tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47982856418909664922023-11-16T17:56:26.924+10:00Aus-e-Lit: Collaboration, Integration and AnnotationAus-e-Lit aims to address the eResearch needs of researchers involved in the study of Australian Literature and Australian print culture by enhancing and extending the AustLit web portal.
Watch this space for discussion about the Aus-e-Lit Project and occasional comments on related projects around the world.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-21745976445992213962010-09-09T10:05:00.010+10:002010-09-13T16:01:59.212+10:00Defining and Exploring Networks and Circles with LORE<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >The amount of literature on the study of social networks is massive, having a long history that predates the analyses that are being pursued in this age of Facebook and Twitter. See the Wikipedia entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network#Social_network_analysis">Social Network</a>. Students of book history and print culture might have c</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >ome across studies by Charles Kadushin and others that have explored the social networks and circles of publishing in the United States of America. <span style="font-style: italic;">Books: the Culture and Commerce of Publishing </span>(1981)</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" > draw</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >s deeply on work done in the 1960s and 1970s to identify and define the American intellectual elite. The 1974 book <span style="font-style: italic;">The American Intellectual Elite</span> was reprinted in 2005 with a n</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >ew introduction by Kadus</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >hin, </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >demonstrating the continued relevance of his studies to an understanding of the ways in which books are written, published, sold and</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" > read. To see how widely Kadushin's research extends, see his <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eckadushin/_wsn/page4.html">bibliography</a>.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" ><br />The primary social networks of Australian literature have been well defined in research conducted during the last fifty years, but the validity of these networks and their </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >hidden complexity have not been explored. AustLit data can be used to visualise relationships between people and organisations, but the data model does not extend beyon</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >d fundamental bibliographical descriptions such as "also writes as", "influenced by", "co-author with".<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/images/vis/agentvis.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 550px; height: 425px;" src="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/images/vis/agentvis.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" ><br />Visualisation of these relationships has been achieved by drawing on such connections within AustLit, but LORE promises to extend this by enabling researchers to enhance and add relationships with additional descriptions that can better define the social structure of publishing. For instance, the structure of a publisher or periodical can be enhanced by using terms such as "employed by", "literary editor of", "ac</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >quaintance of", "father of", "mother of" "literary agent of", "mentor of" etc. Settling on the appropriate terms for the study of publishing is not easy and probably would never stop as unique circumstances </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >arise that better describe certain relationships. Nevertheless, creating an "ontology" that lists all possible relationships within a certain social structure is important. The gradual accumulation of such information will ulimately produce a rich relational database that can be searched and analysed in order to better understand the social networks involved in the production and consumption of Australian literature.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" ><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMNkkws82CiIcyhwFqtFY0nDUvoXN8FITY5U14VCpJBTvhlIwUAI5-XzSYWCyX0is7Org1LaB2N_Vz2N7xuRsgAZWC8q_WPoRyT1-t6BGPDLgqZH4_ySTYUTFgY0rUB3CzA0m7yzbw3e92/s1600/Diagram.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMNkkws82CiIcyhwFqtFY0nDUvoXN8FITY5U14VCpJBTvhlIwUAI5-XzSYWCyX0is7Org1LaB2N_Vz2N7xuRsgAZWC8q_WPoRyT1-t6BGPDLgqZH4_ySTYUTFgY0rUB3CzA0m7yzbw3e92/s200/Diagram.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514715076555826946" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >As LORE is refined over the next six months, the possibilities of creating and exploring social networks will be more closely considered. Automatic mining of links between people and organisations has created thousands of compound objects that show undefined relationships between two or more people and organisations. For instance, the diagram at left visualises the many </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >relationships that radiate from the performer, writer and producer, Nat Phillips. Such visualisations suggest the po</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >tential for collaborative refinement of these inferred relationships if individual researchers and groups can add or correct any link in this complex network.<br /><br /><br />The visualisation need not be as complex as the Nat Phillips example. Simply defining the relationship between an</span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMh4beCHcsbvH7x_KzRt6WgOeHVvXDqOHfKR4WessfYAojdFjtKlwePpDkPT8JvoOvNdU-ushCov22JNzFd_P_Jv-lFgLjD69Mzr0OUWTkQ8wpTXNLfOr3uSPn5aFNe_M8u6hDSRRl0cnO/s1600/diagram+2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 108px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMh4beCHcsbvH7x_KzRt6WgOeHVvXDqOHfKR4WessfYAojdFjtKlwePpDkPT8JvoOvNdU-ushCov22JNzFd_P_Jv-lFgLjD69Mzr0OUWTkQ8wpTXNLfOr3uSPn5aFNe_M8u6hDSRRl0cnO/s200/diagram+2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514718299566249586" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" > author and their literary editor adds a link </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" >to the network of Australian print culture, such as this relationship between Thea Astley and Beatrice Davis. Automatically inferring relationships from AustLit data and manually creating relationships using LORE will provide a foundation for future research into the social networks of Australian literature.<br /><br />To see how relationships can be created using LORE, please visit the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/">Aus-e-Lit Project Site </a>or <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit</a>. Links to updated video demonstrations will soon be added, providing more detailed information about all Aus-e-Lit tools. Until then, please visit the current <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/demos.php">demo page</a>.<br /><br />And anyone interested in helping to better define the definitions of relationships between people and organisations in literary or print culture studies .... We'd love to hear from you.<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" ><br /></span></span><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/uqrosbor/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.png" alt="" /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" > </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;" ></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><strong></strong></span>Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-43652148187856025372010-03-30T13:58:00.011+10:002010-03-30T15:30:56.634+10:00Compound Objects<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_r5OjHGAtki4_QFs_bDo8CH_XeyHcXKAsqFk-F7wosOrK269_nZLMSmsfbhMWv3M7CsW2GZGkBIDu56j3MwYV36W__GxfVQXF2SinnvB01PbW6WL9fz0wn6SRVu08iHEShYgOmPidiBe/s1600/Old+Mate+Map.bmp"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ_r5OjHGAtki4_QFs_bDo8CH_XeyHcXKAsqFk-F7wosOrK269_nZLMSmsfbhMWv3M7CsW2GZGkBIDu56j3MwYV36W__GxfVQXF2SinnvB01PbW6WL9fz0wn6SRVu08iHEShYgOmPidiBe/s320/Old+Mate+Map.