Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 670.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 22:00:09 +0000
From: Frances Condron
<frances.condron@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: news from Oxford
News from the Humanities Computing Unit, University of Oxford
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/
Editorial
Lou Burnard, email: Lou.Burnard@oucs.ox.ac.uk
We realised recently that the Humanities Computing Unit (HCU) at Oxford
University Computing Services (OUCS) must be one of the largest dedicated
Humanities Computing facilities in the world. Its four main components --
the CHC, The Humbul Hub, the Oxford Text Archive and the HCDT -- between
them provide an extraordinary range of services and support facilities for
academic staff and students both within and beyond Oxford. We employ
twenty staff, over half of them externally-funded, and maintain a high
research profile. You can read about some of our current activities in
this issue of HCO, and also by visiting our soon-to-be revamped website at
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/
Our goal is to ensure that all of our activities contribute to an emerging
University-wide strategy for teaching and learning which makes optimal use
of the opportunities offered by information technologies, by accumulating
expertise in the CHC which can be effectively shared by appropriate
training services and by collaborative development projects which support
and enhance teaching and research as practised in this University. We aim
to retain and enhance our current status as a nationally and
internationally recognised centre of excellence for humanities computing
by participating fully in national services such as the Resource Discovery
Network and the Arts and Humanities Data Service, and in international
ventures such as the Text Encoding Initiative.
Reviewing the way the services we offer have changed over the years, both
in scale and in scope, it seems clear that they have evolved in response
not simply to technological changes (though these have been far from
insignificant) but also as a consequence of major changes in the needs and
perceptions of our user communities. If we are getting anything right
then, it is because we have been paying attention to you, our
readers. Here's to continued excitement and upheaval as we move into the
new century!
Beyond the Museum: Working with Archives and Collections in the Digital
Age
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/beyond/museum/
Oxford Union Debating Chamber
20th April, 2001
Continuing our annual series of one-day colloquia, the Humanities
Computing Unit in collaboration with the MDA is running a one-day event
entitled 'Beyond the Museum'. The day will be a mixture of talks and two
highly topical debates. Full details are online at
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/beyond/museum/, and if you wish to register please
contact Jenny Newman (Jenny.Newman@oucs.ox.ac.uk; +44 (0)1865 273221).
The Shock of the Old: Innovation and Information Technology in Traditional
University Teaching
http://www.ox.ac.uk/it/groups/oxtalent/shock/
Computing Laboratory, Oxford
26th - 27th March, 2001
The Shock of the Old explores the impact of communication and information
technologies on teaching and learning in a traditional setting. Speakers
from around the UK will showcase examples of innovative practice, focusing
on the contextual factors which determine the success or otherwise of
using new technologies in teaching and learning. The conference is an
opportunity to find out about developments in a range of subject areas,
and to discuss the opportunities available for adapting teaching and
learning practices and resources between disciplines. You can book online,
or email Jenny.Newman@oucs.ox.ac.uk
Humbul Humanities Hub - http://www.humbul.ac.uk/
New Interface
Humbul has a new look. As part of the re-development of Humbul as a hub of
the Resource Discovery Network we have completely redesigned both the user
interface and the underlying system. Humanities web resources are
described using a cataloguing process based around the Dublin Core
Metadata Element Set (see http://www.purl.org/dc/) and stored in a
relational database. You can now browse Web resources by subject and type
of resource. We catalogue web resources across a wide range of humanities
subjects which include: archaeology, history, classics, philosophy,
literature and culture in English and other European languages, humanities
computing, religion and theology. Types of resources include primary and
secondary sources, bibliographic and reference, research and
teaching-related, and projects or organisations. You can also view
resources for any subject area by audience or time period (where
appropriate). The database can be searched by keyword or phrase.
Over the coming months we are developing other ways of finding online
resources via Humbul including a subject classification system, advanced
searching, subject-based featured resources and links to services and
databases funded by the JISC (see
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/subject/arts-hum/), user customisation and utilties
which will allow you to export records for use elsewhere, have automatic
search results emailed to you or stored as bookmarks, and cross-searching
of related databases such as the Arts and Humanities Data Service.
If you are interested in contributing to the development of Humbul in any
humanities subject area then please contact us.
