"Becoming-other": Experimentation, Virtuality and Alterity in the work of Troika Ranch

Susan Broadhurst (Brunel University)

In many of Troika Ranch's performances the ebb and flow between the organic and electronic is in a continual process of becoming and making new connections. Believing that most media technology is 'dead', in the sense that it is exactly the same each time it is presented, Troika Ranch want the media elements of their work to have the same sense of vitality, dynamism and 'liveness' as the physical performers it accompanies. To this end, the human body is imposed on the media in an attempt to bring it back to life. Reflected in Troika Ranch's use of electronic technology is Deleuze and Guattari's concept of a 'machine'. Originally appropriated from a Lacanian term, the machine denotes a shift away from the organic and human toward a timeless entity with no identity, intent or even end; a model of pure machinic production, always in the process of becoming and making new connections. Central to becoming and making new connections is the body without organs or BwO. It is 'the field of immanence of desire' and an 'intense and intensive body'.

Why Openness Matters: The Deptford.TV Project

Adnan Hadzi (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Deptford.TV is a research project on collaborative film. It is an online media database documenting the urban change of Deptford, in Sout East London. Deptford TV functions as an open, collaborative platform that allows artists, filmmakers and people living and working around Deptford to store, share, re-edit and redistribute the documentation of Deptford.

The open and collaborative aspect of the project is of particular importance as it manifests in two ways: a) audiences can become producers by submitting their own footage, b) the interface that is being used enables the contributors to discuss and interact with each other through the database.

Deptford TV is a form of "television", since audiences are able to choose edited "time lines" they would like to watch; at the same time they have the option to comment on or change the actual content. Deptford TV makes us of licenses such as the creative commons sa-by and gnu general public license to allow and enhance this politics of sharing.

The St Patrick's Confessio Hypertext Stack

Franz Fischer (Royal Irish Academy)

The St Patrick's Confessio Hypertext Stack Project aims to build up a comprehensive digital research environment to make accessible to academic specialists, as well as to interested lay people, all the textual aspects of St Patrick's Confessio - which is, after all, one of the most important texts to have been written in medieval Ireland.

The project envisages providing facsimiles and transcriptions of the extant manuscript testimonies and digital versions of relevant editions, commentaries and translations. All the different textual components of this digital resource will be realised as one hypertext stack of very closely interlinked text layers. The stack itself is then to be embedded in a net of significant contextual information and databases such as the the definitive dictionary entries prepared by Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources (DMLCS) for many of the most interesting words. Furthermore, various audio files will be delivered and a blog-like platform for user interaction will be set up.

Network of Expert Centres

David Robey (University of Reading), Lorna Hughes, Torsten Reimer (King's College London), Andrew Prescott (University of Wales Lampeter)

The Network of Expert Centres is a collaboration of centres with expertise in digital arts and humanities, in the sense of data creation, curation, preservation, management (including rights and legal issues), access and dissemination, and methodologies of data use and re-use. Its membership is open to all such centres in Great Britain and Ireland. Its purpose is to support its members in the advocacy and promotion of the value, understanding and use of ICT in arts and humanities research (broadly defined), the development and exchange of expertise, knowledge, standards and best practices, awareness raising, dialogue with relevant stakeholders, identifying and representing the needs of the research community.

David Robey and Lorna Hughes will present the aims and work of the Network, Torsten Reimer will introduce the key role to be played by the arts-humanities.net site in supporting it, Andrew Prescott will discuss the broader strategic context. Paul S Ell will examine the extent of collaborations the Arts and Humanities Data Service collaborated with the Academic Community and the lacuna its closure has left, something the Network hopes in part to address.  

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Too Much Information: Why Facilitate Media Literacy?

James Cronin (University College Cork)

The current Horizon Report (http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/) argues that while web-based tools are rapidly becoming standard in education and in the workplace and technologically mediated communication is the norm, fluency in information, visual, and technological literacy is not formally taught to most students. In the light of this we need new and expanded definitions and paradigms of academic digital literacy that are based on mastering underlying concepts of critical thinking and enhancing these within the digital environment. This paper attempts to test the assumption that entrants to the humanities, in this case art history, are information or data literate. This is an assumption often made yet it largely goes unchallenged. This paper reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of a series of information literacy workshops currently being delivered in History of Art, University College Cork (http://eimagespace.blogspot.com/). The use of dynamic web tools, like audio and video podcasts, has given two dyslexic students attending the workshops alternative entry points to learning. The project concludes with a set of rubrics to consider when embedding an information literacy workshop within a disciplinary programme.

Literary Geographical Information Systems (GIS): Plotting the Narrative Topographies and Historical Poetics of Irish Literature

Charles Travis (Trinity College Dublin)

This paper presents case study from a project entitled A Digital Literary Atlas of Ireland, 1922-1949, which is utilizing GIS in conjunction with Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Historical Poetics' as means to visualize in 3D, map, interrogate and provide a spatio-temporal analysis of the environmental, socio-cultural and literary landscapes of early twentieth century Ireland. Writers featured in the digital atlas include, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Peadar O'Donnell, Patrick Kavanagh, Forrest Reid, Michael McLaverty, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Kate O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Lady Gregory, John Hewitt and Máirtín Ó Cadhain. 3D GIS visualizations combined with Bakhtinian 'chronotopic' (time-space) analysis draw upon period empirical data as well as fictional narrative and biography, to map narrative plot lines, biographical lifepaths, cultural topographies and physical landscapes represented in the selected works of these Irish writers who published between 1922 and 1949.

Text Image Linking Environment (TILE)

John Walsh (University of Indiana), Dot Porter (Royal Irish Academy), Douglas Reside (University of Maryland)

To create the next generation of the technical infrastructure supporting image-based editions and electronic archives of humanities content, we are developing a new web-based image markup tool, the Text-Image Linking Environment (TILE), through a collaboration of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, Indiana University Bloomington, the Royal Irish Academy, the University of Oregon, and Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. Despite the proliferation of image-based editions and archives, the linking of images and textual information remains a slow and frustrating process for editors and curators. TILE, built on the existing code of the AXE image tagger, will dramatically increase the ease and efficiency of this work. TILE will be developed and thoroughly tested with the assistance of our project partners, who represent some of today's most exciting image-based editions projects, in order to create a tool generated by the community, for the community, with the expectation that, unlike so many other tools, it will be used by the community.