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454273505551147410" border="0" /></a>With an increasing amount of images and full-text being digitised and delivered by local, national and international institutions, the need to be able to bookmark, relate and describe these resources is becoming more and more necessary. The Aus-e-Lit Project aims to assist researchers by developing tools that extend the specifications and protocols delivered by the <a href="http://www.openarchives.org/">Open Archives Initiative</a>, specifically specifications relating to <a href="http://www.openarchives.org/ore/">Object Re-use and Exchange</a>. For researchers in the field of Australian literary and print culture studies, Aus-e-Lit tools developed from these principles will allow them to gather text, image, video and audio files in their Firefox browser window and realate them to specific fields in an AustLit Record. I'll run through a few examples to demonstrate what I mean.<br /><br />If you're unfamiliar with the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/">Aus-e-Lit Project</a>, follow the link provided for a full description of the project's aims, a number of technical articles, and a few video demonstrations of the tools in action. As the interface is constantly changing, new videos will be produced later in 2010, but, for now, these give a good idea of the basic functions of compound objects and the associated annotation tool.<br /><br />LORE (Literature Object Re-use and Exchange) is the name given to the software that has been developed as an extension to the Firefox browser. A small file can be easily installed in the Firefox "Add-ons" found in the Tools menu of the browser. Once this is done, you are free to bookmark and describe internet resources in as little detail or as much detail as you want. The screen-shot at the top of this posting is a collection of resources (AustLit records, text files and images) available on the internet. These resources have been bookmarked and the user has begun to create relationships between the reources and add metadata to describe each resource in order to gather as much information as they can for future reflection or for sharing with peers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9DdoDLpVbpYq4HliF_1RHesrF3WzkUeaZRvLeWtrJkjZGplf4e77m-ChnwTCeSFS-2MCLTQt3NUNlnMF-gocHKYZ0_mNrAC3Ut87r4RLZ59ls35Lx_J7kiXrkwvHgZ9rO2mS2VbC4vX2/s1600/Metadata.bmp"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 124px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9DdoDLpVbpYq4HliF_1RHesrF3WzkUeaZRvLeWtrJkjZGplf4e77m-ChnwTCeSFS-2MCLTQt3NUNlnMF-gocHKYZ0_mNrAC3Ut87r4RLZ59ls35Lx_J7kiXrkwvHgZ9rO2mS2VbC4vX2/s200/Metadata.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454286594751925250" border="0" /></a><br /><br />By adding metadata derived from <a href="http://dublincore.org/">Dublin Core</a> standards to specified fields, the collection of resources and the relationships between them become more meaningful. Ultimately, users will have the ability to choose whether they want to share this information with others, but the potential for collaborative research on a large scale is very significant.<br /><br />One of the most obvious examples is the creation of social networks around particular periods or cultural groups. At the moment AustLit records limited relationships between people (primarily "is influenced by"), but networks of influence could be created by relating the AustLit records of individuals associated, say, with the <span style="font-style: italic;">Bulletin </span>in the 1890s. The variety of relationships that A.G.Stephens had with writers, publishers, artists could be clearly defined to visualise the networks of influence that determined who was published or reviewed and why. Is it just literary, or are their other factors determined by the various relationships between people. Such an activity could be done collaboratively by small, large and mass groups of contributors, building networks of influence that might begin with A. G. Stephens but merge with other editors, publishers, critics and writers. In collaboration, a better understanding of the print culture networks would emerge quickly, potentially revealing clusters of influence that have escaped notice.<br /><br />Several important contributors to the development of Aus-e-Lit tools will sit on a panel at the annual conference of ASAL, 8-10 July 2010. Over the next few months their experiments will be featured here to demonstrate what is possible as far as the discovery, organisation, description and communication of related internet resources is concerned. Textual transmission, adapatation, artist-poet collaborations, and collaborative interpretation will be some of the themes covered. Please leave a comment if you'd like to join the conversation or visit us at ASAL.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-62307940683785960252010-02-23T10:06:00.007+10:002010-02-23T12:00:07.885+10:00Towards Open Access and Collaborative ResearchWE use the word collaboration quite freely these days and point to collaborative research as a promising direction for humanities scholars to take. But in a field where lone scholars continue to dominate research output with single-authored articles and monographs, there is understandable resistance to growing institutional pressure to collaborate.<br /><br />As those of us who work in the academy know all too well, measurement of research output is closely connected to the trajectory of our careers and so points scored are jealously guarded as tokens of value to be collected and redeemed at times of promotion or institutional movement. But as the potential of large-scale collaborative projects become more possible with the development of tools designed to enable contributions from a widely dispersed collection of scholars, this model of reward has become problematic.<br /><br />The authoring tools being developed by the Aus-e-Lit Project fall right in the middle of this problematic area because of the support they give to multiple contributors from various levels of the academy, the community of independent scholars or, potentially, the general public.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/#annotations">ANNOTATION TOOL</a> will allow users to enhance AustLit records by adding information about a work or an author that would not normally be indexed by AustLit. For instance, information about the role of a literary agent in the publication of a particular edition could be added, providing a foundation for generating networks of influence in the publishing industry. If we can imagine scores of independent researchers contributing such information, cultural fields could emerge from the contributed data that tell us more about the publishing industry than we currently know.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/index.php#compoundobjects">COMPOUND OBJECT AUTHORING TOOL</a> allows users to define relationships between AustLit records and the growing number of disparate resources delivered via the internet by local, national and international archives and libraries. Using this tool a researcher could connect all available digital images and transcriptions of a work to their respective AustLit records and generate a digital archive to which the researcher's colleagues can contribute explanatory and textual notes that help to explain the work's textual transmission, its reception at various times, or its possible meanings in literary and cultural terms.