Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 International Grid Symposium A Humanities Grid: Challenges and Opportunities David J. Bodenhamer The Polis Center Academia Sinica March 28, 2007
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Defining the Humanities Study of human beings, their culture, and their self-expression Often described as set of disciplines, including history, philosophy, literature, languages, religion, and cultural studies Qualitative methods Archival data
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Questions, Evidence, and Methods What do modern humanists want to know? Contingency Encounters Transcultural What evidence do they use? Archival Multimedia What methods do they employ? Discipline-based Fusion
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Blurred Boundaries Modern humanities more open to diverse approaches Strong shift toward interdisciplinary research Quantitative data and methods more common More collaborative Vastly more data available than before More data types
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Emergence of Digital Humanities Digital humanities rapidly achieving distinct status Significant e-Resources Text archives Data archives Image archives Web-based production and access
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Digital Humanities Today Digitization Websites Use of e-Tools Information management Data integration Textual analysis Statistical analysis Visualization
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Challenges of Digital Humanities Framing suitable e-problems Evidence Incomplete and missing data Ambiguous data Conflicting typologies/semantic standards Language barriers Legal access Metadata
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Challenges of Digital Humanities Disciplinary Knowledge Base Theory/models/methods Best practices Technology Expensive Steep learning curve Work culture
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Challenges of Digital Humanities Spatio-temporal integration Epistemology Nonlinear Non-expert knowledge Choice and customization
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Humanities Grids Access Grid HASTAC ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences Resource Grids Data Grid Text Grid Image Grid Spatial Grid
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 Opportunities for Humanities Grid Life paths Networks Virtual Reality Gaming Simulations Deep Mapping
Taipei 2007 Taipei 2007 A Modest Proposal Integrated data grid is the greatest current need Space is a common denominator in humanities Link existing text and image mark-up systems to digital gazetteers and other authority files Visualize data by geography