UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Last night saw UCLDH’s first digital excursion of the new term.  We had an afterhours look at the “Growing Knowledge: The evolution of research” exhibition at the British Library.

The exhibition aims to demonstrate the vision for future digital research services at the British Library.  Digital research tools are changing the possibilities of research, extending the boundaries and providing new dynamic ways of interacting with information, yet this poses some challenging questions: How will increasing and complex amounts of data be managed and visualised in the future?  What does this mean for libraries– formerly the ‘gatekeepers’ of research information? Critically, are researchers taking full advantage of the technologies now available for research purposes?  These are important research questions which are the basis of our work at UCLDH.

We had a guided tour of some of the features, and then were able to play with research stations and try out innovative and cutting edge tools and technologies designed to enhance research.

Some highlights included:

• The Sony RayModeler a 360 autostereoscopic display showing a selection of uses gesture controls, and the display is motion sensitive, so just by holding your hand near the device or by moving around the exhibit, you can control the movement of the image, spinning it left or right to get a better look.
• A Microsoft Surface Table containing a digital version of the world’s longest painting, the 19th century Garibaldi Panorama.  4½ feet (1.4 metres) high, painted on both sides and 273 feet (83 metres) long, as you can imagine the painting poses huge challenges for viewing and research in its physical form. Using the virtual version, researchers are able to gather around the surface table, scroll the entire panorama and expand, extract and zoom in on detail.
• The Tweet-O-Meter, designed by our colleagues over at CASA.  The Tweet-O-Meter displays real-time tweeting levels in 9 major cities of the world. It measures the amount of tweets from various locations across the world, updating them every second to give a real time view of Tweets per Minute for each location.
• An animated video wall with interviews with leading experts in the field of digital research.

A major component of the Growing Knowledge exhibition will be evaluating the tools and services on display. Our colleague Pete, part of the Ciber Research Group, will be asking visitors to leave their feedback either at the exhibition or online to voice their views and indicate their interest in future discussions. The Library will also hold discussion groups to explore some of the issues in more depth, for example: How do physical spaces support digital research? Do any of the tools the Library is showcasing help with some of the research problems they encounter? If you would like to be involved in this let us know!

I’ve been thinking about the plight of PhD students, after Claire Ross’ excellent blog entry. I thought it might be useful to consider what might happen at the other end of the PhD. At UCLDH we are part of the UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities who have agreed to contribute to the costs of a Leverhulme Early Career fellowship for a department in the faculty. So if you are a PhD student who is about to finish or has just finsihed your thesis, you might want to think about applying for one of these.

Once again these fellowships are highly competitive, but we would like to encourage applicants to think about working on research topics in Digital Humanities at UCLDH. The Leverhulme deadline is in March, but if you are interested you need to start the process soon. Departments have to prioritise applicants for the internal selection process and completed proposals have to be submitted to the Faculty by 1 Febrary at the latest. So it makes sense to contact us as soon as possible to discuss ideas for your research and how to write the best possible proposal. We at UCLDH know quite a lot about research proposals: we write and read lots of them, so are happy to advise on this, if you can contact us in good time. As usual, please email with informal enquiries: further information will also be posted on the Leverhulme website

Regular readers will know how much we love PhD students here at UCLDH. We can’t get enough of them, almost literally. This time the studentship on offer is for the whole of the department in which UCLDH sits, that’s the iSchool for the benefit of our North American readers. So obviously this is going to be highly competitive, as it will include applicants from other disciplines. But we’d still be very keen to hear from DH applicants. The open evening is also an opportunity to find out more about DIS, though sadly I can’t be there as I’ll be in Paris at a meeting (honest!). But do please get in touch with informal enquiries, if you’d like to.
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UCL Department of Information Studies is a leading centre for research in librarianship, information science, archives and records management, publishing and digital humanities, in one of the world’s top universities. If you are considering doctoral study in any of these areas, we would like to talk to you! We are currently recruiting students to join our doctoral cohort from September 2011. We have a doctoral scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for which we are also inviting applications.

We are holding an open evening on Thursday 25 November 2010 from 5-8pm and we would like to invite you to join us to hear more about doctoral study in DIS and for you to find out about us and ask questions. So that we can order sufficient refreshments, please let us know if you plan to come on 25 November by email to : infostudies-enquiries@ucl.ac.uk.

If you want further information about making an application for doctoral study, please see our research student page.

Please join us on Thursday 21 October for the London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship, at which Dr Stan Ruecker will be presenting his work on designing effective digital environments for reading. ‘In, Around, and Beyond the Electronic Book: INKE designs and prototypes to make working with digital text more enjoyable and rewarding’

Stan is on sabbatical from the University of Alberta, and is a visiting researcher at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. We are lucky to have him here, but he’s soon going to be off on his travels so do come and hear him while you have the chance!

The seminar will be in Room G27 of Senate House, Ground Floor, from 17:30 – 19:30. Full details of other talks in the series can be found on the Institute of English Studies’ webpage

We are pleased to invite you to the next UCL Digital Excursion, which will take place at the British Library on 25 October, 5.30 – 7.30 pm.

By joining this Excursion, you will be the first to experience the “Growing Knowledge: The evolution of research” exhibition – an initiative designed to demonstrate the vision for future digital research services at the British Library. The Excursion will introduce you to a number of features, including digital signage, video demonstrations, interactive welcome animations, an interface touch-table and a prototype “Researcher’s Desktop” application. You will be able to sample each of the tools and applications presented, including some of the latest creations by Microsoft and Hewlett Packard.

The exhibition explores the value of libraries and research in present and future digital times, the use of social networks and social media, and asks questions about the inter-relations and synergies between research and technology.