<br /><br />All of this connecting and describing is supported by a format known as <a href="http://www.w3.org/RDF/">RDF (Resource Description Framework)</a> that delivers (currently) the internet resources through a Firefox browser. In this research environment, no images or text are saved, relieving the user of maintaining an archive or worrying about copyright. Ultimately, engagement with digitised archival material through the Aus-e-Lit interface will enrich the archival material by adding enhanced descriptions in <a href="http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Stand-off_markup">stand-off markup</a> that is stored in an Aus-e-Lit repository as RDF. Click on the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/demos.php">Video Demo</a> link to see the tools in action.<br /><br />In the Aus-e-Lit interface all contributions can be identified by author with an associated date and time stamp. Such an environment supports peer-reviewing at a micro-level, allowing a researcher's work to be validated, quantified and assessed. At this early stage of development there is no established reviewing process, but such contributions to knowledge could provide an alternative or a supplement to the conventional article or monograph.<br /><br />A fertile research environment emerges with tools that support the aggregation of disparate resources and annotations that describe these resources and the relationships between them. Such research environments have already emerged in the sciences, but an application in the data-rich environment already provided by AustLit is obvious. Models such as '<a href="http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/">open notebook science</a>' or '<a href="http://www.driver-repository.eu/Enhanced-Publications.html">enhanced publications</a>' or '<a href="http://www.blogger.com/igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2009-1104-200125/boot.pdf">mesotext</a>' are available for AustLit researchers to consider, all of which favour open-source data with crowdsourcing contributions that make the most of publicly funded data and the publicly funded expertise that can contribute analyses.<br /><br />Such models show the promise of Aus-e-Lit tools, but this promise pushes the boundaries of academic reward, publishing, copyright and the potential for collaboration in the near future. As we continue to test those boundaries, the annotation and compound-object authoring tools developed by the Aus-e-Lit Project will make a valuable contribution to the practice and theory of humanities research.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-21161082353763225612010-01-28T15:13:00.004+10:002010-01-28T15:42:56.419+10:00Testing LORE with an Eye on ASAL 2010.Aus-e-Lit development is approaching a very busy time. Members of our testing group are planning small projects that can be supported by annotation and 'compound object' authoring tools (known as <span style="font-weight: bold;">LORE</span>: Literature Object Re-Use and Exchange) that our software engineers, Anna Gerber and Andrew Hyland, are busily 'refactoring' and 'debugging'. A new version of the tool is imminent, but <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/demos.php">video demos</a> of older versions can be seen at the Aus-e-Lit Project page.<br /><br />Our Aus-e-Lit testing group will propose a panel session to the organisers of ASAL 2010, UNSW, 7-10 July 2010. The projects will include explorations of textual scholarship and scholarly editing, adaptation, literary criticism, film studies and the relationship between poets and artists in the production of limited edition artist's books. Issues such as authorship, textual integrity, aesthetics and reception will be discussed with particular attention paid to the way we might talk about these issues within the emerging field of digital humanities. The major themes and issues will emerge through testing and I will report on them here.<br /><br />Over the next few weeks I'll contribute posts that look more closely at the way LORE supports individual or collaborative annotation and guide you through the world of compound objects and the potential of the semantic web for those working with Australian writers, artists, publishers and readers. I'll talk more fully about the foundation of this project in the Open Archives Initiative and speculate where a project such as this might lead in the years to come. Discussion might also lead to proposals for new names for the thing that is currently known as a compound object! Your recommendations on this will be enthusiastically received, but 'Fred' will not be accepted.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-73568896081093676232009-06-16T08:22:00.004+10:002009-06-16T09:22:15.523+10:00Doris Lessing's GOLDEN NOTEBOOKNew technologies promise to support collaborative research and other interpretive activities, and so it's really good when you see a well-structured example appear on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">internet</span>.<br /><br />In an 'experiment in close-reading', seven critics, scholars and creative writers were invited to participate in an online discussion of <a href="http://thegoldennotebook.org/">Doris <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Lessing's</span> novel <span style="font-style: italic;">The Golden Notebook</span></a>. With the approval of the author and publisher Harper Collins, the <a href="http://thegoldennotebook.org/book/p1/">full-text of the novel</a> is provided so that those outside of the chosen group can consider the 'readings' provided by each contributor with easy reference to the page or pages under discussion. The concentration of discussion on particular pages can also be examined in a section that arranges comments per page in descending order.<br /><br />The 'reading' of the novel began on 8 November 2008 and continued for approximately six weeks. Observers have been invited to comment in a <a href="http://thegoldennotebook.org/forum/categories.php">Forum</a> and the chosen readers reflected on their experience in a <a href="http://thegoldennotebook.org/blog/">blog</a>. This is all arranged in a very simple interface that enables visitors to concentrate on the text of the novel and the attached comments.<br /><br />Comments in the <a href="http://thegoldennotebook.org/forum/categories.php">Forum</a> show a mixed reaction to the experiment, some questioning the veracity of the 'reading' being done online and others suggesting the need for readers outside of the English-speaking world. But, despite this criticism, most people who have added their voice to the discussion have been positive. For an online experiment, the small numbers who have posted comments might be disappointing to the organisers, but one might wonder how this could develop as more people become aware of the site's existence.<br /><br />This experiment in close reading provides a very good model for similar initiatives using full-text through the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">AustLit</span> portal. Agreements with authors and publishers will have to be made for contemporary works, but those works out of copyright provide the possibility for trial and experimentation.<br /><br />The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Aus</span>-e-Lit Project will develop new annotation tools to support experiments like The Golden Notebook and will soon invite contributors to participate in an annotation event that centres on <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowWork&workId=C%23%2cb4">The Bulletin Story Book</a> which contains a number of well-known Australian short stories, including Henry Lawson's 'The Drover's Wife', Barbara <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Baynton's</span> 'The Tramp' (a version of 'The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Chosen</span> Vessel') and Arthur <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Hoey</span> Davis' 'On Our Selection' among many other well-known and long-forgotten stories.