Graceful Degradation: Managing Digital Projects in Times of Transition and Decline

Dot Porter (Royal Irish Academy), Bethany Nowviskie (University of Virginia)

Past panel discussions at conferences in the digital humanities (including one on the question of "finished" work and another on innovative management techniques) have offered anecdotal evidence about factors contributing to the success of digital projects. Our journals and conference programs brim with accounts of works in progress, generally presented at the height of its success. The exigencies of grant funding and conference or publication submissions tend to make the record more sanguine about our projects than, perhaps, their full lifecycle would merit. This poster takes a deliberative look at that darker side of project management with which we are all too familiar - the experience of projects that have entered states of transition or even decline. We will present preliminary results of a broad survey of the digital humanities community related to project management - specifically on how we think about our projects and behave toward them when they face times of transition and decline, and what we see as the causes and outcomes of those times.

The Development of a Shared Taxonomy for the Digital Arts and Humanities

Dot Porter (Digital Humanities Observatory), Torsten Reimer (King's College London)

Digital Arts and Humanities encompasses a sometimes quite diverse field of activity. This diversity makes the development of general classifications schemes a challenge. On the other hand, such a system would be very useful exactly because of the diversity: it would would help researchers to learn about the work of others, encourage knowledge exchange and prevent the duplication of work. For several years, the AHDS Methods Taxonomy has been used to structure the ICT Guides database that catalogues digital arts and humanities projects; ICT Guides is now part of arts-humanities.net, hosted by the Centre for e-Research. Recently, the taxonomy has also been implemented in DRAPIer (Database of Research and Projects in Ireland) by the Digital Humanities Observatory, and other projects have expressed an interest in using it too. Between the partners, we are now developing a model for a shared usage and development of the taxonomy, transforming it into a community resource. In this paper, we will describe the background of the project; discuss the technical model for sharing the taxonomy and its implementation in the systems of the partners; report on the community process for taking it forward; and discuss challenges and chances of such a shared development.

Preservation of Interactive Multimedia Performance with the use of Ontology Models

Eleni Mikroyannidi (University of Leeds), Bee Ong (University of Leeds), David Giaretta (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) and Kia Ng (University of Leeds)

Digital preservation aims at ensuring the intelligibility of digital information at any given time in the near or distant future. Digital preservation has to address changes that inevitably occur in hardware or software, in the organisational or legal environment, as well as in the designated community, i.e. the users of the preserved information. In order to be preserved against these changes, digital information has to be enriched with metadata, usually referred to as Representation Information, which can be used for the interpretation of information. In addition, Representation Information needs to be connected to the Knowledge Base of the designated community. Ontologies offer the means for organizing and representing the semantics of this knowledge base. The paper presents the European IST project CASPAR (www.casparpreserves.eu), which aims to build a pioneering framework to support the end-to-end preservation lifecycle of scientific, artistic and cultural information with particular focus on the artistic testbed. In addition the paper introduces an archival system for preserving Interactive Multimedia Performances

Culture Seen, Culture Experienced, Culture Rediscovered

Mícheál Mac An Airchinnigh (Trinity College Dublin), Yaşar Tonta, Yurdagül Ünal (Hacettepe University)

In this paper we present an account of the (digitized/digital) "culture seen" and the "culture experienced". For each cultural artefact, digitized and brought online, we assume both 1) a formal description (using OWL-DL for example) and 2) a folksonomical description (short text with keywords) will be provided. We anticipate said descriptions to be accommodated within the CIDOC-CRM ISO Standard and expect compatible re-alignments with respect to the Getty Vocabularies. We address the basic research question: how can we re-connect with our cultural roots through what we see on the digital screen and integrate it with our (shared) lived culture today in 2009? A second subsidiary question arises: how can we engage with the culture of another, especially where inter-cultural conflict has historic roots? One resolution is to play "the digital re-discovery of culture (DrDC) game of inquiry" based on the saw "By indirections, find direction out". A key aspect of such resolution crucially depends on the notion of (digital) access. We choose three examples: (a) 2 paintings from two different Art Galleries in Bulgaria, (b) 2 sculptures from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey, and (c) 2 contrasting murals from Belfast, Northern Ireland. A new DrDC game is presented.

Digital Humanities Observatory: Building a National Collaboratory

Susan Schreibman, Dot Porter, Emily Cullen, Don Gourley (Digital Humanities Observatory), Jennifer Edmond (Trinity College Dublin)

The Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO) was established to support digital humanities research in Ireland, and to manage and coordinate the increasingly complex e-resources created in the arts and humanities throughout the island. The DHO, founded in 2008, has in its first year begun to implement a plan of support focusing on three main issues: encouraging collaboration; providing for the management, access, and preservation of project data; and promulgating shared standards and technology for project development.

The DHO sits solidly in the family of recent international initiatives seeking collaboration, sharing, and preservation, that signal a shift in perspective in the digital humanities environment from a project based (digital silo) approach to one in which the scholarly resources we create are linked, interoperable, reusable, and preserved. Collectively, we have entered a new phase of human and technical infrastructure development. This series of presentations on the DHO will address these issues.

What Can You Do With 30,000 Early English (and Welsh) Books?

Paul Schaffner (University of Michigan)

Ten years ago, we set out to create a full-text database of as many as 25,000 early English books. By DRHA, EEBO/TCP-1 will have surpassed its goal and EEBO/TCP-2 will be under way, its new and more ambitious goal to produce a database of about 70,000 books, representing the bulk of extant English and Welsh printing ante 1700. Most of what is done with this data never comes to my or public notice. My hope for this session is to change that. I can speak to the character of the material and some potential uses, but care to hear from users what they want the data to yield, even if it means potentially exposing inadequacies in the data or its markup--perhaps things that can be remedied for EEBO-2. More importantly, I am open to a hands-on, participatory format in which users can learn from each other. At worst, this session would default to a standard paper devoted to the intriguing uses to which a huge mass of historical textual data can be put. At best, it stands a chance of fostering the development of an already a nascent community around this resource.

Nottingham's Web Campus in Second Life

Andrew Beggan (The University of Nottingham)

Following a key institutional summit in April 2008 and agreement by the IS Strategy Board (ISSB), the University of Nottingham decided to build corporate, learning and research resources on an island in Second Life. In September 2008 the University established its web based campus in Second Life, providing a single location for anyone studying, teaching or researching at Nottingham to meet, wherever they are based. As such, it offers an immersive, user-centred virtual world with almost limitless opportunities for exploring innovative research and teaching. In this presentation, we will discuss how Nottingham is realising real benefits from its developments in Second Life, creating open general use spaces, sand box development areas and experiential learning environments. This presentation will review progress made to date, lessons learned and potential future direction. As such, it will be of interest to anyone interested in exploring using Second Life or already using Second Life at their institution.

DiSCmap: Digitisation in Special Collections, Mapping, Assessment and Prioritisation.

Duncan Birrell, Dr. Milena Dobreva, Gordon Dunsire, Kathleen Menzies (University of Strathclyde), Jillian Griffiths, Prof. Richard Hartley (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users is equally rare. How do we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term?

