Promise and challenge: augmenting places with sources

Posted on 2007-06-19 by Tom Elliott

Bill Turkel has some very interesting things to say about “the widespread digitization of historical sources” and — near and dear to my heart — “augmenting places with sources”:

The last paragraph in “Seeing There” resonated especially, given what we’re trying to do with Pleiades:

The widespread digitization of historical sources raises the question of what kinds of top-level views we can have into the past. Obviously it’s possible to visit an archive in real life or in Second Life, and easy to imagine locating the archive in Google Earth. It is also possible to geocode sources, link each to the places to which it relates or refers. Some of this will be done manually and accurately, some automatically with a lower degree of accuracy. Augmenting places with sources, however, raises new questions about selectivity. Without some way of filtering or making sense of these place-based records, what we’ll end up with at best will be an overview, and not topsight.

There’s an ecosystem of digital scholarship building. And I’m not talking about SOAP, RDF or OGC. I’m talking about generic function and effect …  Is your digital publication epigraphic? Papyrological? Literary? Archaeological? Numismatic? Encyclopedic? A lumbering giant library book hoover? Your/my data is our/your metadata (if we/you eschew walls and fences). When we all cite each other and remix each other’s data in ways that software agents can exploit, what new visualizations/abstractions/interpretations will arise to empower the next generation of scholarly inquiry? Stay tuned (and plug in)!

Posted in General, Projects, Publications, Standards | 1 Comment

Open letter to AHRC

Posted on 2007-06-17 by Gabriel Bodard

A letter has been sent to the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, asking for clarification on the fate of digital preservation and dissemination of good practice given the AHRC’s recent announcement that funding for the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) would be terminated early next year. This information-seeking letter (attached here) has been signed on behalf of the Digital Classicist, Antiquist, Digital Medievalist, and TEI communities.

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Rome Reborn 1.0

Posted on 2007-06-11 by scaife

from the Chronicle for Higher Education:

Ancient Rome Restored — Virtually

A group of Virginians and Californians has rebuilt ancient Rome. And today they received the grateful thanks of the modern city’s mayor. The rebuilding marked by this ceremony has been digital. Researchers from the University of Virginia and the University of California at Los Angeles led an international team of archaeologists, architects, and computer scientists in assembling a huge recreation of the city. Rome Reborn 1.0 shows Rome circa 320 AD as it appeared within the 13 miles of Aurelian Walls that encircled it. In the 3D model, users can navigate through and around all the buildings and streets, including the Roman Senate House, the Colosseum, and th e Temple of Venus and Rome. And of course, since the city is virtual, it can be updated as new scientific discoveries are made about the real remains. –Josh Fischman

The RR website repays browsing. The still image of the interior of the Curia Julia is unusually attractive to my eyes, for a digital reconstruction. Of greater interest is what’s said under “Future of the Project,” namely that “The leaders of the project agree that they should shift their emphasis from creating digital models of specific monuments to vetting and publishing the models of other scholars.” I hope that process gets underway.

Update: Troels Myrup Kristensen has his doubts:

Notice the absence of signs of life – no people, no animals, no junk, no noises, no smells, no decay. The scene is utterly stripped of all the clutter that is what really fascinates us about the past. The burning question is whether this kind of (expensive and technology-heavy) representation really gives us fundamentally new insights into the past? From what I’ve seen so far of this project, I’m not convinced that this is the case.

Posted in Projects, Publications | 2 Comments

Studentship and job in E-Science, Imaging Technology and Ancient Documents

Posted on 2007-06-09 by Gabriel Bodard

Posted for Melissa Terras:

Applications are invited for two posts for which funding has been secured through the AHRC-EPSRC-JISC Arts and Humanities E-Science initiative to support research on the application of Information Technology to ancient documents. Both posts are attached to a project which will develop a networked software system that can support the imaging, documentation, and interpretation of damaged texts from the ancient world, principally Greek and Latin papyri, inscriptions and writing tablets. The work will be conducted under the supervision of Professors Alan Bowman FBA, Sir Michael Brady FRS FREng (University of Oxford) and Dr. Melissa Terras (University College London).

