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

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semantic tools that would make it easier to f<strong>in</strong>d and work with partners or if collaboration would be
forced because of the need to organize <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>gly huge amounts of data.
The CSHE report on scholarly communication also argued that greater collaboration will be important
<strong>in</strong> cyberscholarship, but stressed as well the difficulties new collaborative models face, both
discipl<strong>in</strong>ary and f<strong>in</strong>ancial:
Collaborations around <strong>in</strong>terdiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary grand challenge questions are especially complex,
creat<strong>in</strong>g new demands for fund<strong>in</strong>g streams, adm<strong>in</strong>istrative homes, shar<strong>in</strong>g of resources,
<strong>in</strong>stitutional recognition of <strong>in</strong>dividual scholars’ contributions, and the need for participants to
learn the “languages” of the multiple contribut<strong>in</strong>g discipl<strong>in</strong>es (Harley et al. 2010, 16).
Because of these obstacles, as well as a general resistance to change, the authors noted that there is still
little jo<strong>in</strong>t authorship <strong>in</strong> the humanities. At the same time, Choudhury and St<strong>in</strong>son hoped that the sheer
scale of large digitization projects such as the Roman de la Rose would <strong>in</strong>spire humanists to pursue
new collaborative forms of “data driven scholarship.” Similar arguments were made by Stephen
Nichols, who reflected that collaborative efforts were required to engage <strong>in</strong> the new types of
scholarship that could now be conducted because of ever-<strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g amounts of data. “The typical
digital project cannot be pursued, much less completed by the proverbial ‘solitary scholar’ familiar to
us from the analogue research model,” Nichols <strong>in</strong>sisted, add<strong>in</strong>g that “because of the way data is
acquired and then scaled, digital research rests on a basis of collaboration at many levels” (Nichols
2009). Nichols listed three levels of collaboration that would become <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>gly necessary: (1)
partnerships between scholars and IT professionals; (2) new, “dynamic” <strong>in</strong>teractions between scholars
both with<strong>in</strong> the same discipl<strong>in</strong>e and across discipl<strong>in</strong>es; and (3) collaboration between various IT
professionals develop<strong>in</strong>g websites for scholars.
Despite many calls for collaborative scholarship, Borgman echoed the criticism of the CSHE report
that is also found <strong>in</strong> (Crane, Seales, Terras 2009) about the cont<strong>in</strong>u<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>dividualistic nature of much
humanities scholarship. “While the digital humanities are <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>gly collaborative,” Borgman
argued, “elsewhere <strong>in</strong> the humanities the image of the ‘lone scholar’ spend<strong>in</strong>g months or years alone <strong>in</strong>
dusty archives, followed years later by the completion of a dissertation or monograph, still obta<strong>in</strong>s”
(Borgman 2009). She agreed with an earlier <strong>in</strong>sight of Amy Friedlander (Friedlander 2009) that <strong>in</strong>
order to survive, the digital humanities must move beyond large numbers of uncoord<strong>in</strong>ated “boutique”
projects <strong>in</strong>to larger collaborative projects that can not only attract more fund<strong>in</strong>g but also ideally create
larger susta<strong>in</strong>able platforms on which more research can be built. The need to l<strong>in</strong>k projects and
researchers across discipl<strong>in</strong>es and <strong>in</strong>stitutions has also been called for by the LaQuAT project:
It is necessary to l<strong>in</strong>k up not only data, but also services and researchers—<strong>in</strong> the plural.
Research <strong>in</strong> the humanities need no longer be an activity carried out by a s<strong>in</strong>gle scholar, but
rather by collaborat<strong>in</strong>g researchers <strong>in</strong>teract<strong>in</strong>g with<strong>in</strong> an extended network of data resources,
digital repositories and libraries, tools and services, and other researchers, a shared
environment that facilitates and susta<strong>in</strong>s collaborative scholarly processes (Hedges 2009).
In addition to l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g data, services, and researchers, Borgman cited two other important issues for the
success of digital humanities projects: (1) the need to move from a focus on audience to a focus on
participation be it students, scholars, or the public; and (2) the need to pursue collaborative
relationships not only across the discipl<strong>in</strong>es of the humanities but with computer scientists as well.
Crane, Babeu, and Bamman (2007) have echoed this second po<strong>in</strong>t, stress<strong>in</strong>g that humanists lack the
resources and the expertise to go it alone <strong>in</strong> terms of develop<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>frastructure: