by pointing your RSS aggregator, iTunes subscription, aut sim., at:

We should welcome ideas for further events to add to this podcast series, and/or partnerships to podcast the results of seminar series of interest to Digital Classicists in the future.

Posted in Digitalclassicist admin, Events, Publications | Leave a comment

Redefining the Book: Carnegie Mellon and Lulu.com

Posted on 2008-07-10 by Gabriel Bodard

Seen in the Creative Commons blog:

ETC Press has just launched as an “academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint.” The project is affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and is in partnership with Lulu.com. When authors submit their work to ETC they retain ownership of it but they also must submit it under either an Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial or an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

ETC press then posts the works to Lulu.com where they are available for purchase in its hardcopy form, or free download. While the project focuses specifically on writing about entertainment technology, it is easy to see ETC’s model scaling to publishers of other topics and genres.

This is interesting; we’ve been thinking and talking about the use of print-on-demand publishers like Lulu.com as a printer/distributor for a small academic press that needs its publishing venture to be relatively risk-free.

Often books that are distributed by sites such as Lulu are assumed to be vanity publications, non-refereed and therefore of a low academic standard, not accepted for review by learnèd journals, regarded with suspicion when seen on resumés by hiring committees, etc. Will this change as respectable publications start to use this service? Is it changing already? Does the assignment of an ISBN make a difference?

Posted in Publications | 2 Comments

Digital Humanities from the horse’s mouth…

Posted on 2008-07-09 by Gabriel Bodard

L’Observatoire Critique have posted a series of interviews recorded at the recent Digital Humanities conference in Oulu, Finland. Two questions were posed of each respondent:

First Question. What are your colleagues (in your department, in your university, or in your disciplinary specialty) thinking of your involvement in Digital Humanities and of your interest for technology and the new digital tools?
Second Question. Do you think that the Digital Humanities represent a new and distinct disciplinary area?

Several of the respondents are classicists or archaeologists with some connection to the Digital Classicist. All of the answers contribute to the ongoing discussion on the topic of our (inter-)disciplinarity and role within the academy.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Internet Archaeology 24: Dealing with Legacy Data

Posted on 2008-07-08 by Gabriel Bodard

Internet Archaeology announces issue 24, a themed issue dedicated to: “Dealing with Legacy Data” edited by Pim Allison.

In the Mediterranean region particularly, but by no means not exclusively, there exist large datasets from previous excavations, published and unpublished, whose digitisation, spatial mapping and re-analysis can greatly facilitate investigations of social behaviour and changing environmental conditions. This volume presents a number of projects that demonstrate the usefulness of digital environments for analysing such non-digital data. These projects use these ‘legacy data’ within true GIS, pseudo-GIS, or other digital environments to answer specific questions concerning social behaviour and particularly the social use of space.

Several papers of interest to Classicists (as well as all to Digital Humanists).

Posted in Publications, Standards | Leave a comment

Self-archiving

Posted on 2008-07-08 by Tom Elliott

Michael E. Smith has just blogged an opinion piece on self-archiving.

Posted in Digital library, Open Source | Leave a comment

Article on PSWPC in LLC June 2008

Posted on 2008-05-26 by dporter

David Pritchard, “Working Papers, Open Access, and Cyber-infrastructure in Classical Studies” Literary and Linguistic Computing 2008 23: 149-162; doi:10.1093/llc/fqn005.
https://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/2/149?etoc

Princeton—Stanford Working Papers in Classics (PSWPC) is a web-based series of work-in-progress scripts by members of two leading departments of classics. It introduces the humanities to a new form of scholarly communication and represents a major advance in the free availability of classical-studies scholarship in cyberspace. This article both reviews the initial performance of this open-access experiment and the benefits and challenges of working papers more generally for classical studies. After 2 years of operation PSWPC has proven to be a clear success. This series has built up a large international readership and a sizeable body of pre-prints and performs important scholarly and community-outreach functions. As this performance is largely due to its congruency with the working arrangements of ancient historians and classicists and the global demand for open-access scholarship, the series confirms the viability of this means of scholarly communication, and the likelihood of its expansion in our discipline. But modifications are required to increase the benefits this series brings and the amount of scholarship it makes freely available online. Finally, departments wishing to replicate its success will have to consider other important developments, such as the increasing availability of post-prints, the linking of research funding to open access, and the emergence of new cyber-infrastructure.

Posted in Digital library, Publications, Rights | Leave a comment

Microsoft Ends Book and Article Scanning

Posted on 2008-05-24 by Tom Elliott

Miguel Helf, writing in the New York Times, reports:

Microsoft said Friday that it was ending a project to scan millions of books and scholarly articles and make them available on the Web … Microsoft’s decision also leaves the Internet Archive, the nonprofit digital archive that was paid by Microsoft to scan books, looking for new sources of support.

The blog post in question (by Satya Nadella, Senior vice president search, portal and advertising) indicates that both Live Search Books and Live Search Academic (the latter being Microsoft’s competitor with Google Scholar) will be shut down next week:

Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs.

For its part, the Internet Archive has posted a short response addressing the situation, and focusing on the status of the out-of-copyright works Microsoft scanned and the scanning equipment they purchased (both have been donated to IA restriction-free), and on the need for eventual public funding of the IA’s work.

This story is being widely covered and discussed elsewhere; a Google News Search rounds up most sources.

Posted in Digital library, Open Source, Publications | Leave a comment

new CC Journal: Glossator

Posted on 2008-05-16 by dporter

By way of the Humanist.

Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary
https://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/glossator/

Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia. The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing. By aligning itself, not with any particular discipline, but with a particular mode of production, Glossator gives expression to the fact that praxis founds theory.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Call for Submissions online for the first volume, to be published in 2009:
https://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/glossator/

Posted in Open Source, Publications | 2 Comments

New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut

Posted on 2008-05-08 by dporter

Article in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Scholars in the sciences have been light-years ahead of their peers in the humanities in exploring the possibilities of open-access publishing. But a new venture with prominent academic backers, the Open Humanities Press, wants to help humanists close the gap.

…

“Scholars in all disciplines tend to confuse online publication with the bypassing of peer review,” [Peter] Suber observed. “That’s simply mistaken.” In the humanities in particular, he said, “we’re fighting the prestige of print.”

CHE, Today’s News, May 7, 2008:

https://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=WqvC6RkTkxgjB9pb92RywcgrsJVtXz9K

Posted in Open Source, Publications | Leave a comment

Digitizing Early Material Culture, new deadline

Posted on 2008-05-07 by Gabriel Bodard

The Digitizing Early Material Culture conference, for which we posted a CFP back in February, has a new deadline and slightly changed line-up of speakers (Meg Twycross replaces Melissa terras). See the new programme here (PDF).

Posted in Call for papers | Leave a comment

(BYZANTINA) SYMMEIKTA goes open-access

Posted on 2008-05-06 by Tom Elliott

By way of Open Access News, we learn of this announcement, recently posted at openaccess.gr:

Taking into consideration the latest developments in scientific publishing, the Institute for Byzantine Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation has reevaluated the aims of ΣΥΜΜΕΙΚΤΑ, a journal it has published since 1966. Under the new name BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA, it has become a peer-reviewed open access journal with well-defined processes and scope and it is freely accessible at: https://www.byzsym.org/. Its printed version will be published at the end of each year.

Posted in Open Source, Publications | 1 Comment

Institute of Classical Studies Work-in-Progress seminars (London)

Posted on 2008-05-01 by Gabriel Bodard

Digital Classicist Work-in-Progress seminars
Institute of Classical Studies

Fridays at 16:30 in NG16, Senate House, Malet St, London, WC1E 7HU
(June 20th, July 4th-18th seminars in room B3, Stewart House)
(June 27th seminar room 218, Chadwick Bdg, UCL, Gower Street)

**ALL WELCOME**

6 June (NG16): Elaine Matthews and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford), The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and classical web services

13 June (NG16) Brent Seales (University of Kentucky), EDUCE: Non-invasive scanning for classical materials

20 June (STB3) Dot Porter (University of Kentucky), The Son of Suda On Line: a next generation collaborative editing tool

27 June (UCL Chadwick 218) Bruce Fraser (Cambridge), The value and price of information: reflections on e-publishing in the humanities

4 July (STB3) Andrew Bevan (UCL), Computational Approaches to Human and Animal Movement in the Archaeological Record

11 July (STB3) Frances Foster (KCL), A digital presentation of the text of Servius

18 July (STB9) Ryan Bauman (University of Kentucky), Towards the Digital Squeeze: 3-D imaging of inscriptions and curse tablets

25 July (NG16) Charlotte Tupman (KCL), Markup of the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Libya

1 Aug (NG16) Juan Garcés (British Library), Digitizing the oldest complete Greek Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus project

8 Aug (NG16) Charlotte Roueché (KCL), From Stone to Byte

15 Aug (NG16) Ioannis Doukas (KCL), Towards a digital publication for the Homeric Catalogue of Ships

22 Aug (NG16) Peter Heslin (Durham), Diogenes: Past development and future plans

**ALL WELCOME**

We are inviting both students and established researchers involved in the application of the digital humanities to the study of the ancient world to come and introduce their work. The focus of this seminar series is the interdisciplinary and collaborative work that results at the interface of expertise in Classics or Archaeology and Computer Science.

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

Audio recordings and slideshows will be uploaded after each event.

(Sponsored by the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London.)

For more information please contact gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk or simon.mahony@kcl.ac.uk, or visit the seminar website at https://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2008.html

Posted in Digitalclassicist admin, Events | Leave a comment

EpiDoc Summer School, July 14th-18th, 2008

Posted on 2008-04-23 by Gabriel Bodard
The Centre for Computing in the Humanties, Kings College London, is again offering an EpiDoc Summer School, on July 14th-18th, 2008. The training is designed for epigraphers or papyrologists (or related text editors such as numismatists, sigillographers, etc.) who would like to learn the skills and tools required to mark up ancient documents for publication (online or on paper), and interchange with international academic standards.You can learn more about EpiDoc from the EpiDoc home page and the Introduction for Epigraphers; you wil find a recent and user-friendly article on the subject in the Digital Medievalist. (If you want to go further, you can learn about XML and about the principles of the TEI: Text Encoding Initiative.) The Summer School will not expect any technical expertise, and training in basic XML will be provided.

Attendees (who should be familiar with Greek/Latin and the Leiden Conventions) will need to bring a laptop on which has been installed the Oxygen XML editor (available at a reduced academic price, or for a free 30-day demo).

The EpiDoc Summer School is free to participants; we can try to help you find cheap (student) accommodation in London. If any students participating would like to stay on afterwards and acquire some hands-on experience marking up some texts for the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project, they would be most welcome!

All interested please contact both charlotte.roueche@kcl.ac.uk and gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk as soon as possible. Please pass on this message to anyone who you think might benefit.

Posted in EpiDoc, Events, Standards, Teaching | Leave a comment