Session Title:
International Strategic & Policy Issues in Networking Digital Resources in
the Humanities
Session organizers:
Lorna
Hughes, Humanities Computing Group, New York University
David
Green, National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
Session Presenters:
Chuck Henry, Rice University
Stan
Katz, Princeton University
David
Green, National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
Lorna
Hughes, Humanities Computing Group, New York University
This session will engage
the audience in a discussion of strategic issues for implementing an integrated
digital environment for the humanities. While emphasizing the overview or big
picture of developments as a whole, the session will be keyed to specific
initiatives as examples for envisioning the future. A key component to each of
the presentations will be the international extensibility of models, strategies
and practices.
The essential challenge
for all of those engaged in networking cultural heritage is to create a system
that is deeply useful through the integration and management of multiple
approaches and rich divergence across a very broad sector, while creating a
network in which “intellectual needs shape technical solutions.”
The National Initiative
for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) is a diverse coalition of over 90
organizations--based in the United States although with international
membership--created to assure leadership from the cultural community in the
evolution of the digital environment. Over the last 5 years, NINCH has
established a large body of work in support of this goal, including initiatives
in the following areas:
* Educating
policymakers, the cultural community and the public about the critical
importance of translating the vision of a connected, distributed and accessible
collection of cultural knowledge into a working reality;
* Creating a
platform for the community to collaborate in sharing our ideas, resources,
experience and research, learning from each other in order to advance the goal
of an integrated, distributed body of cultural material accessible to all; and
* Providing a
framework to develop and advance projects, programs and partnerships to benefit
the cultural community.
NINCH has identified many
challenges and opportunities facing institutions involved in creating a network
of cultural heritage organizations for the digital age. Museums, libraries,
archives, academic institutions and organizations representing the arts in all
media are all involved in developing strategies that will help create a
sustainable, long-term digital infrastructure.
Panelists in this session
will represent organizations that have worked with NINCH in pursuit of this
goal, and who will share their experience in developing common goals and
achievements and identifying strategies for museums, archives, libraries and
academic institutions. This session is co-sponsored by NINCH and NYU. NYU as an organization has worked
closely with NINCH on a number of initiatives over the last 4 years, and this
session will examine ways that working collaboratively with NINCH has
facilitated the integration of technology in the Humanities at NYU.
There are many
interconnected factors to be included in any strategic plan for creating an integrated
digital environment for the humanities. We indeed to address the following
issues during this presentation:
Speaker: David Green, Executive Director, NINCH
An overview of strategies
developed to date for engaging a very broad community with different
perspectives and work practices in developing a common agenda. How is this
extensible internationally? What are the public policy issues here, for one
country and across countries, and how important are they? Which advocacy tools
are needed to educate funders and others about our needs? What examples are
there for gathering and presenting best examples of our collective work to
date?
2. New
Operating/Business Models
Speaker: Stan Katz, Princeton
Research, development and
implementation of necessary institutional change is crucial, but how do we best
do it, from implementing new technology infrastructure to developing new roles
and new operating/business models across universities, libraries, archives,
museums and arts and media centers?
This presentation will
refer to a joint inititative developed by NINCH and CLIR to address some of
these challenges facing organizations, and an exploration of the strategies
they need to develop in order to create, use and share long term, sustainable
digital resources
Speaker: Chuck Henry, Rice University
Developing with computer
and information scientists radically new kinds of tools and environments for and
by scholars, teachers, curators and artists that respond to their needs and
ways of working. Humanists need to take the lead in ensuring that
“intellectual needs shape technical solutions.”
This presentation will be an overview of the NINCH project to determine what the humanities should be doing to take a more activist and thoughtful role in using and creating computing technology. This work would ultimately be able to contribute to the creation of what might be called an "Humanities Informatics," a study of how the humanities create and use knowledge, that could itself be part of a needed study of the broader history, philosophy and sociology of the arts and humanities, which, unlike the sciences, it has never had.