Alfalab Construction and Deconstruction of a Digital Humanities Experiment Joris van Zundert Huygens Institute (KNAW) The Hague, The Netherlands Anne Beaulieu Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands Douwe Zeldenrust Meertens Institute (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Introducing Alfalab Alfalab is being created by Anne Beaulieu Joris van Zundert Douwe Zeldenrust Rob Zeeman Maarten Hoogerwerf Charles van den Heuvel Smiljana Antonijevic Ruud Bronmans Dirk Roorda Leen Breure Karina van Dalen Ronald Dekker Arjen Versloot Sander Strating Derk Drukker Kees Mandemakers Henk Wals Paul Wouters Peter Doorn Reinier Salverda Melle de Vries Hans Bennis Suzanne van Kaam Bas Doppen and a growing number of others cooperating...
Motivation for Alfalab Our Cultural Commonwealth, The report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences. ACLS, 2006 Tools for Data-Driven Scholarship: Past, Present, Future. A Report on the Workshop October, 2008, Turf Valley Resort, Ellicott City, Maryland. March 2009
Motivation for Alfalab Little uptake of digital tools and 'method' in humanities Lack of Collaboration Lack of VRE's and Virtual Laboratories Lack of critical mass of digitized Problem of heterogeneity of tools, data and method Alfalab tries to meet the suggested requirements in a small controlled community setting
What Alfalab wants to be A collaboration on all levels Exploration of and experimentation on the 'laboratory metaphor' Objectives Success and fail factors Community building 'how-to' Exploration of form and function of tools Work in progress
The naive nativity of an 'alpha-lab'...
Learning in progress Less portal Less lab Focus on community building Rethinking interfaces and visualization Rethinking academic publishing and peer review Reconciling heterogeneity Organizational model
tools & interfaces distributed data workshops desimination Collaboration key networked project leadership shared development effort collaborative vision community involvement
Project scope Phase 1 Exploration Planning, motivating & financing phase 2 Networking (DARIAH, CLARIN, Nines, Bamboo etc.) Phase 2 Implementation Less infrastructure Focus on networking, organization Mapping research heuristics on tools and data 1.4 MEuro Phase 1:
Current state From portal to distributed networked tools and data Tools: 2 demonstrators in progress 'TeksLlab' (TextLab) 'GisLab' (GeospatialLab) 3 rd demonstrator lab planned Project on digital publication and peer review Finding and leveraging synergy effects Collaborative publications TekstLab * GisLab
Alfalab microtoponym pilot Rob Zeeman Meertens Instituut (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands Charles van den Heuvel Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands Douwe Zeldenrust Meertens Institute (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands Arjen Versloot Fryske Akademy (KNAW) Leeuwarden, The Netherlands Sander Strating Fryske Akademy (KNAW) Leeuwarden, The Netherlands Leen Breure University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Google Earth
Prototype Microtoponym Meertens Instituut
Knowledge Infrastructure Cultural History (KICH)
Closing – Q&A
Joris van Zundert Douwe Zeldenrust Anne Beaulieu Alfalab Construction and Deconstruction of a Digital Humanities Experiment