The 'Digitisation in Special Collections: mapping, assessment and prioritisation' (DiSCmap) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Information Network (RIN) and run jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM), has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities. This paper describes and discusses DiSCmap's research and findings and could be presented as a paper, a panel, round-table or 'town hall' discussion dependent on the preference of the conference organizers. It will address the following themes: Advance discussion around digitisation of scholarly resources Digital preservation and sustainability Investigate user engagement and social participation Promote discussion around education and the digital humanities and arts

Transforming the Study of Australian Literary Cultures through a Collaborative eResearch Environment

Roger Osborne, Anna Gerber, Jane Hunter, Kerry Kilner (The University of Queensland)

An Australian eResearch program is having a transformative effect upon the research into, and the teaching of, Australian literary cultures through the development and deployment of web-based scholarship and collaboration technologies. For almost a decade, AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au), a collaborative enterprise between numerous universities and the National Library of Australia, has been operating within the interdependent aims of being a virtual research environment for scholars and a dependable, accurate and up-to-date information resource and access point for all. For the past 18 months, the National eResearch Architecture Task force (NeAT) has funded, Aus-e-Lit, a collaboration between the AustLit community and the University of Queensland eResearch Lab to develop a range of innovative Web-based services for literary scholars.

Creating Dynamic Links Among Irish Resources

Michael Buckland, Daniel Melia, Ryan Shaw (University of California)

Learning depends on finding explanations and descriptions when unfamiliar names, events and topics are encountered. Although individual reference works increasingly exist in digital form, more needs to be done to make reference collections easy to use in a digital library environment. We are working with the texts of the back-files of Irish journals being retrospectively digitized at the Queen's University, Belfast. The key to ease of access is to provide the user with choices but to remove from the user as much as possible of the procedural complexity of searching. The interface prompts the user with a menu of suitable recommended resources, finds the internet address, formulates a search query in a form suited to the particular resource, takes care of mechanical procedures, and displays the retrieved explanation or description. The details of the query, the resource, and the explanation can be added to the text or to notes as XML compliant mark-up. For prototype see http://metadata.berkeley.edu/demos/ Although conceived as an aid when reading, this approach would be equally useful when writing or editing. We will review the rationale and implications.

Electric Edo: Creating a Networked Drama Degree for a Geographically Dispersed Student Cohort.

Barbara Bell (NHC/UHI Millenium)

UHI Millenium Institute (University of the Highlands & Islands) is an HEI comprising thirteen colleges and research centres covering an area from Argyll to Shetland.

I am currently developing an undergraduate drama degree to be networked amongst 3-4 colleges at locations hundreds of miles apart, projecting an annual cohort of 20-25 students in groups of 5+ in any one location. The challenges to be faced go well beyond investing in e-books and arranging for identical scenery kits.

Acknowledging that this unique drama degree is a work-in-progress, this Short Presentation will open up for display and discussion the meld of the 'immediate physical' with the 'mediated physical' in educational experiences and creative environments and the educational, cultural and artistic ideas that underpin the proposal.

Towards Narrative Art History: Ways to Heaven in the Christian Middle East

Christiane Esche-Ramshorn (University of Cambridge), Stanislav Roudavski (University of Melbourne)

This paper discusses epistemological implications and expressive benefits of an exploratory, visual and narrative approach towards the study and presentation of historical art and architecture. Rather than focusing primarily on artefacts and textual, analytically biased, means of representation, our approach aspires to en-gage with spatial, visual, tacit and emotional characteristics of historical lifeworlds while adhering to a coherent understanding of academic rigour. We hope that the resulting methodology might lead to an approach that we propose to name "nar-rative art history" and that other researchers will recognise and share. This paper serves as a demonstration of first results and an invitation to collaboration.

The overarching challenge of developing narrative art histories is discussed in this paper in application to a particular project developed at the Department of His-tory of Art and Architecture at the University of Cambridge. The project, Ways to Heaven, demonstrates how literary, visual, spatial and musical sources can com-bine into dramatic narratives able to motivate and guide exploratory research ef-forts, produce unexpectant results and sustain representations that are not only formally informative but also emotionally engaging. The historical narrative of a 15th-century Armenian pilgrim who travelled from Middle Asia to Rome and other Western cities supplies the material for this narrative. Utilizing interactive digital technologies, the project reflects on Bishop Martiros Erznkatsi's exploits tying to-gether recorded facts and probable situations in an effort to make experientially concrete statements able to explicate and contrast contemporary cultural tradi-tions. The resulting prototype utilises an engaging spatial and interactive multi-media environment that incorporates voice-over recordings of diaries, poetry and music integrated with navigable sequences, movies and still images. Built around a flexible and extendible representational framework, this online-capable interac-tive environment supports various engagements with many types of sources, from historic to newly generated. It is capable of supporting various modes of engagement with content including comparative exploration, visual and performa-tive thinking, visual argument-making and immersive, emotional participation.

Ways to Heaven accompanies the art-history book "Sharing St. Peter's in the Renaissance: East and West at the Vatican" (in preparation) which focuses on the Christian cultures of Armenia and Ethiopia exploring an under-represented period in their history and their links with the Church of Rome. The future work on the Ways to Heaven will develop the existing prototype into a fully-functional user interface where multiple cultural engagements including medieval geography, Silk Road trade, East-West cultural and artistic exchanges, theology, international pil-grimage and warfare can be explored through multiplicious and flexibly extendi-ble, visually and emotionally meaningful narratives.

Our paper presentation can be supported by two short movies that illustrate our approach to the treatment of historical visuals, in this case contemporary sketches by Martin Heemskerk.

The Usability of Digital Documents - A Barrier to Digital Scholarship

George Buchanan (Swansea University)

The digital delivery of documents to the desks of scholars and academics is an increasingly common part of academic life. However, the volume of material available to many researchers now means that one search can return many documents of potential interest. Typically, a text is read briefly "online" before being printed or saved to disk for closer reading. This initial, relatively short, survey of a document is a critical moment in the information seeking of an academic: its potential relevance is assessed and only if it passes this inspection will it be read in detail. We present the results of a series of human-computer interaction studies that identify some of the usability problems that are caused by the design of current digital document reader software (e.g. Adobe Acrobat, DejaVu). While a skilled and determined researcher will endeavour to scrupulously study material as they assess it for their needs, current software design provides invisible traps that impede the effectiveness of even the most skilled reader.

