Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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reported that eSAD was develop<strong>in</strong>g a knowledge base that could also be implemented <strong>in</strong> the same
portlet or another one. Before these algorithms were implemented <strong>in</strong> the VRE-SDM they were difficult
to access and required more process<strong>in</strong>g power than many s<strong>in</strong>gle systems possessed. Although
develop<strong>in</strong>g an <strong>in</strong>terface to connect the portal with the National Grid Service (NSG) ran <strong>in</strong>to some
complications, Wallom et al. concluded that this project had been a success for they had managed to
create a “build and <strong>in</strong>stallation configuration toolkit” that could be used by the eSAD researchers to
distribute the algorithms they had created onto the NGS.
The VRE-SDM project grew out of the “Build<strong>in</strong>g a VRE for the Humanities”(BVREH) project 688 at
Oxford University that was completed <strong>in</strong> September 2006. This project surveyed the use of digital
technologies through a scop<strong>in</strong>g study at Oxford and sought to create set of priorities for develop<strong>in</strong>g
<strong>in</strong>frastructure for humanities research. The researchers conducted a series of semistructured <strong>in</strong>terviews
with humanities professors <strong>in</strong> order to create a set of scenarios describ<strong>in</strong>g typical researchers (Pybus
and Kirkham 2009). The surveyed revealed a number of <strong>in</strong>sights and demonstrated that:
… the overall priorities of most <strong>in</strong>terviewees concerned central host<strong>in</strong>g and curation of the
digital components of research projects; and potential for a VRE to facilitate communications.
The latter <strong>in</strong>cluded the dissem<strong>in</strong>ation of results from projects, event notification, registers of
research <strong>in</strong>terests, collaboration beyond <strong>in</strong>stitutional boundaries, and the promotion of
humanities research at Oxford more generally. The cross-search<strong>in</strong>g of distributed databases,
project management tools, and directory services for hardware, software and other types of
electronic resources were also noted as important requirements (Fraser 2005).
The researchers found that focus<strong>in</strong>g on humanities professors’ current research and ask<strong>in</strong>g them to
describe a “day <strong>in</strong> the life” of their work was a very effective <strong>in</strong>terview<strong>in</strong>g approach that not only gave
professors a sense of ownership <strong>in</strong> the process but also allowed documented user needs, rather than
technology, to determ<strong>in</strong>e what demonstrators they developed.
After the survey was completed, the BVREH team used these common priorities as the basis of a
workshop for which they developed four demonstrators as standards-compliant portlets. One of these
demonstrators was the “Virtual Workspace for the Study of Ancient Documents (VWSAW),” which,
as stated above, evolved <strong>in</strong>to the VRE-SDM. The research of the BVREH project that built on this
prelim<strong>in</strong>ary survey illustrated how conduct<strong>in</strong>g an analysis of the humanities research environment
allowed them to map “exist<strong>in</strong>g research tools to specific components of the research life cycle” (Fraser
2005). Although technical development was not an end goal of this project, the survey still allowed
them to make <strong>in</strong>formed decisions regard<strong>in</strong>g future <strong>in</strong>frastructure choices. While the BVREH team
reported that iterative development was very important, their most important recommendation was that
VRE developers attend meet<strong>in</strong>gs with their <strong>in</strong>tended users so they could understand both the type of
research their users conduct and the k<strong>in</strong>d of materials they use (Bowman et al. 2010).
The experience of the BVREH project confirms the advice given by Voss and Procter (2009) <strong>in</strong> terms
of build<strong>in</strong>g a VRE or that <strong>in</strong>frastructure designers need to consider the research methods of their
<strong>in</strong>tended users as well as their larger social and organizational context. “As the name virtual research
environment implies,” Voss and Procter expla<strong>in</strong>, “the aim is not to build s<strong>in</strong>gle, monolithic systems but
rather socio-technical configurations of different tools that can be assembled to suit the researchers’
needs without much effort, work<strong>in</strong>g with<strong>in</strong> organisational, community and wider societal context”
(Voss and Procter 2009). In other words, creators of <strong>in</strong>frastructure should not seek to build a universal
688 http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/