ICT in Arts and Humanities Research

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ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
e-Science in the Arts and Humanities 7 July
2006
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• ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme
• includes the creative and performing arts
• practice-led research
• 3.8m for 5 years from October 2003
• Part of a uniquely centralized system of public
  support for ICT in the arts and humanities
• but precarious...

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• Existing provision
• AHRC Research Panels
• Up to 2003, about 50 of 100m of research
  projects have some kind of digital output and/or
  input
• What kind of projects?
• Support services funded by AHRC and JISC
• Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)
• creation, curation, preservation, and on-line
  dissemination of digitised research materials
• Resource Discovery Network (RDN now Intute)
• gateways for the discovery of online resources

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• ICT Programmes aims
• to build capacity nation-wide in the use of ICT
  for arts and humanities research
• complementing existing provision
• to develop, promote and monitor the AHRC's ICT
  strategy
• later...
• strong infrastructure in place on which to build
  up e-Science activities
• despite arriving at the table very late

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• Main activities
• ICT Methods Network 1m for 3 years from April
  2005
• use of advanced ICT methods
• Projects and methods database (with support from
  JISC)
• methods taxonomy
• will be part of a unified on-line resource
  ICTGuides (AHDS)
• including training materials at all levels
• register of experts
• list of centres
• ICT Strategy Projects (1m)
• knowledge-gathering needs, uses, scoping surveys
• resource-development
• Problems of funding tools development

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• AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
  (EPSRC?)
• e-Science vs e-Research
• Oxymoron?
• Agenda rather than a methodology, still less a
  subject
• As developed in the natural sciences and
  technology
• Infrastructure of advanced technologies for
  collaboration and resource-sharing across the
  Internet

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• AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Grid technologies
• Computational grid
• Data grid
• Access grid
• Associated technologies
• Visualization
• Data mining
• Security

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• e-Science
• Why is it important for the humanities?
• Money
• tools and generic resource development
• Injection of new technologies
• collaborations between computer scientists and
  arts and humanities researchers
• Dispersed and heterogenous nature of typical
  humanities data resource
• the typical AHRC-funded resource
• Not an instant solution
• Combination of top-down and bottom-up
  developments to integrate resources
• But not just the data grid

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• AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Now
• Scoping survey (later)
• JISC AH e-Science Support Centre (Kings
  2006-8)
• based in AHDS and Methods Network
• AHRC AH e-Science Research Workshops
• EPSRC e-Science demonstrators
• This Summer/Autumn
• six 4-year AHRC e-Science postgraduate
  studentships.
• AHRC-JISC e-Science research projects (1.2m
  EPSRC?)
• varying emphasis on tools development and
  research findings

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• AHRC-JISC Arts and Humanties e-Science Initiative
• Scoping survey Scoping e-science and e-social
  science developments and their value to the arts
  and humanities (Sheila Anderson, Kings College
  London)
• Identify, collate and analyse information on
  e-science technologies, projects and outputs
• Match these against methods and challenges in the
  arts and humanities series of expert seminars
• Create an on-line information base for
  consultation by arts and humanities scholars
• Draft report end July
• Final report mid-August

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• Expert Seminars on.
• Library and Information Studies
• Archaeology
• Literary and Textual Studies
• History
• Visual Arts
• Performing Arts
• Linguistics and Languages

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ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
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• cross dataset searching (across complex and fuzzy
  data) and developing a configurable tool to
  undertake record matching
• not merely limited to historians and census
  material
• physicists and astrophysicists working on the
  Astrogrid
• to track and trace different entities in space
  across massive datasets

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ICT in Arts and Humanities Research
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• e-Science and other current issues
• Sustainability, standards and quality assurance
  of e-resources
• quality
• reusability
• harmonization and interoperability
• The added value of ICT for the quality of
  research
• achievements to date
• possible quantum leap resulting from grid
  technologies
• Need for interagency collaboration