Demonstration of an Ontology-Based Image Retrieval System for Images of Fine Art

Daniel Isemann, Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh, Khurshid Ahmad (Trinity College Dublin)

We propose to hold a live demonstration of an advanced markup and retrieval system for images of fine art which was recently developed at Trinity College Dublin. The public demonstration would encourage interaction from the audience, could be held in an informal setting and only needs a data projector. We envisage about 15-20 minutes for the system demonstration and similarly for feedback and questions from the floor. Our system employs ontologies (hierarchically structured formal descriptions of a domain) for the markup and retrieval of a digital collection of fine art images. A standard top-level ontology for information on cultural heritage is combined with a domain ontology for paintings, prints and drawings which was developed from a variety of existing published and electronic sources. A commercially available collection of 40,000 digitised artworks and associated textual information was used to populate our system with data. The system allows analysing and retrieving images from the collection in ways that go beyond conventional text based retrieval systems.

Music and Text: Integrating Scholarly Literature into Music Datasets

Richard Lewis, David Lewis, Tim Crawford, Geraint Wiggins (Goldsmiths, University of London)

We present the latest developments of the Purcell Plus eScience project which aims to assess the impact computational methods will have on musicology. We demonstrate a digital ontology for music theoretic and historiographic terminology and techniques for using it to assert relationships between scholarly literature and musical works. We describe results in formalising musicological methodology and potential applications in constructing VREs for music research.

Workflow, Responsibility and Quality Control for Digital Editions: A Case Study

Gary Stringer (University of Exeter)

The modern digital edition of a literary work is most often a collaborative product, with many contributors participating in the process of production, from the planning and image capture phases through to the electronic presentation of the edition. Managing the production process, and marshalling all these forces into an efficient workflow presents a major challenge, which is often well understood for large scale projects, but is perhaps less well defined for individual Edition projects.

In this paper I will present some suggestions for tools to ease this workflow, and some analysis of their effectiveness in use, notably within the AHRC-funded project, "Citation and Allusion in the Ars Nova French Chanson and Motet", towards the production of "Je chante ung chant", an archive of late-medieval lyrical poetry.

Many of the tools examined are standard, open-source products, and are commonly used in other areas of digital production, such as software development; I will address both their applicability to the domain of literary text production, and their suitability to a less technical audience such literary editors and reviewers.

The Eton Myers Collection Virtual Museum

Henry Chapman (Unviersity of Birmingham)

The Eton Myers Collection of ancient Egyptian Art is one of the finest of its kind, and consists of approximately 3000 objects. It was built up by Eton College following an initial collection of an initial collection was bequeathed by Major William Joseph Myers at the end of the 19th century. The Eton Myers Collection Virtual Museum project, funded by JISC, has aimed to make a proportion of the collection universally available on the Internet through the three-dimensional high-definition laser scanning and modelling of objects. This paper will outline the results of the project and the potential of 3D modelling for the curation and accessibility of museum collections.

Arts, Humanities and the Semantic Web

K Faith Lawrence (Digital Humanities Observatory), Hugo Mills (Trinity College Dublin), Hugo Mills (University of Reading) and Benjamin Heitmann (Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI))

According to the World Wide Web Consortium, the Semantic Web "provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries". Whether it is in the now ubiquitous RSS feeds or hidden within triple stores the Semantic Web has developed into a significant force in the years since its conception. The three papers in this panel session demonstrate the ways in which the semantic web is being used, harnessed, and analysed to support research and how the Arts and Humanities community is taking advantage of this new technology. The papers address how the Semantic Web connects both people, within social networks, and the data describing objects, and how these aspect of the network are interwoven.

Contextualizing Text and Object

Orla Murphy (University College Cork), Dot Porter (Royal Irish Academy)

Contextualization refers both the physical context of text - that is, the recognition that text is embodied in specific material objects - and the historical and geographical context of those objects themselves. A text may be represented in a single instance, or it may be found in many instances, from many different places, written at many different times. Because of the physical condition of these objects, textual readings may not be certain. Advanced imaging technologies now exist to help bring out damaged or lost text, including multi-spectral imaging of manuscripts, 3D scanning and digital reconstruction of stone tablets, and non-invasive scanning and virtual unrolling of papyrus scrolls. Once the text is uncovered, however, it still needs to be edited, and those editions should include both images of the objects and metadata describing exactly how the text appears and how the editor made his or her decisions about readings. This editorial approach maintains transparency and enables those people using the editions to double-check the editor's decisions. The two papers comprising this session will explore different aspects of the issue of contextualization for digital editions of texts and the objects on which texts are inscribed.

Dot Porter: Editing in Multiple Dimensions: editing images, imagining editions
Orla Murphy: Re-Visioning Sculpture: Scans of Stones - a cultural heritage case study from Lismore Co. Waterford

Balance (2009)

Dionysios Athinaios (Queens University Belfast )

Balance is an algorithmic composition/installation that uses sound material from the MiSS library to create an ever-changing never-ending soundscape. The sounds are assigned "labels" that describe prominent characteristics like frequency occupation (low, mid, high) and spatial implication (close, mid, far). This information is used to decide on the number of elements that can coexist at any time hopefully creating a more meaningful randomness (!!). The work was designed specifically for the MiSS concert ( Sonorities Festival, 8/5/2009)  and the sonic lab at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast.

Netrooms (2008)

Pedro Rebelo

Netrooms: The Long Feedback is a participative network piece which invites the public to contribute to an extended feedback loop and delay line across the internet. The work explores the juxtaposition    of multiple spaces as the acoustic, the social and the personal environment becomes permanently networked. The performance consists of live manipulation of multiple real-time streams from different locations which receive a common sound source. Netrooms celebrates the private acoustic environment as defined by the space between one audio input (microphone) and output (loudspeaker). The performance of the piece consists of live mixing a feedback loop with the signals from each stream.

http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~prebelo/netrooms

The Holinshed Project: Comparing and linking two editions of Holinshed's Chronicles

James Cummings, Arno Mittelbach (University of Oxford)

This poster (digital or physical) discusses the digital humanities aspects of The Holinshed Project at the University of Oxford. To assist the project editors in comparing the two editions (1577 and 1587) of this important work, the Research Technologies Service built a comparison engine known as the 'TEI-Comparator'. This open source program incorporated a a bespoke fuzzy text comparison algorithm based on n-grams with a front-end based on Google Web Toolkit for making, confirming automatic matches, correcting mistaken ones, or providing annotations of the matches between the two documents. By the time of the DRHA 2009 conference, the TEI-Comparator will have launched itself on Sourceforge with documentation and examples to make it easy for others to re-purpose this software for other similar uses, and submit bugs and requests for future development. Although it has been known as the 'TEI-Comparator', in fact the program should work well with XML files of any vocabulary as long as the elements being compared have sufficient unique text in them.