Michael Fraser, email: Michael.Fraser@oucs.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Text Archive (OTA) - http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/
Depositing with the Oxford Text Archive
It is now just over two years since the Arts and Humanities Data Service
(AHDS) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) formed a joint
C&IT policy in an effort to support UK academics with the creation of
digital resources and to offer a secure home to these resources once they
are completed. This mutually beneficial partnership is now starting to
yield exciting results. Taking one AHRB funded resource as an example, we
hope to illustrate the process by which digital resources can be properly
preserved with the AHDS and re-distributed back into the Humanities
community.
"The Making of History" is a collection of digital texts and images which
centre around the events of 1848 as described in Part III, Chapter I of
Gustave Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, and assembled into a
hypertext package. In addition to the text of the chapter itself, the
resource comprises of over 300 densely written folios (plans, sketches,
rough drafts) and a large quantity of historical and documentary notes
which give context to Flaubert's writings. The use of hypertext to express
the relationships between the various events and documents could not have
been achieved as effectively in a traditional print publication. The
navigation tools provided by the resource allows the user to move easily
through the information in an non-linear way, offering new, multiple
readings of the events.
The new Technical Appendix of the AHRB grant application now requires
applicants to contact the relevant AHDS Service Provider for technical
advice on such subjects as the appropriate standards to use when creating
a digital resource. It also obliges the applicant to offer any
'significant' digital resource for deposit with the AHDS. Tony Williams,
Professor of French at Hull University, the principal author of "The
Making of History", first got in contact with the OTA in the Autumn of
1999. Satisfied that the project was on a sound technical footing,
Professor Williams spent the next year developing the resource, and within
the last month has been back in contact with the OTA to discuss possible
deposit options. There is no one method by which the OTA will accession
new deposits, we offer a range of services, ranging from a secure archive
only option, to making resources freely available for download from the
OTA web site. Informal negotiations, usually by email, helps to establish
what the depositor wants while ensuring at all times that the resource
will be properly preserved.
The prototype of the resource was sent to the OTA on a CD-ROM, but the
project can just as easily be viewed as a web page. In the end it looks
likely that "The Making of History" will be available from the OTA as a
single downloadable zip archive, with the possibility of mirroring the
original Hull web site when it finally goes live. Limited CD-ROM
distribution has also not been ruled out. When the resource is ready for
deposit a copy of the OTA Depositor Pack will be sent to Professor
Williams for signing. The pack contains a non-exclusive deposit licence,
which ensures that all rights for the resource remain with the depositor,
thus allowing him to distribute the resource in his own way, including
commercial publication, while maintaining a preservation, back-up, copy
with the OTA.
The OTA is continually looking for new resources for deposit, and the AHRB
is only one potential source of these. Recent new accessions, deposited by
individual academics, include a Database of Japanese Kanji as well as
Latin texts by Horace and Ptolemy.
The process of depositing with the OTA is therefore one of consultation
and negotiation, with all rights being retained by the depositor. If you
are creating a digital resource, or know of one, which would benefit from
deposit with the OTA please get in touch with us. All documents relevant
to depositing with the OTA can be found on our web site
(http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/) in the section marked 'OTA Publications'.
Alan Morrison, email: Alan.Morrison@oucs.ox.ac.uk
Humanities Computing Development team (HCDT) -
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/hcdt/
Sphakia Survey Internet Edition
The HCDT was proud to launch the Sphakia Survey Internet Edition in 27
October at Magdalen College Auditorium. The Sphakia Survey is an
interdisciplinary archaeological project whose main objective is to
reconstruct the sequence of human activity in a remote and rugged part of
Crete (Greece), from the time that people arrived in the area, by ca 3000
BC, until the end of Ottoman rule in AD 1900. Research covers three major
epochs, Prehistoric, Graeco-Roman, and Byzantine-Venetian-Turkish, and has
involved the work of many people using environmental, archaeological,
documentary, and local information. Please visit the Web site for more
information at: http://sphakia.classics.ox.ac.uk/
Please see the HCDT Web site at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/hcdt/ for more
information about our current projects, and to visit our completed
projects for Theology, History, English, Archaeology, Chinese, and others.
The full-text version of this edition of HCO on-line is available at
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/chc/hco.html
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr Frances Condron, Humanities Computing Unit, Oxford University
Computing Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN.
Email: frances.condron@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1865 273280
URL: http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/
ASTER: http://cti-psy.york.ac.uk/aster/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Feb 13 2001 - 17:34:32 EST