The Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) and Research Needs in the Digital Humanities Ray Siemens CRC Humanities Computing 2005 UVic Canarie Advanced Research Networks Day25 November 2005

TAPoR &  The Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) is a collaboration of research units at six Canadian universities, to build a centralized gateway to representative electronic texts and text analysis tools. They include:  University of New Brunswick (in the Electronic Text Centre & Computer Science)  Université de Montréal (in Law)  University of Toronto (in English & Information Studies)  McMaster University (in the Humanities Computing Centre)  University of Alberta (in the Arts Computing Area)  University of Victoria (in the Humanities Computing and Media Centre, across the faculty of Humanities, and with collaboration with the Library)  has operated with the HCMC (Peter Liddell, Director) and focussed on the creation and analysis of texts in varied electronic media  encouraging standardized digitisation of Humanities research resources,  provoking new (inter)disciplinary research and research questions by interrelating large databases with new search and retrieval tools, and  supporting and reflecting research into human-computer interface and interaction issues.

Next Phase of Research Development  Involves the development of large, varied-media datasets toward application in high-performance computing.  These group into clusters, consisting of  textbase-oriented activities  multimedia database activities  GIS-related activities  A common ground is found in the way in which they will require a deeper understanding of issues related to large-scale interrelation issues and the application to them of practices associated with high- performance computing.

Textbase  Internet Shakespeare Editions (Michael Best)  Canada Century Research Infrastructure (Peter Baskerville)  Imperialism on the Ground (John Lutz and Patrick Dunae)  Renaissance English Knowledgebase (Ray Siemens)  Cowichan Dictionary (Tom Hukari)

Multimedia Database  Le mariage sous l'Ancien régime (Claire Carlin)  Pedagogical Exploration and Analysis of a French Learning Object Repository (Catherine Caws)  Infant Speech Acquisition Project (John Esling)  Katakana Database Project (Joe Kess)

GIS  Representations of London in the 16th- and 17th- Centuries (Janelle Jenstad)  McClure House: Cataloging and Display of Heritage Architectural Archives (Martin Segger, Chris Petter)  And  Le mariage sous l'Ancien régime (Carlin)  Imperialism on the Ground (Lutz, Dunae)

Common Research Direction  All projects involve the creation of large, complex datasets developed to standards appropriate to  the disciplinary traditions out of which each emerge  formats that will allow them to take their place in larger corpora  in forms suitable for the application of high-performance computing techniques.  While we have developed an understanding of the ways in which humanities data in textual form can be represented, organized, and grouped for small-scale dissemination and analysis, our understanding of the ways in which such materials integrate at large- scale levels is still emerging.  Addressing issues and concerns  inherent in representing materials that document human experience: varied forms and types, developed across many years and in varied media (paper, clay, canvas, stone, &c.), defying easy categorization and description  relating to the digital formats used to store the electronic incarnations of those materials  governing the ways in data in varied and disparate forms can see integration via common representative strategies (also emerging) and algorithmic facilitation (i.e. tool development).

Reflection in Curriculum  Extant courses at the graduate and undergraduate level in History, Linguistics, English, and other disciplines  A new BA curriculum specifically in the Digital Humanities is in the late stages of planning