1. A Doctoral Studentship for a period of 4 years from 1 October, 2007. The studentship will be held in the Faculty of Classics (Sub-Faculty of Ancient History) and supported at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents and the Oxford E-Research Centre. The Studentship award covers both the cost of tuition fees at Home/EU rates and a maintenance grant. To be eligible for a full award, the student must have been ordinarily resident in the UK for a period of 3 years before the start of the award. (Further Particulars2)
2. A postdoctoral Research Assistantship for a period of 3 years from 1 October, 2007. The post will be held in the Faculty of Classics (Sub-Faculty of Ancient History) and supported at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents and the Oxford E-Research Centre. The salary will be in the range of £26,666 – £31,840 p.a. Applicants must have expertise in programming and Informatics and an interest in the application of imaging technology and signal-processing to manuscripts and documents. (Further Particulars)
The deadline for receipt of applications is 4 July 2007. Further details about both posts, the project, the qualifications required and the method of application are available from Ms Ghislaine Rowe, Graduate Studies Administrator, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford OX1 3LU (01865 288397, ghislaine.rowe@classics.ox.ac.uk). It is hoped that interviews will be held and the appointments made in the first half of July.

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publishing software

Posted on 2007-06-05 by hughcayless

During the session on collaboration between Digital Humanities centers at Digital Humanities 2007, Julia Flanders made some remarks that got me thinking about software tools and publication. Her remarks revolved in part around the possibility of such a collaboration providing peer review services, and also around the way in which our community tends to be good at building prototypes, but less good at producing finished software. One of the motivating forces behind this habit is the academic culture of publication. It’s a regrettable fact that tool-building in the humanities does not get the same credit as publishing. In the EpiDoc project, we’ve made an effort to be sure to cite software tools we’ve built as publications, which is what they are. The new Digital Humanities Quarterly is in a position to publish peer-reviewed articles that do not fit the traditional definition of article (e.g. multimedia presentations). What obstacle would there be to publishing peer-reviewed, Open Source software source code in a journal like DHQ? Obviously software doesn’t follow the same rhythms as print publishing, but why couldn’t a 1.0 release be termed a publication? Is a good software tool not the moral equivalent of an article or even a book? Or am I just a heretic?

Posted in General | 4 Comments

Robot Scans Ancient Manuscript in 3-D

Posted on 2007-06-05 by scaife

Amy Hackney Blackwell has a new piece in Wired on the just-concluded month-long effort to digitize Venetus A at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice.  (There’s a nice gallery of images too.)
I was fortunate to be part of this CHS-sponsored team for one week. Ultimately, we managed to acquire 3-D data as well as very high resolution images for three different annotated manuscripts of the Iliad. All of this material will be made available on-line on an Open Access basis.

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NEH announces deadlines for Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants

Posted on 2007-06-04 by hughcayless

From Brett Bobley at NEH (via neh-dhi-update@list.neh.gov):

The next two deadlines will be:

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

So mark your calendars!

I should note that we are currently in the process of updating the guidelines for this program based on feedback we’ve received from the field. The guidelines on our website right now are from last year — I hope to have the new, revised version up by mid-July. As you know, this program is designed to encourage innovations in the digital humanities. In fact “innovation” is really a key theme we’ll be stressing in our new guidelines. We want bold thinking, people! We will also be tweaking the award amounts to try to accommodate both *smaller* projects (think brainstorming/R & D sessions, planning workshops, alpha-level prototypes) as well as *larger* projects (think more developed projects that need seed money to get rolling).

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OA in Classics…

Posted on 2007-06-04 by scaife

Josiah Ober, Walter Scheidel, Brent D. Shaw and Donna Sanclemente, “Toward Open Access in Ancient Studies: The Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics” in Hesperia, Volume: 76, Issue: 1. Cover date: Jan-Mar 2007

Posted in Open Source, Projects, Publications | Leave a comment

Two Digital Humanities Job Openings at Brown University

Posted on 2007-06-03 by Gabriel Bodard

1. Scholarly Technology Group—Senior Research Programmer

The Senior Research Programmer Analyst works closely with faculty and STG staff to carry out digital humanities projects by performing project analysis, providing technical leadership, programming and software development in support of STG’s projects. This person will recruit, plan and manage projects, write grant proposals, stay abreast of new methodologies and practices relevant to Digital Humanities and disseminate STG’s work at conferences.