JISC: Enriching Digital Resources

Mary Smith (University of East London), Lydia Weller (University of Kent), Carol Burrows (University of Manchester), Katherine Lindsay (University of Oxford), Dennis Wheeler (University of Sunderland), Andrew Pellow (University of Leeds), Ahmed Abu-Zayed (University of Exeter), Paul Vetch (King's College London), Zoe Watson (University of Reading), Geoff Browell (King's College London), Lyn Dafis (National Library of Wales), Jane Hogan (University of Durham), Amy Robinson (Visual Arts Data Service), David King (The Open University), Susannah Rayner (School of Oriental and African Studies), Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (Kings College, London), Susan Lambert (Arts University College, Bournemouth), Rob Iliffe (University of Sussex), Stuart Hunt (University of Warwick), Graham Stone (University of Huddersfield), Henry Chapman (University of Birmingham), Shelley Hales (University of Bristol), Zeth Green (University of Birmingham)

Isaac Newton on YouTube, controversial maps of Sudan, Richard II's Cookbook and historic Navy logbooks helping scientists to address the challenges of climate change; these are just a few of the treasures that have been unlocked and made freely available online by the Enriching Digital Resources programme. Time ebbs and flows through the 25 projects that make up the Enriching programme, from the ancient palaces of Pompeii reconstructed in the virtual world of Second Life, to the online digital manuscripts of the First World War poets mixing with the digitised memories of members of the public on Flickr. The projects peer forward into the future with the 2012 Olympics and the communities of East London, the future of child protection and social care and historic pathology slides that are helping medical students with diseases that are rarely seen in 21st century Britain.

As the past is brought into the present, so users are able to look to the future and be a part of a critical mass of content that is helping change the way that all of us interact and intergrate with online digital content, and where the use of social networking sites and technologies has enabled new users and communities to engage with this diverse and exciting content, and to ensure a presence in the online spaces that we already inhabit and are familiar with.

The Enriching Digital Resources programme http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/enrichingdigi.aspx has been funded by the JISC, and is a part of its pioneering Digitisation Programme http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation.

Performance - Interactive Piano Performance Using Bio-Sensors

Sarah Nicolls (Brunel University)

This performance would be an example of Nicolls' work in the field of interactive technology and would either be a work-in-progress of work currently being undertaken with Dr Atau Tanaka, Director of Culture Lab, Newcastle University or a work using the technological 'performance environment' developed with a team of technologists from Queen Mary's University of London. Duration of approx 15-20'. The attached file shows an example outline of the latter performance.

Engagement by Undergraduate Design Students in the Web 3D 'virtual world' of Second Life

Olinkha Gustafson-Pearce (Brunel University)

Many higher education establishments are currently using the Web 3D Virtual Worlds to deliver all or part of a learning module. In this study the author reports on a study which has been conducted over a period of two years with undergraduate Design students, who have been engaged in the Second Life environment. In this environment they have developed 'Design' orientated concepts for the module submissions. This study reports on the results of data gathered from the students over a two year period.

Re-Visioning Sculpture: Scans of Stones - A Cultural Heritage Case Study from Toureen Peacaun, Co. Cork, Ireland.

Orla Murphy (University College Cork)

Digital imaging technologies provide a new and challenging platform for the apprehension of material objects in their context, and also radically outside their traditional context. In this paper the 3D data capture of sculpture is interrogated. An early, inscribed high-cross has an inscription that was missed entirely by one scholar, dismissed as runic and indecipherable by another, recognised as geometric capitals by a third, and variously interpreted as being Latin or Irish by subsequent viewers.

A laser scan of the monument in the field and its plaster casts in the National Museum of Ireland revealed a further potential reading and further opportunities for scholarship amongst historians, epigraphers, archaeologists and others.

Removed from its setting in the field, within a monastic enclosure and now the subject of a downloadable plug-in, how best might this study be represented online? How can the integrity of the monument be maintained in a digital environment?

In this paper, the techniques involved in interpreting this damaged inscription are explored and solutions, in the form of contemporary best practice within the framework of the TEI, are examined.

"Creating a Critical Mass of Digitised Content": Where the Idea Came From and Where It Might Go

Lyn Lewis Dafis (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales)

The National Library of Wales, like many other institutions involved in the creation of digital content through digitisation, is moving away from the handcrafted or boutique approach towards the goal of creating "a critical mass of digitised content". But what exactly is meant by "critical mass". This paper will look at what a critical mass of content might look like in the context of digitisation and how it might be possible to recognize its achievement using both quantative and qualitative measures. It will then address the practical implementation of a policy of moving towards creating a critical mass of digitised material as experienced at the National Library of Wales. It will outline the National Library's vision for creating a critical mass of digitised print-based material relating to Wales, including the Welsh Journals Online project, and the main obstacles to its achievement.

Standards - Getting Arts and Entertainments Data Ready for the Semantic Web

Simon Dessain

The International Venue and Event Standard project has 4 partners - The List, Blue Compass, ACT Consultants and Glasgow University.

What's On digital resources are used ever more by potential audiences to develop awareness, to gain more detailed knowledge of events and to pursue the practical steps to become a member of the audience. This will often involve the user signing up for information bulletins, exploring rich data, reading event comments, reviews and descriptions, considering date and time and venue information, and pursuing ticketing options. All of which increasingly requires digital providers of What's On information to work with a range of other arts, events and entertainments organisations.

At present there are no standards (UK or worldwide) that guide the structure of such information. This makes it hard or impossible for any one in the arts information chain to digitally receive or supply information. Other information domains, such as research information in the academic world have some well developed standards and approaches. The IVES project addresses this issue for the arts, events and entertainments sector.

Sl'Étude Performative Presence Rendered Across Worlds

Franziska Schroeder, Pedro Rebelo (Queen's University Belfast), Chris Chong (Independent)

This proposal is for a performance involving the virtual environment SecondLife. This piece explores two performance environments (a virtual and a physical space) in two directional fashion. It engages the virtual users (avatars) by allowing them to spatialize sounds in RL by positioning specifically designed objects in SL. The performer is equipped with motion tracking devices (LED lights) that allows the performer's gestures and movements to be tracked. These movements will be displayed in SL as a rendered trail of performative presence, thus intensifying a two way connection of the two worlds.

The piece was specifically designed for the Sonic Arts Research Center's Sonic Lab.

Digital Mappings of a Late Medieval City: (Re)presenting Urban Experience Through Texts, Images and Spatial Technologies

Keith Lilley (Queen's University Belfast), Paul Vetch (King's College London), Catherine Clarke (Swansea University)

It is still relatively unusual in medieval studies to make use of digital media to help interpret and understand visual and textual cultures of the Middle Ages. This jointly-authored paper seeks to address this by drawing upon the experiences and results of a collaborative, inter-disciplinary research project that has brought together the expertise of scholars from the fields of literary history, historical geography, and humanities computing. This project, 'Mapping Medieval Chester: place and identity in an English borderland city c.1200-1500', is currently underway and will form the basis of the proposed paper which will consider two main themes arising from this Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project. First, the paper will consider the methodological problems arising from a cross-disciplinary project, particularly those resulting from differing disciplinary practices and norms in studying medieval urban experiences, and trying to (re)present these to different audiences using a multi-media web-resource as well as more conventional academic outputs. We then consider, secondly, the conceptual and theoretical challenges posed by these 'mappings' of medieval Chester - the textual/figurative on the one hand and cartographic/literal on the other - and how we can try to reconcile these through the processes of integrating textual and visual sources using spatial technologies and the project's web-resource.

