Advancing the Development of Digital Scholarship: SAT, CEH,

and the DDB

Charles Muller, Masahiro Shimoda, Kiyonori Nagasaki Center for Evolving Humanities, Graduate school of

Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo (Powerpoint file for this presentation available at:

http://www.acmuller.net/articles/2011-03-31-SAT_DDB-AAS.ppt)

Shortcomings in the Ongoing Development of Digital Scholarship: In General

Joseph Raben: “Humanities Computing in an Age of Social Change,” Keynote Lecture, Digital Humanities, King’s College, 8th July 2010. http://www.arts-humanities.net/video/roberto_busa_award_lecture_joseph_raben_%E2%80%93_humanities_computing_age_social_change_dh2010

Shortcomings in the Ongoing Development of Digital Scholarship: In General

Joe Raben: “It seems ironic that the community of scholars dedicated to promoting wired access to the riches of the humanist tradition have so far failed to create a Wiki of their own activities. To rely on the imprecise algorythmic methods of Google, which is basically an advertising medium designed by computer engineers without any evident input from the scholarly community, scarcely seems like appropriate behavior for a group that prides itself on the minute accuracy of its own documents. . .“

Shortcomings in the Ongoing Development of Digital Scholarship: In General

“. . .And while Wikipedia probably contains a good deal of information regarding Digital Humanities, that information is so scattered among all the other types of information it contains, and is so subjected to random editing that it cannot be relied on for comprehensiveness, interconnectivity, or timeliness. A Wiki for humanities computing therefore, which could be called Digital Scholar, would provide many benefits to both the inner community itself, and the general world of scholarship. “

Shortcomings in the Ongoing Development of Digital Scholarship: In General

Scholarly Wikis, yes, but more than this is needed to improve the situation.

Obstructions to the Ongoing Development of Digital Scholarship: In Japan

Digital Humanities in Japan has its own shortcomings:

A overall sluggishness in the acceptance of the digital medium in the humanities disciplines

Lack of institutional recognition.

Buddhist Studies as Leader: A Star in the Field

Ironically, in North America, Europe, and Asia, since the early days of the WWWeb, the field of Buddhist Studies, normally associated with the oldest trappings of inertia in humanistic studies, has emerged as one of the leading forces in the digitization of scholarship.

Spearheaded by canonical digitization projects.

Efforts at the University of Tokyo

SAT Taishō Database Project: Centered on the Taishō Canon, INBUDS database, and DDB, and now linking with numerous other projects worldwide through the RBIB.

Center for Evolving Humanities (CEH). Academic unit at the University of Tokyo promoting digital scholarship through the development of a DH curriculum, seminars, symposia, workshops, and conferences, and support of young DH researchers.

Aims of the SAT Project

To cooperate with various related projects in the field of Buddhist Studies

To resolve a range of problems from an approach that understands the methods of traditional humanities as well as humanities informatics.

Construction of a “Research Base for Indology and Buddhist Studies”

SAT DB

DDBINBUDS

Character OntologyMultilingual

Imager

Web API

bibliographic database

Digital Dictionary

of Buddhism

10

Type in 阿羅漢 (arhat) and search

Select a page from the search

results

Located term 阿羅漢

Select a portion of text

Basic meanings from DDB, along with a link into the dictionary are generated

DDB entry on Arhat

Search for 阿羅漢 in the article database

CiNii database information indicates the availability of

a PDF

PDF of article from CiNii

International connection of basic research via hyperlink

International Buddhist Studies alliance

Pali Canon (Thailand)

Collected Works of Korean Buddhism (Korea)

English Daizōkyō (Numata)

INBUDS (Japan)

Various other international projects

SARDS (Germany)

DDB(Japan)

SAT(Japan)

20

ITLR (Germany)

SARDS (Austria)

The International Research Alliance

International connection of basic

research via hyperlink

Past Indological and Buddhist

Research

Research on Media and Buddhism

International Buddhist Studies alliance

Buddhist Research

Base

Digital Humanitie

s

Revised texts and Tripiṭaka as result

Pali Canon (Thailand)

Collected Works of Korean Buddhism (Korea)

English translation of

Daizōkyō

INBUDS (Japan)Single-dimensional

data in the form of transcripts 、 imag

es, music, filmVarious other international projects

collaborative managemen

t

rese

arch

on

evalu

atio

n

Sto

ring

Analy

zing

Legacy and Digitization

Next-Generation Buddhist Studies

Next-Generation Humanities

SARDS (Germany

)DDB

(International)

RBIBRBIB

SAT(Japan)

ITLR(Germany)

The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism [DDB]: A Model for the Sustainable

Development of a Collaborative Scholarly

Field-wide Web Reference Service

恕

DDB Process of Development

1986 – work initiated with book publication in mind.

1995 – placed on web with approx. 2800 entries

1995-2000 HTML hardlinked version (base files maintained in SGML then XML)

2001 – "Beddow Version." Web delivery with Perl/XSL (approx. 5,000 entries)

DDB Process of Development

2002 – Completion of input of Soothill data (funded by JSPS), along with user contributions, raising the DDB content to 15,000 entries.

2002-2011 – rapid addition of entries based on translation work and user input (esp. Karashima, Hodge, Sinclair, Foulk, Radich, Swanson, Chun, Lusthaus, plus scores of others). Entry total has reached 55,000 and continues to grow rapidly

DDB Interoperation with SAT Database

2008 – For the first time, the DDB was applied directly to an online textual database, based on the work of Kiyonori Nagasaki of IIDH.

2008 – Reverse linking: based on documentation provided on the SAT web site, we were also able to link entries directly back into their locations in the Taishō via SAT.

"DDB 2.0" Fall 2010 – Michael Beddow completes

radical rewrite of DDB and CJKV-E programming structure.

Access and Collaboration Guest user (5 searches per day). Policy

developed gradually based on experience. Full access (contribution—basic: 1 A4 page

for two years of full access; or fee). Success of the model is based greatly on

devoting energy to making known the contributions of collaborators: node level, web site (Contributors), monthly newsletter, monthly data postings.

Access and Collaboration

Institutional Subscriptions. More than 38 university libraries are now subscribed to the DDB/CJKV-E dictionaries, perhaps the greatest single validation of the acceptance of the project as scholarly resource.

"CJKV-E 2.0" We have received a three-year research grant

for the purpose of expanding the coverage of the CJKV-E dictionary. We are making excellent progress, such that by the end of 2013, users will have access to a significantly larger lexicon for the study of classical Chinese texts.

Thank you!

恕

(Powerpoint file for this presentation available at: http://www.acmuller.net/articles/2011-03-31-SAT_DDB-AAS.ppt)