(for more information see Brown Careers (under B00938) and https://www.stg.brown.edu)

2. Women Writers Project—Project Manager / Textbase Editor

The Women Writers Project develops and publishes a digital research collection of early modern women’s writing, and conducts ongoing research on digital editing and text encoding. The WWP Project Manager/Textbase Editor is responsible for the general management of the WWP, overseeing the development and editing of the textbase content, managing licensing for Women Writers Online, and managing the WWP’s outreach and publicity activities. The Project Manager also works on WWP research projects and occasionally with the Scholarly Technology Group as opportunity permits. The position requires expertise in humanities computing, literary research, and computer project management, and a strong background in TEI/XML text encoding.

(for more information see Brown Careers and https://www.wwp.brown.edu)

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Collaborative article against perpetual copyright

Posted on 2007-06-03 by Gabriel Bodard

Back in the middle of May, Lawrence Lessig posted a note on his blog pointing to a particularly idiotic op-ed in the NY Times that argued for perpetual copyright. He invited readers to write a response, on his Wiki. 25000 visits and nearly 300 edits later, the resulting article ‘Against Perpetual Copyright‘ is an impressive piece of work, summarising the arguments that include the essential difference between physical property and intellectual property, the stifling effect of strict, long-term copyright on creativity, among others. The piece is a testament to the power of collaborative authorship as well as a strong refutation of the op-ed in question.

See now Lessig’s observations on this article in a recent post, pointing out how he wouuld have focussed the arguments differently (principally by comparing the ability of different copyright models to promote and reward creativity).

Posted in Open Source, Rights | Leave a comment

Withdrawal of AHDS Funding

Posted on 2007-06-02 by Gabriel Bodard

Following the recent public announcement that the UK’s AHRC intends to withdraw funding from the Arts and Humanities Data Service, the following petition has been set up at the British Government’s website.

On 11 May 2007, Professor Phillip Esler, Chief Executive of the AHRC, wrote to University Vice-Chancellors informing them of the Council’s decision to withdraw funding from the AHDS after eleven years. The AHDS has pioneered and encouraged awareness and use among Britain’s university researchers in the arts and humanities of best practice in preserving digital data created by research projects funded by public money. It has also ensured that this data remains publically available for future researchers. It is by no means evident that a suitable replacement infrastructure will be established and the AHRC appears to have taken no adequate steps to ensure the continued preservation of this data. The AHDS has also played a prominent role in raising awareness of new technologies and innovative practices among UK researchers. We believe that the withdrawal of funding for this body is a retrograde step which will undermine attempts to create in Britain a knowledge economy based on latest technologies. We ask the Prime Minister to urge the AHRC to reconsider this decision.

You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition.

Posted in General, Projects, Standards | 2 Comments

Job: Research Associate at Telota Initiative, BBAW

Posted on 2007-05-24 by Gabriel Bodard

Alexander Czmiel posts to following job to the Digital Classicist list:

I would like to point you to an open position at the Telota-Initiative (“The electronic life of the Academy”) of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Though the job advertisement is in German and knowledge of German is advantageous the project language is not necessarily German.

https://www.bbaw.de/schein/stelle/telota.html

Basic data:
– position: research associate
– duration: as soon as possible until 31 December 2008
– qualifications:
– knowledge in producing digital scholarly editions
– knowledge of XML and related technologies
– knowledge of a programming language

You can find an overview of our last projects at https://pom.bbaw.de/index-en.html

Applications should be addressed to Regina Reimann (reimann@bbaw.de).

Please don’t hesitate to contact me (czmiel@bbaw.de) for further informations.

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Computing Panel at European Association of Archaeologists

Posted on 2007-05-24 by Gabriel Bodard

A Call for Proposals from Geoff Carver (seen on Antiquist). Send abstracts or suggestions to gjcarver@t-online.de.

I still need a few abstracts for a session I’ve organised for the European Association of Archaeologists conference, to be held in Zadar, Croatia in September; I’ve included my session abstract, and if you have any more questions, let me know.

Is Invention the Mother of Necessity?

