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E-Humanities in Germany:
Some thoughts. (Not just on Germany.)
Dr. Max Vögler
Libraries and Information SciencesGerman Research Foundation (DFG)
Topics
• Vision of e-Humanities
• A view from the Disciplines
• A view from Technology
• What can we learn from others?
• Challenges
Vision of the e-Humanities
http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
Berlin Declaration (Oct. 2003):
…contributions include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.
Open access must satisfy…
…a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship.
A View from the Disciplines: Text-based “Wissenschaften”
• Text-based scholarship (Linguistics, Language and Literature Studies, etc.) are developing the tools and standards to drive text-based data-scholarship
– standards: TEI
– projects / tools: TAPOR, TextGRID, etc.
– digitization: “supply”-side driven scholarship? (the Million books question…)
• And yet… Access to data still limited. Bad interfaces, restrictive use policies, haphazard standards implementation
A View from the Disciplines: Archeology
• Lots of Data! Much of it well documented (though most not in any standard form), much investment of public funds and an obvious “public mission” (cultural heritage)
• Innovative projects (Altägyptisches Wörterbuch – pure xml)
• Network of international data centers (ADS, DANS)
• long tradition of collaborative (and large-scale) research
• Challenging: Very heterogeneous Data (GIS, 3-D, Pics, Text, Climate, etc.)
http://www.bbaw.de/bbaw/Forschung/Forschungsprojekte/altaegyptwb/de/Beleg
A View from the Disciplines: Philosophy / Literary Studies
• Thinking in groups? Collaborative Scholarship
• Scholarly Editions as “data journals”?
• Long-term projects (Langzeitvorhaben) as natural candidates for an e-approach
http://www.hypernietzsche.org
A View from the Disciplines: History
• Well-connected!
Communication well-developed (H-Soz-u-Kult, Sehepunkte, Historicum, H-Net, etc.)
• But what about the e-monograph? (Columbia U. Press)
A View from the Disciplines: History
• Well-”sourced”!
Digitization of sources, reference works and archival finding aides
(ANNO/ALEX, Clio-online, ZVDD)
• But can/should/will historians collaborate on e-research?
A View from the Disciplines: Art / Music
• So much potential!
• Multimedial from the ground up!
BUT:
• Problems of Copyright, esp. for online publishing
• Access to Data often difficult (e.g., Rund-funkanstalten)
A View from Technology:
what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• Example: Center for History and New Media at George Mason University (CHNM)
http://chnm.gmu.edu/
A View from Technology: what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• Data is sexy! Even (or especially) in the humanities.
http://www.gapminder.org/video/talks/ted-2007---the-seemingly-impossible-is-possible.html
A View from Technology: what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• Visualization of Data
(especially in the social sciences)
A View from Technology: what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• Web 2.0 / participatory scholarship
• Interesting as a form of research collaboration
BUT also for:
• curating data (quality control, classifying pictures, multimedia samples, etc.)
http://www.ibreadcrumbs.com
A View from Technology: what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• International Cooperation
• Foster interaction and collaboration to
– build capacity
– foster standards, best practices
– encourage development of tools, data sets / centers
A View from Technology: what’s driving e-Scholarship?
• Development of Text and Data Mining Tools
• Challenge: encourage interdisciplinary development and re-use of tools (e.g., CERN, public-private partnership)
What Can We Learn from Others?
• Importance of (structured) cooperation around data issues / technology
– Astronomy: AstroGrid-D sharing resources
– Social Sciences: RatSWD works on “opening” data (official statistics); Int. Data Forum (IDF) is trying to do this internationally
What Can We Learn from Others?
• Division of Roles and Responsibilities
– Earth Sciences: data centers and libraries
– The TIB Hannoverand the EarthSciences Data Centers
What Can We Learn from Others?
In Conclusion…
• Research questions need to drive technology,
AND…
• Technological advances need to be integrated into (existing) research agendas.
• e-Wissenschaft, not e-Humanities: much to learn from existing practice in other disciplines. Don’t see Humanities as isolated.
• Rethink Roles: what do “data centers” look like in the humanities? What is the role of the “e-Wissenschaft librarian”? Of the e-scholar?
In Conclusion…
• Rethink careers:
– The scientific “data professional”: who is s/he? Where does he/she come from? What does his/her career path look like?
– How to get (more) scholars to integrate e-humanities approaches into their research practices? Tenure, recognition for “data publications”?
• Copyright, Copyright, Copyright… (to access other works, to make own works properly accessible – read Berlin Declaration carefully!)
• e-Publishing: is the monograph e-fähig? Is the “data journal” e-humanities-fähig?
In Conclusion…
• Every Discipline is special! Must find its own “path”, has its own challenges (the beauty of the humanities…)
BUT:
• Structures are important:
– division of labor (researchers, libraries, data centers)
– coordination of standards, best practice (internationally!)
– articulation of community needs (funding needs, emerging fields, forward looks)