<br /><br />This event will inform the development of collaborative annotation tools by inviting wide participation and feedback on the technical and conceptual delivery of such a service to researchers in the field of Australian literature. The release of this development model will be announced here and through other <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">AustLit</span> networks in the near future. The prototype will be discussed in a special session at <a href="http://asal2009.anu.edu.au/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ASAL</span> 2009.</a>Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-73378595515407312932009-06-03T09:31:00.005+10:002009-06-03T11:48:43.148+10:00Aus-e-Lit Project Update<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Over the last six months Aus-e-Lit team members have been busy with technical and conceptual development and have appeared at a number of events to spread the news about the tools that will soon enable greater engagement with AustLit data.</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br />Papers have been presented at </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.eresearch.edu.au/programme2008">eResearch Australasia 2008</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">, </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2008/">International Digital Curation Conference 2008</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">, </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.icadl2008.org/">International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries 2008</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">, </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="https://or09.library.gatech.edu/">International Conference on Open Repositories 2009</a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> and </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.mith2.umd.edu/dh09/">Digital Humanities 2009</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">. Copies of these papers have been posted on the Project site - </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/publications.php">here</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">.</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br />The Project's goal is to help <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit </a>users to discover, organise, describe, analyse, collaborate and communicate in a networked environment. This will be achieved by providing a <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/index.php#integration">federated search</a> of selected databases, an <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/index.php#annotations">annotation service</a> and a new tool, <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/index.php#compoundobjects">LORE</a>, that will enable users to create and publish compound digital objects in a variety of presentation forms. You can view a <a href="http://blip.tv/file/2132990/">video </a>of these tools in use that was prepared by Anna Gerber for Open Repositories 2009.<br /><br />In addition to conference presentations, these new tools have been demonstrated to members of the Austlit user community based at the University of Queensland. AustLit personnel and staff members from the <a href="http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/">School of English, Media Studies and Art History</a> have been asked to comment on prototypes of the Aus-e-Lit tools. Feedback on the prototypes has been positive and comments have informed the preparation of a demonstration and workshop at the <a href="http://asal2009.anu.edu.au/">annual conference</a> of the <a href="http://asaliterature.com/">Association for the Study of Australian Literature</a>.<br /><br />In consultation with members of research communities active in the field of Australian literary studies, the project team is preparing several examples that will be used for demonstration at ASAL and beyond.<br /><br />The project has attracted the interest of Professor Paul Eggert who has a considerable international reputation in the field of scholarly editing. Professor Eggert is currently working on a major scholarly edition of the works of the colonial Australian poet, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=A%23%29B">Charles Harpur</a>. Harpur's poetry exists in manuscript, periodical and book versions that reveal significant variation due to the poet's constant revision towards a collected edition that failed to appear during his lifetime. An <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/v00003.pdf">edition </a>of Harpur's poetry was prepared after his death, but severe editorial intervention created texts that depart significantly from the last known manuscript versions. The Aus-e-Lit project is using the case of 'The Creek of the Four Graves' to develop tools to assist collaborative scholarly editing. You can see a video of the basic structure of the prototype <a href="http://maenad.itee.uq.edu.au/lore/U21anno.html">here</a>.<br /><br />Discussion with teachers of Australian literature in EMSAH has isolated a few texts that can be used to develop tools that assist collaborative analysis of literary works. Henry Lawson's well-known short story 'The Drover's Wife' will be used as a test-case to investigate the benefits of collaborative annotation. Published in <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/bulstor.pdf"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Bulletin Story Book</span></a> in 1901, its appearance in this book enables discussion of other texts such as Barbara Baynton's 'The Tramp' and Arthur Hoey Davis' 'On Our Selection' and an exploration of the literary culture of the 1890s that centres on writers whose work appeared in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Bulletin </span>during that decade.<br /><br />The project team has also been investigating the benefits of online text analysis tools like those offered by <a href="http://portal.tapor.ca/">Tapor </a>or demonstrated at the <a href="http://libxml1a.unl.edu/cocoon/tokenxcather/index.html?file=../xml/base.xml">Willa Cather Archive</a>. Over time and in consultation with AustLit users we'll be testing these tools and will direct users to the best of them so that AustLit research communities can take full advantage of the increasing amount of full text freely available on the web. In the near future the project will also offer data visualisation tools to support 'distant reading' of Australian literary history by drawing on the rich data source collected by AustLit.<br /><br />Such visualisation will potentially help projects such as Professor David Carter's '<a href="http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=58078&pid=24596">America Publishes Australia: Australian Books and American Publishers, 1890-2005</a>.' Evidence accumulated during this project could potentially enhance AustLit records by providing information not normally indexed by AustLit: literary agents; publisher's representatives; editors; print runs; dustcover images; comprehensive bibliographical descriptions etc. Examples from this project will be developed to demonstrate how the accumulation of such data might be analysed and re-used for other research questions.<br /><br />The potential for the re-use of digital objects is being explored with the help of AustLit's <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/BlackWords">Black Words Research Community</a>. Black Words team members are drafting a variety of thematic trails that can be created by using LORE to collect, organise and present web-based digital objects. These trails will eventually be delivered through the Black Words page and will inform the development of style sheets for other types of presentations from slide shows to illustrated essays. Of course, our thinking is often influenced by the <a href="http://nines.org/exhibit_list">exhibits </a>now accumulating at NINES.