Development of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the Sharing and Democratising of Cultural Heritage Data

Anthony Corns, Robert Shaw (The Discovery Programme)

The creation and use of digital spatial data within cultural heritage studies has increased over the past decade. However, the ability to share and reuse this data for further research is limited by technological, semantic and organisational barriers. The development of open standards and technologies has enabled the creation of spatial data infrastructures (SDI) that allow users to discover, evaluate and use spatial data sets and incorporate them into their own research. Much of the effort to date has been to harmonise environmental and security related spatial data. Cultural heritage information experts should adopt and adapt many of the standards established within their research community. This paper explores the requirements and research necessary for the development of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for the sharing and reuse of cultural heritage data, allowing for the efficient understanding and management of cultural heritage.

Digital Human(ist)s in the Making: a forum on Digital Humanities in Irish Postgraduate Education

Francesca Benatti (University College Dublin)

This paper is an interrogation of the wider digital humanities community about the present and future role of Digital Humanities in postgraduate programmes, with a focus on the Irish context. It is based on my experience of teaching Digital Humanities to graduate students from University College Dublin and the University of Limerick as a part of a structured PhD programme. Its aim is to stimulate discussion among conference attendees who are involved in teaching digital humanities, and to create the basis for a network of Irish educators in digital humanities that can foster collaboration, confrontation and representation of our discipline at academic level.

The paper can either be part of a structured panel on digital humanities and education, if other submissions in the area have been presented, or form the beginning of a discussion among interested conference attendees, who can describe their experience as digital humanities educator in a more unstructured format. Their interventions (and mine) will focus on the challenges encountered in setting up our courses, organising access to materials and technologies, delivering complex content with or without face-to-face interaction with the students, and relating with colleagues and project leaders at departmental and interdepartmental level.

BioDes: A Interchange Format for Biographical Information

Jelle Gerbrandy (Gerbrandy Software),  Rik Hoekstra (Institute for Netherlands History)

This paper reports about BioDes: an XML format for describing Dutch biographies. The standard was developed in the context of the creation of a portal for duch biografies ("Het Biografisch Portaal"), in cooperation between 10 participating institutes.

We discuss the context of defining BioDes, the main motivations for defining the the format as it is, and of course, the format itself.

Digital Editions of Medieval Welsh Poetry

Dafydd Johnston (University of Wales), Alexander Roberts (Swansea University)

Presentation of a digital scholarly edition of 14th-century Welsh poetry, www.dafyddapgwilym.net, and a current project to prepare a similar edition of the poetry of Guto'r Glyn.

The Repository that Isn't

K Faith Lawrence (Digital Humanities Observatory), Stephen Yearl (University College Cork), Don Gourley (Digital Humanities Observatory), Hugo Mills (University of Reading), David Tarrant (University of Southampton)

This round-table will consider the question of what we understand repositories to be now, what they may become in the future and some of the issues and practicalities that must be addressed in the move towards the digitised storage and dissemination of resources.

InterPlay: Experiences of Collaboration from Cardiff UK (Collaborative, Real-Time, Distributed, Surrealistic Cinema)

Michael Daley (Cardiff University)

This paper highlights the contribution that Cardiff University has made over the last two years to the concept of Interplay. InterPlay is described as a multifaceted, real-time, collaborative digital performance event that occurs simultaneously at multiple sites throughout the world. Artists and technologists from several institutions synchronously perform and collaborate in real time, utilizing media and technologies of various forms, such as Access Grid®, streaming digital cinema and audio, computer animation, remote MIDI control, motion capture, and interactive distributed virtual reality, and was the brain child of Elizabeth Ann Miklavcic and Jimmy Miklavcic founders of Another Language Performing Arts Company, University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing.

We will demonstrate the software that has been developed to assist the production of Interplay and discuss the use of High Definition video streaming and our experiences of collaboration via the Access Grid. The Access Grid® is an ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and to visualization environments. These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid. We will also discuss the environment that was created to allow us to have a mime artist performing along side 3D animations.

An Online Critical Edition of Wilde's Works

Aoife (Dr) Leahy (Dublin Institute of Technology), Florina (Dr) Tufescu (Dalarna University)

The Oscholars provides a perfect example of a "dynamic network and community of knowledge." It began as a newsletter in 2001 that was published by the Wildean scholar David Rose. Since 2007, The Oscholars hosts a series of journals dedicated to Wilde's contemporaries such as George Moore and John Ruskin as well as to fin de siecle art and the New Woman. The Oscholars is published online by Steven Halliwell of the Rivendale Press. An open access annotated edition of Wilde's works is the next step for The Oscholars. This idea stemmed from identifying a need for annotations of Wilde's works that are both freely available and of a scholarly quality. Online, UCC's Celt Online and the University of Virginia have made some Wilde texts available, but the material is not annotated. We hope to draw on the international pool of scholars already associated with The Oscholars to provide a wide range of perspectives on Wilde Studies. This paper provides a glimpse of the project as it will stand in September 2009. We encourage feedback from our audience in response to some early pages from the project.

The Virtual Manuscript Room

Edward Craft, Zeth Green, Peter Robinson, Jill Russell, Susan Worrall (University of Birmingham)

This paper will describe the Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR) will bring together digital resources related to manuscript materials (digital images, descriptions and other metadata, transcripts) in an environment which will permit libraries to add images, scholars to add and edit metadata and transcripts online, and users to access material. The centrepiece of the VMR will be full digitized manuscripts from The Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts held at Special Collections in the University of Birmingham. This collection, previously unavailable on the web, has been designated as of national and international importance. As well as high-resolution images of each page, the VMR will provide descriptions from the printed catalogue and from Special Collections' own records.

Digitization at the Institute of Netherlands History

Jelle Gerbrandy (Gerbrandy Software), Ineke Huysman (Institute of Netherlands History)

The Institute of Netherlands History (ING) is a scholarly institute engaged in stimulating research into the history of the Netherlands. In 2005 the ING has started the digitization of the Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien (RGP). This the largest national collection of historical source materials in the field of Dutch History, consists of 450 books, and contains collections of letters, descriptions of historical archives, diaries and other historical material. At this point, more than 100 books from the series (70.000 pages) have been digitized and published on the internet. These works are available on http://www.inghist.nl/retro.

In this paper, we want to explain some of the reasons behind our particular approach, and to share some of our experiences with colleagues in the field.

