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

239
monolithic system that can meet all possible needs but <strong>in</strong>stead design extendable configurations of
both general and doma<strong>in</strong>-specific resources and tools that users can adapt to meet their own research
needs across the discipl<strong>in</strong>es. While technological challenges rema<strong>in</strong>, the sociological considerations of
<strong>in</strong>frastructure decisions also need to be considered.
Despite the success of the VRE-SDM project, Stuart Dunn has cautioned that implement<strong>in</strong>g VREs <strong>in</strong>
the arts and humanities will be always be more complicated than <strong>in</strong> the sciences because of “fuzzy”
nature of research practices <strong>in</strong> the humanities (Dunn 2009). He argued that Google Earth, 689 although a
commonly used tool and considered by some to be a sample VRE, should <strong>in</strong>stead be looked at as a
component of a VRE. A successful VRE <strong>in</strong> the humanities, Dunn stated, will have to meet number of
requirements, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g support for authentication so that scholars can record their methodology or
publish how they researched their conclusions or created visualizations. In addition, users must have
control, or at the very least knowledge, of how or whether their data are “preserved, accessed and
stored.” F<strong>in</strong>ally, a VRE for the humanities must have a clearly def<strong>in</strong>ed research purpose. Dunn
ultimately proposed that Pleiades, rather than Google Earth, be considered as a sample humanities
VRE, s<strong>in</strong>ce the former “has a def<strong>in</strong>able presence, it allows only authenticated users to contribute to its
knowledge base, and there is a quantifiable and coherent research purpose” (Dunn 2009).
Another topic that Dunn brought up was a concern documented throughout this research, namely, that
digital publication is an act of <strong>in</strong>terpretative scholarship that needs to make its data, methodology, and
decisions transparent and to create stable and citable results that can be verified and, ideally, tested and
reused. Another overrid<strong>in</strong>g theme illustrated by Dunn was the importance of design<strong>in</strong>g technology that
can support traditional or exist<strong>in</strong>g research practices as well as enable groundbreak<strong>in</strong>g work:
The successful development and deployment of a VRE <strong>in</strong> the humanities or arts is cont<strong>in</strong>gent
on recogniz<strong>in</strong>g that workflows are not scientific objects <strong>in</strong> their own right. Workflows <strong>in</strong> these
discipl<strong>in</strong>es are highly <strong>in</strong>dividual, often <strong>in</strong>formal, and cannot be easily shared or reproduced.
The focus of VREs <strong>in</strong> the arts and humanities should therefore be on support<strong>in</strong>g exist<strong>in</strong>g
research practice, rather than seek<strong>in</strong>g to revolutionize it (Dunn 2009).
The conclusion that VREs, or <strong>in</strong>deed any cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure, will not be able to be used for <strong>in</strong>novative
research until designers better understand how they can support standard research has been seen
throughout this review. “Until analytical tools and services are more sophisticated, robust, transparent,
and easy to use for the motivated humanities researcher,” Borgman asserted, “it will be difficult to
attract a broad base of <strong>in</strong>terest with<strong>in</strong> the humanities community” (Borgman 2009). As Borgman
conv<strong>in</strong>c<strong>in</strong>gly argues, if the digital tools and collections already available cannot be easily used, mak<strong>in</strong>g
an argument for the greater uptake of digital humanities research will be very difficult <strong>in</strong>deed.
New Models of Scholarly Collaboration
The need for more collaboration between humanities scholars both with<strong>in</strong> the humanities and with
other discipl<strong>in</strong>es is called for repeatedly throughout the literature on digital classics and on humanities
cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure. In their discussion of plann<strong>in</strong>g for cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure, Green and Roy (2008)
concluded that unfortunately, “much of the daily activity of the humanities and social sciences is
rooted <strong>in</strong> the assumption that research and publication form essentially an <strong>in</strong>dividual rather than a
collaborative activity.” While they were certa<strong>in</strong> that the future of liberal arts scholarship would be <strong>in</strong>
greater collaboration, they were uncerta<strong>in</strong> if collaboration would be brought about by the creation of
689 http://earth.google.com/