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Virtual Research Environments <strong>in</strong> the Humanities: A Way to Address Doma<strong>in</strong>-Specific
Needs
A variety of research has emphasized the development of virtual research environments, or VREs, for
the humanities as one potentially useful build<strong>in</strong>g block for larger cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure. 687 Blanke (2010)
promoted the idea of a humanities VRE that “would br<strong>in</strong>g together several Digital Humanities
applications <strong>in</strong>to an <strong>in</strong>tegrated <strong>in</strong>frastructure to support the complete life cycle of humanities research”
(Blanke 2010). One useful def<strong>in</strong>ition of VREs has been offered by Michael Fraser:
Virtual research environments (VREs), as one hopes the name suggests, comprise digital
<strong>in</strong>frastructure and services which enable research to take place. The idea of a VRE, which <strong>in</strong>
this context <strong>in</strong>cludes cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure and e-<strong>in</strong>frastructure, arises from and rema<strong>in</strong>s
<strong>in</strong>tr<strong>in</strong>sically l<strong>in</strong>ked with, the development of e-science. The VRE helps to broaden the popular
def<strong>in</strong>ition of e-science from grid-based distributed comput<strong>in</strong>g for scientists with huge amounts
of data to the development of onl<strong>in</strong>e tools, content, and middleware with<strong>in</strong> a coherent
framework for all discipl<strong>in</strong>es and all types of research (Fraser 2005).
Fraser suggested look<strong>in</strong>g at VREs as one component of a digital <strong>in</strong>frastructure, rather than as standalone
software, <strong>in</strong>to which the user could plug tools and resources. In fact, he argued that <strong>in</strong> some ways
the terms VRE and cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure could almost be synonymous, with the one difference be<strong>in</strong>g that
“the VRE presents a holistic view of the context <strong>in</strong> which research takes place whereas e-<strong>in</strong>frastructure
focuses on the core, shared services over which the VRE is expected to operate” (Fraser 2005). Fraser
also stated that VREs are <strong>in</strong>tended <strong>in</strong> general to be both collaborative and multidiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary.
On the other hand, Voss and Procter have recently criticized a number of VRE projects because of
their overly specific or generically designed architectures and an overall lack of <strong>in</strong>teroperability.
“VREs that have been built to date tend to be either specific configurations for particular research
projects or systems serv<strong>in</strong>g very generic functions,” Voss and Procter concluded, add<strong>in</strong>g that “the
technologies used to build VREs also differ widely, lead<strong>in</strong>g to significant fragmentation and lack of
<strong>in</strong>teroperability”(Voss and Procter 2009). To promote greater <strong>in</strong>teroperability, Voss and Procter
suggested identify<strong>in</strong>g common features that would be required from a generic <strong>in</strong>frastructure across
discipl<strong>in</strong>es by explor<strong>in</strong>g the research life cycle. They identified the follow<strong>in</strong>g functionalities as
common to research environments for almost all discipl<strong>in</strong>es: authenticate, communicate and
collaborate, transfer data, configure a resource, <strong>in</strong>voke computation, reuse data, give credit, archive
output, publish outputs (formally and <strong>in</strong>formally), discover resources, monitor resources, ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>
awareness, ensure data provenance, and provide authorization. In addition, Voss and Procter identified
a number of research challenges that would need to be further <strong>in</strong>vestigated before the successful
deployment of VREs. These challenges <strong>in</strong>cluded understand<strong>in</strong>g the factors that <strong>in</strong>fluence the adoption
of VREs, learn<strong>in</strong>g how they are used differently <strong>in</strong> various discipl<strong>in</strong>es, and consider<strong>in</strong>g their
implications for scholarly communications.
The project of <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g eSAD with the VRE-SDM (VRE for the Study of Documents and
Manuscripts) provides a useful example of a possible VRE for classics. eSAD had <strong>in</strong>dependently
developed a number of image-process<strong>in</strong>g algorithms for scholars work<strong>in</strong>g with ancient documents, and
these were consequently “offered as functionalities wrapped <strong>in</strong> one or several web-services and
presented to the user <strong>in</strong> a portlet <strong>in</strong> the VRE-SDM application” (Wallom et al. 2009). The authors also
687 JISC has recently released an extensive study that explores the role of VREs <strong>in</strong>ternationally <strong>in</strong> support<strong>in</strong>g collaborative research both with<strong>in</strong> and across
discipl<strong>in</strong>es (Carusi and Reimer 2010).