<br /><br />Following the forthcoming demonstration and workshop at ASAL, we hope to enagage more users with the various prototypes in order to prepare for a full usability study in 2010. We welcome comment at any time via this blog or by email to the project manager, Roger Osborne: <a href="http://www.blogger.com/r.osborne@uq.edu.au">r.osborne@uq.edu.au</a>.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:11;" ><span style=""></span></span></span>Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-922957166109250442008-12-12T09:40:00.003+10:002009-06-03T11:46:34.203+10:00Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary CultureThe <a href="http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=20">Resourceful Reading Conference</a> was held at the University of Sydney on 4-5 December.<br /><br />The conference brought together researchers from fields such as literary studies and mathematics , librarians, database managers, programmers and publishers.<br /><br />The keynote speakers, Professor <a href="http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/hss/staff/craighugh/index.html">Hugh Craig </a>from the University of Newcastle's <a href="http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/groups/cllc/">Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing</a> and <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/emsah/index.html?page=17651&pid=20547">David Carter</a>, Professor of Australian Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Queensland, set the tone for a highly productive meeting. Professor Craig's discussion of high-level data analysis supported by computational stylistics was complemented by Professor Carter's reflection on the emergence of 'new empiricism' from the institutional dominance of 'theory' in recent decades.<br /><br />Under the banner of 'new empiricism', the conference provided a forum for archive-based approaches to the study of literary history and the 'distant reading' enabled by computer analysis of large amounts of data. At one extreme Kathie Barnes (paper delivered in her absence by Paul Eggert) and Roger Osborne discussed their explorations in the papers of David Malouf and Kylie Tennant. At the other, the collaboration between Julieanne Lamond and Mark Reid showed the possibilities of <a href="http://conflate.net/inductio/2008/06/visualising-reading/">data visualisation</a> based on library borrowing records from Tim Dolin's <a href="http://www.australiancommonreader.com/">Australian Common Reader</a>. Between these two extremes within 'new empiricism', a number of research projects were discussed at the conference, demonstrating the variety of new empirical approaches currently operating within the field of Australian literary studies.<br /><br />These included demonstrations of developments within databases such as <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit</a>, <a href="http://www.ausstage.edu.au/default.jsp?xcid=27">AusStage</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.com/a/">APRIL , </a>Ken Gelder's Colonial Popular Fiction Digital Archive and Pat Buckridge's plans for an Australian version of the British <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/">Reading Experience Database</a>.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-16486949403197384072008-11-03T09:18:00.004+10:002008-11-03T12:03:45.203+10:00NINES<a href="http://www.nines.org/index.html">NINES </a>is the acronym for Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship, a ground-breaking digital project hosted by the University of Virginia. NINES aggregates a large collection of <a href="http://www.nines.org/contributors/projects.html">digital projects</a> devoted to the 'long nineteenth century' by indexing their content and providing a comprehensive searching and authoring facility through the NINES interface. From the beginning of 2009, NINES will also support an 'exhibit builder', enabling users to arrange and publish the items they discover in annotated bibliographies, course syllabi and illustrated essays.<br /><br />The NINES <a href="http://nines.org/collex">Collex Interface</a> offers an excellent model for the development of Aus-e-Lit. The initial federation of selected databases in the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/">Aus-e-Lit Project</a> could be presented to users in a way similar to that employed by NINES, but the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF">FRBR</a> bibliographic model employed by AustLit will remain the foundation for the records of individual works. So, too, the new interface will be built on AustLit foundations. For example, to see how AustLit currently represents Patrick White's <span style="font-style: italic;">Voss </span>click <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/common/samples/voss.html">here</a>. AustLit users can get to such records through Quick, Guided and Advanced Searches, producing a result that will look something like <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/common/samples/TypicalSearch.html">this</a>. Aus-e-Lit programmers are currently working with the current AustLit interface and the selected databases to provide the best interface for the display of federated data. The first versions will be tested in December and trialled throughout 2009.<br /><br />The Aus-e-Lit team is looking forward to the appearance of the new version of Collex which will include an 'exhibit builder'. <a href="http://nines.org/exhibits">Example exhibits</a> have been mounted on the NINES web-site, providing a preview of what the exhibit builder can do, but it will be informative to see how the collection of exhibits grows after the tool is released. The collaboration or interaction of the NINES community is essential for the growth and enrichment of metadata that links and describes digital items from the many contributing projects. The collection and organisation of digital objects combined with the enrichment of keywords and annotations will build an increasingly rich infrastructure of data for present and future researchers of nineteenth century literature and culture. With its origins in the 'long nineteenth century', Australian literature has a lot to contribute to knowledge of the period. The current stage of development will make it difficult to offer the stability required by NINES to function within its aggregated community, but a future partnership could be considered, providing Australian literature a stronger position in digital communities devoted to the study of nineteenth century literature and culture.<br /><br />With its ability to collect, describe and publish digital objects from a wide variety of peer-reviewed projects, NINES is one of the most significant examples for the development of tools for the study of literature in a digital environment. The technical and conceptual foundations of the project that are outlined in a collection of '<a href="http://nines.org/about/readings.html">Related Readings</a>' offer an important grounding in the future of literary studies in a digital world. As a base for the 'promotion of new modes of criticism and scholarship promised by digital tools' such as Collex, <a href="http://www.juxtasoftware.org/">Juxta </a>(the project's text collation program) and <a href="http://www.ivanhoegame.org/">Ivanhoe </a>(an online play-space for textual interpretation), NINES is an essential book-mark for any browser.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-51630307027277828092008-10-28T12:41:00.004+10:002008-10-29T12:06:01.967+10:00Electronic Knowledge Sites and Hyper NietzscheThis posting comes to you from a desk somewhere at the University of Queensland, composed on a screen that delivers, at my request, large quantities of information every week from web-sites across the world. The homepage that appears every morning after the browser boots up is <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">http://www.austlit.edu.au/</a>, offering a portal to the world of Australian literature with information on authors, their works and references to a plethora of reviews, essays, books, films, performances and many other phenomena. In most cases, the information is contained within the AustLit web-site, but occasionally I am directed out of that container to web-sites hosted elsewhere.