The programme will be as follows:

• 17.30: one of the curators from the British Library will give an introductory talk about the exhibition.
• 18.00: hands-on time for you to explore the exhibition and try out the digital facilities.
• 18.30: Event closure, with possibility to chat on if you wish.

Refreshments will be provided.

Please note that the CIBER group at UCL is evaluating the exhibition for the British Library, and a researcher, Peter Williams, will hope to informally interview as many people as possible, either at the event or at a later date, about your experiences.

If you wish to attend, please register and bring the printout of the invitation with you on the day. We will be meeting you outside the British Library.

The annual conference of Ireland’s National Academy for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) and the Learning Innovation Network (LIN) took place in Dublin, Ireland on 6-7 October. My colleagues from University College Cork, Dan Blackshields and James Cronin, and I gave a paper at it that addressed some of the conditions that university lecturers and facilitators need to create in order to scaffold ‘integrative learning’ in their students.

Howard Gardner (2009) argued that the synthesising mind will be the most important mind for the 21st century. He suggests that we need to re-think the way we think, and by implication how we learn and teach. An important research topic in the field of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), integrative learning aims to ensure that ’students in higher education can make meaningful connections within and between disciplines, for example by integrating on-campus and off-campus learning experiences, and tying together and synchronising different perspectives and ways of knowing’ (Higgs et al. 2009) .

In the literature, a number of factors are argued to be essential to both the synthesising mind and the fostering of it. These include, inter alia, the importance of critical thinking, the necessity of authentic assessment and learning experiences as well as the role of self- reflective and self-directed learning strategies. Drawing on a sustained, asynchronous conversation that we held in an online workspace during Summer 2010, our paper sought to ask “what is at stake for facilitators of integrative learning?”. In our presentation we focused on the integration of our various disciplinary perspectives and experiences in order to explore the dynamics of disciplinary identity, language and collaboration through the critical frame of integrated learning.

To close, UCL’s new MA/MSc in Digital Humanities was showcased. This will offer students an interdisciplinary programme and the possibility of taking modules in subjects such as Information Studies, Computer Science, Engineering, Archaeology and the Built Environment. The curriculum will be a research-led one that nevertheless enables students to gain significant real-world experience through work placements. This integrative ethos will be further enhanced by the close collaboration that will take place with the facilities offered by UCL Library Services, notably Special Collections, and of UCL Museums and Collections, whilst liaising closely with a variety of world-class, London based libraries, archives and museums within the vicinity of UCL.

Reflecting afterwards on our paper, my colleague Dan Blackshields remarked on the potential of “Digital Humanities to reveal the fissures in disciplinary thinking and enable the learner to give a vigorous shake to their sense of what is real. To paraphrase Brian Greene with regards to the role of art – jarring the disciplinary imagination into imagining new things”. Please do feel free to contact us with your comments and experiences!

Gardner, H., 2010. Building the 21st Century Mind (Gardner in Conversation with Jonah Lerher), Scientific American, March 17th 2009.

Higgs, B, Kilcommins, S. and Ryan, T. (eds.) (2010) Making Connections: Intentional Teaching for Integrative Learning. Cork: NAIRTL.

The London Digital Humanities Group this evening played host to three members of the National Archives staff who shared current developments and future plans for their catalogue.

The photo on the left references one of the key issues highlighted by Director of Technology and Chief Information Officer David Thomas – that of disambiguation.

When a searcher looks for “wellington”, do they mean the boot, the place, the politician, or the traditional English beef dish?

It’s an issue that’s familiar to all cataloguers, and anyone who has tried searching large mixed resources (including the internet). Like all curators of large scale collections, the National Archives has to find automated solutions to improving the organisation and discovery of their 11 million + records.

The new search, due to be launched in March 2011, moves away from clustering results by record series to arranging by period (centuries); geography (continents); type of record (diaries, files, etc.); subject; and, most significantly provides the facility to tag items found in a search to add clarity and precision.

The power of catalogue users will be harnessed to increase the amount of knowledge shared on the records, and one of the impressive things about tonight’s presentation, was this was presented as key – users working with the Archives to improve its records. So many projects present two tiers of record creator / editor – the user, whose content is somehow secondary in nature, and the all-powerful professional cataloguer. It will be interesting to see if there is a greater uptake of the facility for users to tag and add notes because of this partnership approach.

The National Archives is using its existing geographical knowledge and sophisticated algorithms to create some interesting mapping facilities. By combining Ordnance Survey, Geonames.org and Association of British Counties geodata with gazetteers and other information held by the Archives, they are essentially building what Mark Hall, presenting this section of the evening, called a spatial and temporal gazetteer of the British Isles, which, once ready, will be available as open data for others to use.

They have even started to produce sample mashups to inspire creativity in other researchers – click on the “map extras” on Domesday on a map and you can find “Viking places” (i.e. those with names likely to be Norse in origin) or “Crane places” (those whose name suggests the bird).

The final part of the evening was presented by Tom Storrer and provided an overview of the Archives’ work on the UK web continuity initiative. As well as highlighting work done to preserve the 2010 election materials, Tom  showed us government websites from 1997.  Great to see the website from my first London job still up and running and archived for posterity. Amazing to remember we needed more tech skills to add content to those pages than the blog on which I’m posting now!

With many thanks to Dr Williams Library for hosting the event and to London DH Group co-convener and MA LIS student Inga Jones for circulating details.

Image: theirhistory, copyright commons

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on:

Date: Tuesday, 19th October 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This month’s topic is Virtual Research Environments.

The reading is: Alexander Voss, Rob Procter, (2009). Virtual research environments in scholarly work and communications.

Hope to see you there!

If you cannot make this date but are interested in future meetings, you can join the the DDH e-list!