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e-Science for the arts and humanities

Sheila Anderson

Arts and Humanities Data Service

King’s College London

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e-Science and the arts and humanities

• Funded by the AHRC through its ICT Programme• Nine months – December 05 – August 06• Sheila Anderson – PI• Luke Blaxill – RA• Katrin Weidemann – project administrator• Input from Lorna Hughes, Tobias Blanke, Stuart

Dunn (arts and humanities e-science support centre)

• Research practitioners

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Scoping Survey: Aims and Objectives

• Raise awareness and understanding of e-science, and how e-science might relate to and support the different disciplines within the arts and humanities

• Enable scholars engaging with ICT in their research practice to find about and take advantage of the outputs and tools arising from the e-science and e-social science programmes

• Assist the AHRC in the development of an arts and humanities e-Science research agenda

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The Scoping Survey• Scoping survey methodology

– Identify, collate and analyse information on e-science technologies, projects and outputs

– Consult the community to discuss the role an e-science agenda in supporting their research practice – series of expert seminars

– Create an on-line information base for consultation by arts and humanities scholars with information on projects (both science and arts and humanities) and tools

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Expert Seminars key to this process

• Exchange ideas and knowledge• Identify use of ICT in research practice and ‘grand

challenges and opportunities’• Identify e-Science potential• Identify priority areas for research and practice• Recommendations for future action

– Priorities for research

– Priorities for tools development

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Seminars led by……

• Library and Information Studies – Melissa Terras• Archaeology – William Kilbride• Literary and Textual Studies – Peter Robinson• History – Mark Greengrass• Visual Arts – Sue Gollifer• Performing Arts – Angela Picini • Linguistics and Languages – Paul Rayson

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Defining e-science for the arts and humanities?

• e-Science is about an enabling infrastructure – tools , technologies, computing power etc. – supporting research

• For the arts and humanities: the development and deployment of a networked infrastructure and culture through which resources – be they processing power, data, expertise, or person power – can be shared in a secure environment, and in which new forms of collaboration can emerge, and new and advanced methodologies explored

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Research Challenges

• Massive amounts of source material to be digitised and captured in digital form: creating an A&H data deluge….

• Recursive nature of scholarship in a digital age: unrealised potential

• Integrating conceptual models and data• Static vs Dynamic representations of knowledge• Cross domain collaborative methods

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Fundamental Principles• Truly be an arts and humanities agenda• Must come from, and be embedded in, research practice

and research needs• BUT be innovative and push barriers: innovation –

incubation – stabilisation cycle• Be sensitive to those less engaged• Inclusive – capable of embedding in everyday research

practice• Be about empowerment and democratisation• Enable new forms of collaborations across domains and

sectors• Re-imagine the concept of ‘e-Science’ and challenge

existing e-Science technologies • International, scalable, sustainable

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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science Look Like?

• It would understand and involve users– Methodologies of use must better inform creation,

curation, management, access, tools development

– User friendly, easy to install and use tools

– Cross domain and cross-sector

– Empowering and open

– Respecting IPR and copyright

– Deep log analysis, anthropological studies etc. to understand user behaviours

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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science Look Like?

• It would address content needs:– Massive digitisation programme– Existing, highly dispersed content joined up through the

grid and appropriate tools – ontology connectors– Deep mining using different methods for connecting; data

and text mining– Community engagement, folksonomies – Non-textual searching for sound, video– Large scale images, moving images, sound, etc. managed

and accessed through the grid– Capture the creative process, making and research– Annotation, collation, visualisation, simulation– Content from across disciplines

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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science Look Like?

• It would enable collaboration:– Strong possibilities – from text to performance

– Access grid, VRO, Virtual communities

– New forms of research characterised by democratisation and openness – challenging!

– New forms of collaboration – across disciplines and domains and including shared curation

– Shared creation, curation, analysis of shared content

– Dynamic, interactive BUT secure and trusted

– Push the access grid further for collaborative research and teaching

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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science Look Like?

• Characterised by innovation and experimentation• It would push methodological barriers:

– Visualisation– Simulation– Geo spatial and geo-temporal– Creative process– Annotation and text analysis, image analysis

• It would need support:– Institutional– Cluster computing rather than grid?– Training– Tools

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More Information

• Check out:

• www.ahessc.ac.uk

• www.ahds.ac.uk/projects/ - look under Research for e-Science Scoping Survey