<br /><br />Working on the Aus-e-Lit Project frequently makes me consider the possibilities of my position in front of the screen supported by a suitable machine. I am certainly not the first to consider these possibilities. In his important book <span style="font-style: italic;">From Gutenberg to Google</span> (2006) Peter Shillingsburg dreams of an electronic resource that provides everything a literary scholar could hope for:<br /><blockquote>[I]f one had comprehensive scholarly compilations of the documents of a knowledge area, beauty of presentation, imaging, collation on the fly, constant self-check for authenticity, writer's tools for annotational linking, multiple forms of output (to screen, to print, to XML, to WORD, to TEX, to PDF, to others), sound, motion, decent speed, decent holding capacity, user-friendly interface, quick navigation to any point (three clicks or less), and scholarly quality - and if one had these capabilities in authoring mode, augmenter's mode, and reader's mode, in a suite of programs with similar interfaces all workable on multiple platforms so that they were not too difficult to learn or to port from one set of equipment to another, and so that the tools developed for one archive could be easily adapted for use with another archive - then we would have something to crow about. (91)</blockquote>Something to crow about, according to Shillingsburg, because we only have 'multiple experiments that rarely talk to each other and are not easily transferable. The dream that Shillingsburg describes is what he has called an 'electronic knowledge site', a collaborative enterprise that will outlive its originators by providing a resource that 'can grow and develop through changes in intellectual focuses, insights, and fads and accomodate new knowledge in configurations that may augment or correct rather than replace the work that went before.' (95) Shillingsburg's book is worth a reading not only for this view of possibilities, but also for its acknowledgement of the economic, technological, physical and cultural realities of scholarly work.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Gutenberg to Google</span> is also important for its direction to digital projects in Australia, the USA, Great Britain and Europe. One of the most interesting is the <a href="http://www.hypernietzsche.org/base.html">HyperNietzsche Project</a> which will soon be available on-line as NietzscheSource. Delivering digital images of manuscripts, books and articles and supporting the authorship of essays, commentary and critical editions, NietzscheSource promises to be an important example for any project that aims to deal with print-based modes of expression. Of particular interest to Aus-e-Lit in its third stage of development will be the organisational structure of a 'dynamic ontology' that maintains a record of the complex relationships between digital objects while at the same time enabling linear sequencing according to genetic, chronological or thematic criteria.<br /><br />A core group of strong and enduring digital projects will inform the development of Aus-e-Lit. The <a href="http://www.nines.org/">NINES </a>project at the University of Virginia is already informing the technical and conceptual thinking of the Aus-e-Lit team. When it comes on-line in the near future, NietzscheSource will offer another significant inspiration as we move towards an idea that's not far removed from Peter Shillingsburg's notion of an 'electronic knowledge site'.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-72447749637720220062008-10-17T13:11:00.004+10:002008-10-17T14:07:07.741+10:00PynchonWikiThis <a href="http://www.pynchonwiki.com/">PynchonWiki </a>has little to do with Australian literature, but it demonstrates the possibilities of collaborative annotation.<br /><br />The PynchonWiki was established soon after the publication of <span style="font-style: italic;">Against the Day</span> in November 2006. Between that time and June 2007 more than two hundred contributors annotated the book by page and topic, accumulating more than 450,000 words about Pynchon's long and complex book.<br /><br />This phenomenon attracted the attention of two academics who have published <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Econtent=a791548564%7Edb=all%7Eorder=page">'Literary Sleuths Online'</a> to describe the events and assess the results. The article presents the PynchonWiki as an exemplary example of e-Research collaboration, but acknowledges some 'weaknesses of this voluntary, amateur and low-tech type of online collaboration'. Compared to Weisenburger's 1988 companion to the earlier novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Gravity's Rainbow</span>, the PynchonWiki offers considerably more information and the ability to link to a large variety of digital resources with a quality of scholarship that can be revised and expanded at will. While the quality of scholarship frequently lags behind Weisenburger, the collaborative venture is an admirable example intense engagement with a single text that 'is bound to encourage learning among contributors'.<br /><br />Any discussion of open and collaborative annotation will ultimately lead to the question of quality, but the example of the PynchonWiki demonstrates that a carefully managed resource can produce positive and useful results for a community of enthusiastic readers.<br /><br />The Aus-e-Lit annotations services will be supported by a large amount of full-text in the <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/oztexts/austlittexts.html">AustLit Primary Source Texts</a> hosted by SETIS. The ability to annotate by line or word in a searchable dataset across two hundred years of Australian literary history will provide an unprecendented resource that will grow and evolve with time, leaving a record of individual and community reading that will inform general readers and researchers into the future. When the Aus-e-Lit annotation services come online during 2009 calls for volunteers will be broadcast and some specific annotation events will be coordinated.<br /><br />I'm sure that such events will result in significant discussion about the quality and benefits of collaborative annotation in Australian literary studies.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-1969184651682639782008-10-17T09:21:00.002+10:002008-10-17T10:37:36.286+10:00Scholarly Editing and Digital EditionsAmong the ARC Discovery Projects for 2009 announced yesterday was a major scholarly edition of the work of colonial poet Charles Harpur. Chief investigators are Professors Paul Eggert and Elizabeth Webby and Dr Peter Robinson. The Project aims to make all the manuscript versions of Harpur's poems available for study through <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/">SETIS</a>, and to support literary criticism, teaching and collaborative editing through a project web-site, providing a model for future projects. <br /><br />This project will add to the large body of work that has been produced at the <a href="http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/ASEC/">Australian Scholarly Editions Centre</a> (ASEC) under the direction of Professor Eggert. Ten volumes in the Academy Editions of Australian Literature were completed by 2007 and eight volumes in the Colonial Texts Series had appeared by 2004, a significant achievement in textual criticism and scholarly editing. Work on these editions have informed a number of articles on editorial theory, many of which have appeared in major journals in the field such as <a href="http://www.mith2.umd.edu/research/projects/sts/html/journal.php">Textual Cultures</a> and <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/bsuva/sb/">Studies in Bibliography</a>.