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

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Unlike their colleagues <strong>in</strong> the sciences, however, humanists have relatively few resources with
which to develop this new <strong>in</strong>frastructure. They must therefore systematically cultivate alliances
with better-funded discipl<strong>in</strong>es, learn<strong>in</strong>g how to build on emerg<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>frastructure from other
discipl<strong>in</strong>es and, where possible, contribut<strong>in</strong>g to the design of a cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure that serves
all of academia, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the humanities (Crane, Babeu, and Bamman 2007).
Scholars <strong>in</strong> the humanities thus need to learn to build relationships with colleagues <strong>in</strong> the sciences and
to repurpose as many tools as possible for their own needs. Michael Fraser made similar po<strong>in</strong>ts <strong>in</strong> his
recent piece on VREs:
For the most part, it is expected that computer science will act <strong>in</strong> partnership with other
discipl<strong>in</strong>es to lay the foundations, <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g methods and knowledge from the relevant subject
areas. Humanities scholars, for example, cannot necessarily be expected to apply tools and
processes (<strong>in</strong>itially developed for the e-science community) effectively to their own subjects.
Better to articulate the challenges and methods and sit down with the computer scientists. This
is not an alien idea for many <strong>in</strong> the humanities - there is a long history of such partnerships
(Fraser 2005).
The need of humanists to both outl<strong>in</strong>e their needs to computer scientists and to utilize their tools has
also been made by Choudhury and St<strong>in</strong>son (2007):
One of the imperatives for the humanities community is to def<strong>in</strong>e its own needs on a
cont<strong>in</strong>uous basis and from that to create the specifications for and build many of its own tools.
… At the same time, it will be worthwhile to discover whether new cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure-related
tools, services, and systems from one discipl<strong>in</strong>e can support scientists, eng<strong>in</strong>eers, social
scientists, and humanists <strong>in</strong> others (Choudhury and St<strong>in</strong>son 2007).
Thus, partnerships between the humanities and computer science not only are necessary but also offer
opportunities for truly <strong>in</strong>terdiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary work. More research also needs to be conducted <strong>in</strong>to how
easily tools can be repurposed across discipl<strong>in</strong>es.
On the other hand, scholars <strong>in</strong> computer science are also beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g to push harder for closer
connections with the humanities. In an <strong>in</strong>vited talk at the EACL, Franciscka de Jong called for
rebuild<strong>in</strong>g old liaisons between the natural language process<strong>in</strong>g community and humanists:
A crucial condition for the revival of the common playground for NLP and the humanities is
the availability of representatives of communities that could use the outcome, either <strong>in</strong> the
development of services to their users or as end users (de Jong 2009).
Toms and O’Brien have also recognized the need for greater collaboration between self-described e-
humanists and the larger computer science community, not<strong>in</strong>g that the lack of communication between
these two groups had led to a limited awareness among e-humanists as to what tools were already
available. “Perhaps due to the general and likely conditioned practice of not collaborat<strong>in</strong>g,” Toms and
O’Brien suggested, “they have not sought advice or collaborated with <strong>in</strong>dividuals from a host of other
discipl<strong>in</strong>es who have created tools and technologies that could support the humanities, e.g.,
<strong>in</strong>formation retrieval, natural language process<strong>in</strong>g and l<strong>in</strong>guistics to name a few” (Toms and O’Brien
2008). Both communities will thus have to beg<strong>in</strong> mak<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>roads to start build<strong>in</strong>g a common
<strong>in</strong>frastructure.