We see our approach as a compromise between rough-and-ready mass digitization and highly edited web publications that include transcribing and encoding all of the source material.

Engaging the General Public in Digitization Projects: Collections of Value and Economies of Scale

Kate Lindsay, Stuart Lee (University of Oxford)

This paper addresses how public-collaboration models within the field of digitisation can provide both research collections of worth and economies of scale. Focusing on the experiences of a recent initiative run at the University of Oxford, the Great War Archive (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa) this paper will outline what the benefits of such collaboration may be, what challenges these projects will encountered, and how future efforts can benefit from such experience.

Archives 2.0 for Endangered Languages: from Diskspace to MySpace

David Nathan (School of Oriental and African Studies)

A digital archive for endangered languages documentation has to deal with the diversity that characterises its field, especially the range of goals, projects, methods, and skills of documenters. There are few conventions for what counts as a documentation, and deposits contain a wide variety of media, materials and formats. We find systematic change over time in protocol metadata (access restrictions on materials) as conditions and attitudes change in the source community. Dealing with protocol presents a significant workload for communities, depositors, archives, and the end-users.

While the price of disk space is plummeting, the demand for human skills is rocketing in this complex and dynamic environment. In response, the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS is taking advantage of developments in social networking to help reduce the burden on the archive staff and to enhance our role in supporting languages and research. The archive is now conceived as a platform for the conduct of sets of relationships and commitments. As a forum for relationships between information providers (the depositors) and information users, using the now-familiar idiom of the Facebook or MySpace page, depositors and requesters can negotiate directly using the archive platform, to achieve more flexible and creative outcomes.

Visualising Europe, 1750-1850

Tania Manca (NUI Galway), Maurizio Bossi (Gabinetto G.B. Vieusseux), Robin Kavanagh (NUI Maynooth)

The aim of our panel session is to present three European projects focused on the relation between images, history, memory, literature and ideas and their reception. The three projects are conceived on the basis of a digital database. We would like to share expertise and recent experience and to underline international links and collaborations. Through the dialogue between the three projects that we will present in the panel we would like set the basis of the creation of a common iconographic database among various countries in Europe in order to impart value to the rich legacy in the history of European civilisation consisting of the vast quantity of images contained in travel books.

Creative Dimensionality Within a Post-Choreographic Perspective

Olubgbenga Taiwo (Unversity of Winchester)

Creative dimensionality within a post- choreographic perspective

My intension in this paper is to introduce my concept of 'Creative Dimensionality' and how this fits into Johannes's conceptual debate concerning the emergence of a post - choreographic cultural practice with its new audio/visual/textual/interactive language. Johannes Birringer initiated a debate on the DANCE-TECH.NET; which congregates an international collection of artists, scientists, theorists and organizations on-line examining the interface between performance practice, media technology and cultural innovation. The subject of the debate is how to define 'The Post-choreographic'. In an attempt to define this new visual language, and offer some new critical tools, I have through the process of my performance practice, arrived at the term 'creative dimensionality'. In a post-choreographic context my predominant performative perceptions with regards to improvisation, shifts from 'goal oriented outcomes' to 'process oriented transformations' with particular regards to how the audience engages with the context of performance. I want to emphasis the word 'pre-dominant' as way counter any simple dualistic readings. This slight perceptual shift, takes the utility of improvisation as an aesthetic tool and moves it towards improvisation as tool that reveals and explores, what Turner and Broadhurst calls liminal space that exists in and of its self.

Words of Power: Emerge, A Language for the Dynamic Control of Live Performance.

Ian Willcock (De Montfort University)

The paper describes the key concepts and formal grammatical structures underpinning the design of a domain specific language (DSL) developed for dynamically specifying the logical choice-relationships between events and cues within live performance. After a brief survey of existing approaches to describing and modelling live performance, both in generic terms and approaches specific to particular genres and styles, the development of a generalised model of performer-activity in live performance is introduced together with logical structures developed from the generic model which inform the language design and allow it to integrate with a wife range of performance traditions and genres. The implementation and application of these ideas in developing the Emerge language is explored through both a formal grammar and a discussion of the choices that had to be made between ease of use for the intended target users and grammatical simplicity. The features of the prototype software and language are briefly described, showing how they might enable artists, both individually and collaboratively, to specify decision-making structures in advance of a performance and participate in shaping a performance as it proceeds.

www.treegrid.co.uk

Patrick Macklin (The Glasgow School of Art)

Originally shown at CCA as part of the project Stage Fright, treegrid took the form of a projected 3d environment and accompanying website. It also incorporated a chip-camera grabbing stills from the space. The online component was user controlled and drew data live from the stock market and weather satellite imagery.

The animation was scripted to home in on each of the 'plots' once a day. Stills from the animation, and from the gallery via the chip camera were uploaded to the website.

Ideally the piece would be re-set so that the 'plot's' could be replanted by new users. This could either be projected or via monitor alongside the web interface.

I'm archiving the project at present, turning the image capture from the chip camera, and screen grabs from the digital environment into movie files for the site. This archive from CCA may or may not be included in any further installations.

Drawing on the Digital: Analysis and Modelling in Architecture and Music

Fiona Smyth, Donal Lennon (University College Dublin)

Within the realms of acoustic theory the overlapping disciplines of architecture and music composition are scientifically evaluated. The research design is inter-disciplinary and capable of bridging theory and practice. It is firmly based on the use of digital technologies which allow for efficient, accurate and replicable procedure. Investigations are focused on the comparative evaluation of virtual and actual data types, the outcomes of which are then applied in the creation of visual and aural models. Data presentation in the form of such a model constitutes a precise, readily accessible and comprehensible record which can then be subjected to further analysis in order to determine the degree of interaction of architecture and music, and to assess the impact of one upon the other within the constraints of that particular context. Data capture, analysis and mapping the site has also revealed the vital importance of preservation of the extant manuscript sources that presently are under threat.

DRAPIer: A database of digital research and projects in Ireland

Paolo Battino and Don Gourley (Digital Humanities Observatory)

DRAPIer (Digital Research And Projects in Ireland) is a database gathering together the rich and varied work in the area of digital humanities that is being carried out by the Higher Education sector in the Republic and Northern Ireland. Launched at the Royal Irish Academy on 13 July 2009, the database currently lists more than 35 projects from virtually all institutions across the island. The Digital Humanities Observatory is looking for any missing projects to submit their information to the database to make this an even more comprehensive resource. 
Projects can be browsed by discipline, institution, temporal periods, and geographic range, amongst others. It can also be browsed by methods used in creating the digital resource, such as text encoding or scanning; metadata formats, such as  Dublin Core or TEI; and content types, such as images or audio recordings. These facets provide a roadmap to the range of digital humanities activities in

Ireland across disciplines, formats, and methodologies.  It is also intended that DRAPIer be used as a resource: as the basis for future collaborations between projects; as a conduit for peer learning; and location that documents expertise in the area of digital humanities in Ireland. 
DRAPIer was built on Drupal, a robust content management framework, and other freely available open-source software. The controlled vocabularies used by DRAPIer to describe project facets are based on those developed for ICT Guides and currently implemented by arts-humanities.net at the Centre for eResearch, King's College London. Refinement of the vocabularies is ongoing, and the DHO is actively contributing to this work. 