<br /><br />In addition to the print volumes, ASEC has supported investigations into the development of electronic editions, hosting editions of Marcus Clarke's <a href="http://web.srv.adfa.edu.au/JITM/HNL/Annotation_Viewer.html">His Natural Life</a> and Ned Kelly's <a href="http://web.srv.adfa.edu.au/JITM/JL/Annotation_Viewer.html">Jerilderie Letter</a> as experimental models. Eggert summed up the technical and theoretical issues of these projects in <a href="http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/20/4/425?ijkey=ISGJQkEkAXrxTOM&keytype=ref">'Text-encoding, Theories of the Text, and the "Work-Site"'</a>.<br /><br />The scholarship and theoretical foundations of these scholarly editions will strongly inform the development of annotation and authoring services at Aus-e-Lit. Similar to Eggert's notion of the 'work-site', the tools developed by the Aus-e-Lit Project will support active engagement with database records and available full-text records, helping to foster collaborative research in the fields of Australian literary studies, book history and print culture.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-78102193055450493802008-10-16T10:03:00.004+10:002008-10-16T11:23:54.273+10:00SETIS: Sydney Electronic Text and Image ServiceOne of the major problems for students, researchers and general readers of classic Australian literature is the unavailability of texts in print form. Of course, an enthusiastic reader could probably find copies of many of these books in second-hand and antiquarian bookshops, or borrow them from their local council or university library, but such opportunities are limited and the condition of ancient or well-worn books do not make suitable reading copies. In an attempt to make important works of Australian literature more accessible and to help preserve the material copies that are still available, the Sydney Electronic Text and Images Service (<a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/index.html">SETIS</a>) has supported a large-scale digitization project that is a magnificent resource for present and future readers and researchers.<br /><br />Among the many texts that have been digitized at SETIS, more than one hundred are sponsored by AustLit, selected on the basis of academic surveys and advice. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the 1930s, the <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/oztexts/austlittexts.html">AustLit Primary Source Texts</a> form a core group of texts that have significantly contributed to Australia's literary history. The first books of many well-known writers are included, but neglected writers such as Chester Cobb are also represented in the list. Important nineteenth century women writers such as Ada Cambridge, Rosa Praed, 'Tasma' and Catherine Martin are included and the series of <span style="font-style: italic;">Bulletin </span>anthologies edited by A. G. Stephens provide a glimpse of the literary content of that famous weekly newspaper. Primarily using first editions as a source for transcription and delivering text to readers in PDF format, SETIS draws readers as close as possible to the original publication without providing a digitized image of each page.<br /><br />SETIS enables searching within and across the texts it hosts, but Aus-e-Lit plans to provide a richer searching infrastructure for the AustLit Primary Source Texts, linking their data to that held within AustLit and other <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/">target databases</a>. In the next three months testing will begin on the first phase of federated searching and a demonstration version will be available for feedback by July 2009, just in time for the annual <a href="http://asaliterature.com/">ASAL </a>conference.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-74155053711204318112008-09-16T12:25:00.004+10:002008-09-16T13:30:49.810+10:00Northbridge History ProjectToday, Northbridge is home to the hospitality and entertainment sectors of inner-city Perth. Originally a series of interconnected swamps, the area has grown in tandem with the progress of the city and state. People from many parts of the world were attracted to the area, creating a diverse population that continued to grow until the 1970s when a proposed freeway led to a residential decline. The area has since developed into the entertainment precinct for which it is now known, once boasting 'more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere'. But continued development in the 1990s led to a concern that the area was losing its unique character. This influenced the state government's decision to sponsor an initiative to investigate and preserve the history of the area.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.northbridgehistory.wa.gov.au/index.cfm">Northbridge History Project</a> (NHP) is one of the outcomes of this initiative. Consulting with government, communities and individuals, the NHP aims to collect images, documents and oral testimony related to the locality, making them available to the public through an Electronic Archive. To date, the archive contains three displays, 123 documents, 663 images and 47 oral histories, providing a collection of material that provides a rich introduction to the growth of the area.<br /><br />It is planned that the archive will be used for education and tourism purposes and so a substantial amount of secondary resources are available as well as curriculum materials for use in schools and universities. Contributions from government, community groups and individuals are actively sought, making this a significant collaborative project on many levels. As an example of what can be done for a specific locality the NHP is first rate. Such projects might support investigations into the literary culture of particular areas and provide a wonderful context for the interpretation of setting. A web-site devoted to David Malouf's Brisbane is high on my wish list.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-77849057113357152042008-09-12T12:25:00.004+10:002008-09-12T13:25:52.957+10:00Australian Common ReaderInterest in readers and reading continues to grow, supporting a number of superlative book-length studies, such as Jonathan Rose's<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes</span> (2001) and databases such as Britain's <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/">Reading Experience Database</a>. Contributions to the field have also come from Australia with a number of studies in the various volumes of the <span style="font-style: italic;">History of the Book in Australia</span>, Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa's survey, <span style="font-style: italic;">Australian Readers Remember</span>, and the very impressive database <a href="http://www.australiancommonreader.com/">Australian Common Reader</a>.<br /><br />This last is of most interest to digital humanities because of the access it gives to the reading habits of ordinary Australians in the nineteenth century. Using data extracted from the library records of various schools of arts and mechanics' institutes, users are able to search for particular titles and observe the lending patterns at each library, including the identification and description of borrowers. For example, if you were to search on Joseph Conrad's <span style="font-style: italic;">Typhoon </span>you would find that the novella was borrowed by five men and two women at the Rosedale Mechanics' Institute and that their occupations were tailor, teacher, home duties, doctor, accountant and surveyor. For each of the identified borrowers one click will bring up their entire borrowing record, providing a comprehensive listing of the reading habits of Australians according to occupation. General conclusions from this limited dataset must be cautious, but it shows a potential map of Australian reading habits that will become richer and richer as more library records are added.