1. Alfalab Construction and Deconstruction of a Digital Humanities Experiment Joris van Zundert Huygens Institute (KNAW) The Hague, The Netherlands joris.van.zundert@huygensinstituut.knaw.nl Anne Beaulieu Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands anne.beaulieu@vks.knaw.nl Douwe Zeldenrust Meertens Institute (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands douwe.zeldenrust@meertens.knaw.nl

2. 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...

3. 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 22-24 October, 2008, Turf Valley Resort, Ellicott City, Maryland. March 2009

4. 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

5. 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

6. The naive nativity of an 'alpha-lab'...

7. 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

8. tools & interfaces distributed data workshops desimination Collaboration key networked project leadership shared development effort collaborative vision community involvement

9. 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: 2009 - 2011

10. 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

11. Alfalab microtoponym pilot Rob Zeeman Meertens Instituut (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands rob.zeeman@meertens.knaw.nl Charles van den Heuvel Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands charles.van.den.heuvel@vks.knaw.nl Douwe Zeldenrust Meertens Institute (KNAW) Amsterdam, The Netherlands douwe.zeldenrust@meertens.knaw.nl Arjen Versloot Fryske Akademy (KNAW) Leeuwarden, The Netherlands aversloot@fryske-akademy.n Sander Strating Fryske Akademy (KNAW) Leeuwarden, The Netherlands sstrating@fryske-akademy.nl Leen Breure University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands leen@cs.uu.nl

13. Google Earth

20. Prototype Microtoponym Meertens Instituut

21. Knowledge Infrastructure Cultural History (KICH)

22. Closing – Q&A

23. Joris van Zundert joris.van.zundert@huygensinstituut.knaw.nl Douwe Zeldenrust douwe.zeldenrust@meertens.knaw.nl Anne Beaulieu anne.beaulieu@vks.knaw.nl Alfalab Construction and Deconstruction of a Digital Humanities Experiment http://alfalablog.knaw.nl http://earth.google.com http://www.hgnnederland.nl http://www.kich.nl http://www.meertens.knaw.nl http://www.huygensinstituut.knaw.nl http://www.vks.knaw.nl