Sometimes it seems like all the recent developments in computer applications for archaeology are technology-driven: increasingly realistic graphics, higher resolution cameras and scanners, new uses for existing software, etc.

At its worst, this approach can result in technology for its own sake: cool innovations that might impress the “geeks” and “nerds,” but don’t seem to take the real needs of archaeologists into consideration.

This session aims to turn things around by discussing not just what we can do with computers in archaeology, but what we would like to do, if the technology should someday become available. We want to discuss why we use computers – our aims and goals – and why some of us feel threatened not just by the machines we use, but also by the jargon that surrounds them.

Ultimately, the goal is to begin addressing the apparent paradox that – although in some ways archaeologists escape the modern world by retreating into the past – we still study the past largely in terms of technological changes (stone, bronze, iron ages, etc.), without necessarily understanding the relationships between technology and modern archaeology.

This is a valuable discussion which touches on the perennial question Digital Humanists face about whether the “digital” or the “humanities” drives our research. On the one hand we must never lose touch with the fact that we are scholars in a humanistic discipline (be that Classics, Archaeology, History, or whatever), and that the history and expectation of scholarship in that discipline must be at the forefront of our endeavors. On the other hand, it is generally not the classicists or archaeologists who invent new technologies, but either disciplines with better funding than us, or science, medicine, and industry. It would be irresponsible of us not to borrow and build upon these technologies as they become available, so it is inevitable that digital technology (and the expertise of information scientists) will to some extent drive developments in humanistic scholarship also. Where we allow the balance to be drawn will decide the future of our disciplines.

Posted in Call for papers, Conferences | Leave a comment

BASP licensing

Posted on 2007-05-17 by Tom Elliott

In a post yesterday I complained that I couldn’t find a license statement associated with the newly announced online version of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. Gregg Schwendner had a look and found it.

The table-of-contents view for each issue (e.g., no. 25 2006) includes the following statement:

Permission must be received for any subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please contact spo-help@umich.edu for more information.

I still think that this information should also appear at the level of the individual article (e.g., John Oates, “Sale of a Donkey”), and that the sitewide text access policy page should include some general guidance.

Posted in General | Tagged | 1 Comment

BASP goes open access … or something

Posted on 2007-05-16 by Tom Elliott

I was filled with glee when I saw Chuck Jones’ post on Blegen Library News to the effect that the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists is now “online open access.”

I eagerly clicked through to the BASP holdings (actually served up by the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service) . I found that, yes, all but the two most recent issues are available as page images (not online fulltext, but raw text can be downloaded from the “bookbag”).

I salute the appearance of this resource; however, I’m troubled by the absence of a license statement. What am I allowed to do with these documents? Can I copy them to give to students? Can I put them into my institution’s digital repository?

The site-wide “text access policy” is somewhat less than enlightening:

Access policy:

Coming soon

The help page for the “holdings display” presents a non-BASP example in which there is a full statement of “availability.” No such statements accompany the BASP articles I put in my bookbag.

Dear editors of BASP: thanks for making this resource available online. Please clarify the rights and licensing for us, and make this information part of the metadata records associated with the online version.

Dear UMDL and UMich Scholarly Publishing Office Management: thanks for this valuable suite of services and tools. Is licensing and availability left solely to the discretion of contributors with no business rules to prevent surfacing of content that lacks an availability statement? If so, it would be very helpful to see an explanation of this policy replacing the “coming soon” notice pointed out above, or — better yet — incorporated in some basic but ubiquitous form throughout the interface.

It is actually hard to find online a good primer on why rights and licenses are important things to address when placing content online. For the moment, I’ll just cite the following …

The NISO Framework Advisory Group’s A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (2nd edition, 2004) is endorsed by the Digital Library Federation (of which the University of Michigan is a member). The framework clearly states (emphasis mine):

Collections principle 5: A good collection respects intellectual property rights. Collection managers should maintain a consistent record of rightsholders and permissions granted for all applicable materials.

Intellectual property law must be considered from several points of view: what rights the owners of the original source materials retain in their materials, what rights or permissions the collection developers have to digitize content and make it available, what rights collection owners have in their digital content, and what rights or permissions the users of the digital collection have to make subsequent use of the materials.

Posted in General | 6 Comments