Serendipity, Sustainability and Scholarship: Humanities e-Resources for Ireland

Paul S Ell (Queen’s University)

The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis, within the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen’s Belfast has long been the leading developer of strategic electronic resources for use by Humanities scholars with interests in Irish Studies. This paper reviews some of the Centre’s e-resources, examines their impact on scholarship, and discusses sustainability.

A key e-resource developed by the Centre, in collaboration with the University Library and JSTOR, was the development of a digital library of core materials relating to Ireland. The paper will discuss the academic imperatives of this project.

Enhancing Discovery and Sustainability Through a Global Platform: Harnessing JSTOR for Irish Scholarship

Anne Ray (JSTOR)

Beginning in 2006 JSTOR collaborated with the Queen’s University Belfast through the JISC Digitisation Programme to create the Ireland Collection, a digital resource selected from the print holdings of the University Library, which will include the full back runs of 75 journals pertaining to scholarship on Ireland, over 200 rare monographs, and manuscript content featuring diaries, sheet music, and other content types. Using the example of this project, Anne Ray from JSTOR Content Development will describe how institutions and scholarly organizations are levering JSTOR as their platform and collaborator to support the publication and sharing of their content, and to consider vital questions of sustaining digital scholarship. The presentation will describe some possible impacts of placing Irish Studies content in a multidisciplinary, global platform.

New Tools for Irish Scholarship: JSTOR Advanced Technology Research

John Burns (JSTOR)

Using in part the example of the Irish Digital Library project, John Burns from JSTOR’s Advanced Technology Research group will describe JSTOR’s new directions toward creating a dynamic and sustainable research environment aimed at serving scholars and students. He will demonstrate and discuss JSTOR’s research initiatives and partnerships, and how they are helping scholars to more effectively find and use both primary and secondary source materials. In particular we will discuss active projects such as the Data for Research service, the Decapod Project and the Open Annotation project and will touch briefly on a variety of earlier stage projects.

Creating a Digital Scholarly Edition of the British Library's Cotton MS. Vitellius F. v.

Kevin S. Hawkins (University of Michigan)

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library has published an online scholarly edition entitled ‘A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550-1563, by Henry Machyn’. This edition includes a detailed introduction, images of the manuscript, a transcription including supplied text, a modernization of the text into contemporary English, and images of a 19th-century handwritten transcription of the original manuscript. After explaining the role of the Scholarly Publishing Office in promoting new models for scholarly communication, this paper will discuss the construction of this edition: the acquiring of images, creation and proofreading of the encoded text, customization of the interface, and digitization and cataloging of the 19th-century manuscript. Particular attention will be paid to the difficulties created by intellectual property rights.

'Celebrating Wales': Culturenet Cymru and the widening role of digitisation in Wales

Dafydd Tudur (Culturenet Cymru, at the National Library of Wales)

Since 2003, Culturenet Cymru has delivered a range of successful digitisation projects, including ‘Gathering the Jewels’, ‘From Warfare to Welfare’ and ‘Community Archives Wales’. Significant developments in web technology and its availability over the past six years has presented particular challenges to Culturenet's aims of collaboration with community groups and other organisations while adhering to rigorous international standards. This paper will discuss the digital resources created in collaboration with community groups, and evaluate the challenges and successes of Culturenet's work in widening community access and engaging communities in digitisation. It will also outline how Culturenet Cymru might develop its role in the future.

Irish Studies e-Resources

Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis Staff (Queen’s University Belfast)

The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis since its inception in the late 1990s has attracted, in collaboration with other international research centres, more than £8,000,000 in research funding through in excess of 60 grants. The Centre is a leading player in the development of Irish Studies electronic research resources. However, its remit is not simply restricted to a digitisation unit despite significant work in this area. It resides within an academic department – the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology – not, as may be more typical, within Information or Library Services. As a result its interests stretch beyond the development of e-resources to the use of these resources in scholarship and the development of new research methodologies to make best use of e-content.

This poster display highlights four of the Centre’s key projects. First, the Stormont Papers, a record of debates in the Northern Ireland Parliament from its inception in 1921 to Direct Rule in 1972. Second, the Act of Union Virtual Library which contains a variety of materials related to the 1801 Union between Britain and Ireland. Third, a Digital Library of Core Materials on Ireland that, in collaboration with JSTOR, holds more than 600,000 pages of journals, monographs and manuscripts of interest to Irish Studies scholars. Fourth, the Database of Irish Historical Statistics, the first project the embryonic Centre was involved in, which aimed to develop a comprehensive collection of published census statistics from 1821 to 1971 drawn from the printed volumes.

There will be an opportunity for conference attendees to use these resources online during the poster session. In addition traditional publications drawing on these materials will be available for consultation.

The European Science Foundation

The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an independent, non-governmental organisation, the members of which are 80 national funding agencies, research-performing agencies, academies and learned societies from 30 countries. The strength of ESF lies in the influential membership and in its ability to bring together the different domains of European science in order to meet the challenges of the future. Since its establishment in 1974, ESF, which has its headquarters in Strasbourg with offices in Brussels and Ostend, has assembled a host of organisations that span all disciplines of science, to create a common platform for cross-border cooperation in Europe. ESF is dedicated to promote collaboration in scientific research, funding of research and science policy across Europe. Through its activities and instruments ESF has made major contributions to science in a global context.

The ESF covers the following scientific domains:

• Humanities
• Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Medical Sciences
• Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Social Sciences
• Marine Sciences
• Nuclear Physics
• Polar Sciences
• Radio Astronomy Frequencies
• Space Sciences

The ESF stand at DRHA 2009 will give each participant the opportunity to know more about ESF instruments and activities, gather publicity material and meet one of its Science officers in the Humanities remit.

Library Tour: Queen's University

With 1.2M volumes and 2,000 reader seats in a mixture of formal and informal spaces, the newly opened Library at Queen's blends the best features of a traditional library with the latest technology to create a truly 21st century environment for study and research. A member of library staff will introduce delegates to the building and the range of services available.

A tour is available on Monday 7 September between 1.15 and 1.55 and on Tuesday 8 September between 12.45 and 1.15.

Each tour is limited to a maximum of 15 delegates.

Delegates should meet in the PFC foyer where they will be escorted to the new Library