Humanities Computing

NYU and NINCH
NYU Joins the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage

Lorna Hughes

As such, NINCH acts as an advocacy group, a communications and education resource, a forum for discussion and debate among its member organizations, and a catalyst for new networking projects demonstrating collaboration and integration of effort across the cultural community. Through these activities, NINCH is attempting to build a distinct community of organizations which are involved in digitizing and disseminating humanities resources.

The Initiative began in 1993 as a collaborative project of The American Council of Learned Societies, The Coalition for Networked Information and The Getty Information Institute (then known as The Getty Art History Information Program).

NINCH was founded partly in response to the publication of two reports which have become highly significant in the rhetoric surrounding the creation of a National Information Infrastructure. "Humanities and Arts on the Information Highways: A Profile," which was published in September 1994, outlined the case for providing all Americans with electronic access to the nation's cultural heritage and identified the issues and challenges in making this possible. That report was partially a follow-up to the chapter on "Arts, Humanities and Culture on the NII," in the Clinton Administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) 1994 report "The Information Infrastructure: Reaching Society's Goals."

In March 1996, David Green was hired as NINCH's founding executive director. NINCH is now broadening the base of its support, developing its program and agenda, and establishing a broad membership of 65 organizations. This membership consists of a representative group of cultural and humanities computing groups from around the country -- museums, professional organizations such as the Association of Research Libraries and the American Historical Association, arts organizations and humanities computing centers.

New York University has been actively involved in creating digital resources in all aspects of the humanities for some time now, through the digitization initiatives undertaken by many projects at Bobst Library, the Institute of Fine Arts Icon Project, the creation of online teaching resources, and many other initiatives around the NYU community. Therefore, it seemed timely for NYU to join a national initiative which intends to promote and support the creation and use of digital resources in the Arts and Humanities. NYU Libraries became a member through their affiliation with the Association of Research Libraries, and ACF's Humanities Computing Group has joined the policy council of NINCH. This means that NYU will be represented in the setting of policy goals and in planning initiatives for the organization. NINCH membership will also help the new Humanities Computing Group at ACF to work effectively across disciplines and organizations.

Membership in NINCH brings many benefits to the NYU community. One is that it affords the possibility for outreach and collaboration with the global humanities computing community, notably as part of an advocacy group for the arts and humanities. Another is that our membership stresses the importance of including the contributions and the needs of the arts and humanities community in all legislation and policy deliberations concerning our digital future by Congress, government agencies and other institutions (such as universities and museums).

A third benefit is that NINCH is actively exploring new ways for humanists and computer scientists in industry and academia to work together to develop truly effective digital tools for the humanities, and has particular interest in promoting these initiatives as they relate to the Internet2 project. In a project conducted with the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, NINCH helped convene a working group on computers in the humanities and recently produced a report of a roundtable organized by NINCH called "Computing and the Humanities," which has been published by the American Council of Learned Societies (www.acls.org/op41-toc.htm).

NINCH will be in a key position to advise on initiatives which will promote the use of Internet 2 by meritorious applications in the humanities.

In practical terms, NINCH organizes workshops, seminars and talks on many aspects of computing in the humanities, and can potentially bring activities like these to NYU. NINCH advises on funding opportunities for humanities computing projects, and is organizing a seminar on strategies for grant proposals to the Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI2).

NINCH has a committee investigating the development of copyright legislation as it affects educators and researchers. This group provides feedback to the community, and has lobbied extensively for fair use guidelines in education. NINCH now has extensive background and up-to-date information on digital copyright issues and legislation on its web page. A productive series of Copyright Town Meetings held around the nation with ACLS and the College Art Association last year will be repeated this coming year on campuses and at conferences nationwide.

NINCH is also involved in creating a definitive guide to digital resources for the humanities, and has put together a working group to create an international database of online resources for the Arts and Humanities. Participants in this working group come from humanities computing centers and digital networking projects in North America and Europe, including the UK equivalent of NINCH, the Arts and Humanities Data Service (www.ahds.ac.uk). I am pleased to be representing NYU on this project, and I will be reporting on progress in this area in future issues of Connect.

In January 1998, David Green came to NYU to speak at an ACF colloquium. His talk presented a vision of a globally linked digital environment, in which important new bodies of cultural resources are readily created, accessed and preserved. He also discussed some of the technical, social and political issues that must be addressed before this vision can be achieved. At the event, he spoke about NYU's involvement with NINCH. "It is my hope that NINCH can help mobilize humanities computing centers across the country to start working together more synergistically and effectively in projects such as the international distributed database of digital humanities projects," said Green. "This is perhaps the launching pad for both a formal and informal gathering of such computing centers, to help solve problems and work on issues collaboratively in a way they've not done before."

Posted May 18,1998