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.australiancommonreader.com/">Australian Common Reader</a> also provides a search facility for two extensive nineteenth century diaries, Annie Baxter Dawbin (1834-1868) and William Bunn (1830-1901). These features will be enhanced in the future with a new section that proposes to address the impact of newspapers and magazines using Toni Johnson Woods' list of fiction serials in Australian periodicals.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.australiancommonreader.com/">Australian Common Reader</a> welcomes contributions to the database from researchers across Australia. They are actively seeking records from the following sources:<br /><ul><li>Australian Mechanics Institutes, Literary Institutes, and Schools of Arts</li><li>public libraries</li><li>commercial subscription or circulating libraries</li><li>private libraries and collections</li><li>book clubs</li><li>booksellers records</li><li>newspapers and magazines</li><li>diaries or letters</li></ul>Anyone holding such records or those with research projects on these institutions would benefit from a close look at the <a href="http://www.australiancommonreader.com/">Australian Common Reader</a>.<br /><br />Tim Dolin's essays (usefully hosted by the web-site) demonstrate that Australian readers were more interested in British fiction than in the emerging writers of Australian fiction. But such evidence helps us to better understand how Australian writers, readers and publishers positioned themselves in a nation filled with imported books and magazines.<br /><br /><br /><em><br /></em>Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-71737366995101317662008-09-12T08:23:00.000+10:002008-09-12T09:00:12.056+10:00Australian Newspapers BetaThe National Libraries of Australia recently launched <a href="http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home">Australian Newspapers</a> in a beta version. The project aims to digitise more than a dozen major newspapers from Australian capital cities, ranging in date from 1803 to 1954. Although the project is in a very early stage with limited coverage so far it will prove a significant resource for the study of Australian literature.<br /><br />I conducted several searches on authors I am familiar with from my own research to see what sort of new information emerged. I'm particularly interested in Vance Palmer because of his dual role as a 'man of letters' and as a writer of popular fiction. Not only do you find reports of his radio addresses from the 1940s in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Canberra Times</span>, but a number of serial versions of his early novels are also found in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Argus</span>. The latter is particularly important because until now they had escaped the notice of AustLit indexers. For research on working writers, literary criticism, book news, readers and reading, Australian Newspapers is and will be an important resource.<br /><br />The digitised images are quite clear and searches take you directly to the article in which key words appear. The text has been passed through an OCR process, but the results are generally quite poor. To address this shortcoming Australian Newspapers invites (and enables) users to make corrections to the full text. While this will never bring the full text to perfection, I imagine that well researched authors and topics will result in cleaner texts.<br /><br />The coverage of Australian Newspapers is very patchy at the moment, but as more and more newspaper issues are added to the database, search results will become richer and researchers will get a better idea of the complex networks of Australia's literary culture and the extent to which working authors spread their work across the nation.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-56750652870102031102008-09-10T10:22:00.000+10:002008-09-10T11:08:28.623+10:00Digital Humanities: Past present and FutureOn 2 September the Digital Humanities Symposium was hosted by the University of Western Sydney. A relatively small number attended the event, but the presentations and discussion were interesting and relevant to Aus-e-Lit<br /><br />Willard McCarty talked about the Dictionary of Words in the Wild <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fdictionary.mcmaster.ca%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFrqEzcgW2gxs0WULJs8ZaM5LbOV5cRwow">http://dictionary.mcmaster.ca/</a> and Paul Arthur talked about spatial history with particular reference to the Northbridge History Project <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.northbridgehistory.wa.gov.au%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFrqEzdlCI-maFh9WZFnU950mx9YDYyy8w">http://www.northbridgehistory.wa.gov.au/</a> . Ien Ang talked about using the web-site DiverCities <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Facl.arts.usyd.edu.au%2Fthreecities%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D25%26Itemid%3D37&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFrqEzdKSpItPqckDVJ7q2pV7goc8McALA">http://acl.arts.usyd.edu.au/threecities/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=37</a> to facilitate intercultural dialogue. Andrew Murphie talked about open access and the rise of alternative forms of publication, noting the division between tradition and ‘non-hierarchical forms of authority’ See <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.andrewmurphie.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFrqEzcuT5Ma1q3P3BIekaLhFeN9LDFZrw">http://www.andrewmurphie.org/</a> for more. And Leonie Hellmers talked about her new role at <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.intersect.org.au%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFrqEzdjklbtOgnlyKA70wTyxxZeTtE4_w">http://www.intersect.org.au/</a> .<br /><br />In the spirit of these projects, the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/projects/aus-e-lit/">Aus-e-Lit</a> project aims to contribute to the development of digital humanities in Australia with its collaborative integration and annotation services. <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit </a>has already built a strong foundation of collaborative research by supporting more than a dozen <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets">Research Communities</a>. The expansion of digital services provided through the Austlit interface will further support collaborative research in these projects and, hopefully, lead to the organisation of new research communities that will benefit from the Aus-e-Lit initiatives. In turn, new collaborations will contribute new ideas, assisting the Aus-e-Lit team to develop a service that will assist researchers in the fields of Australian literature and print culture for many years to come.<br /><br />In the coming weeks and months, this blog will review many old and new digital projects to discover the depth and quality of digital humanities in Australia and to compile a list of web-sites that might inspire other researchers to embark on their own digital projects. Some of these will focus on literature, but many will cross disciplines, providing a view of the past and present that is relevant to all.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4798285641890966492.post-44100458727058137052008-08-28T13:36:00.000+10:002008-08-28T13:46:59.647+10:00Welcome to Aus-e-LitThe Aus-e-Lit Project is an initiative of <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit: the Australian Literature Resource</a> and the <a href="http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/%7Eeresearch/">UQ eResearch Lab</a>. The Aus-e-Lit project is a <a href="http://www.pfc.org.au/bin/view/Main/NeATaustlit">NeAT-funded</a> project that aims to address the eResearch needs of researchers involved in the study of Australian literature and Australian print culture. We welcome any comments or suggestions from the community and will use this space to contribute to ongoing conversations about the development of humanities computing.Roger Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12791573060821606229noreply@blogger.com0