It should be emphasized that these lists are all intended for illustrative purposes only, and are not intended to be comprehensive. The services discussed are not all exclusively concerned with Humanities resources, and range from major well-established Services on the one hand to small-scale pilot projects on the other. Information here was provided by the Services concerned before or during the feasibility study, and has not been checked in detail.
The emphasis is entirely on research rather than teaching.
In some ways the
A particular feature is the BIRON catalogue. This
catalogue covers most of the Archive's holdings, and has been built up
over a number of years by trained librarians using a controlled
vocabulary. The Archive has relationships with several other
institutions, such as:
Much data documentation is paper based, but work is under way to
introduce electronic formats, and so far this has been completed for
about 850 data sets.
The Archive currently holds the secretariat of the Council of
European Social Sciences Data Archives (
The Archive is one of the largest social science archives in the
world. It has over 7,000 data sets, of which nearly 4,000 are fully
catalogued and the rest are opinion polls. The number of data sets is
increasing at a rate of about 250 per year. [See note 47] Each
year more than 2,000 data sets are accessed, and over 1,500 data
catalogues are distributed.
The primary tasks of the project are:
Access is available without charge to all bona fide
requesters, subject to the copyright restrictions imposed by the
depositors.
The data sets are relevant to the social sciences and some
humanities disciplines.
There are currently some 800 users, largely staff and
postgraduates, from about 100 sites. However,
The effort is multinational in scope, with involved people in six
countries, but no formal management structure. The project uses an
internal bibliographic format referred to as BibEc format. Papers are
stored as PostScript files, usually compressed.
Covers academic economics only.
It offers scholars long term storage and maintenance of their
electronic texts free of charge. It manages non-commercial
distribution of electronic texts and information about them on behalf
of its depositors.
The texts vary in format, quality and degree of mark-up. There is
a gradual process of converting to standard formats. The texts are
available for research and teaching, subject to the copyright
limitations imposed by their depositors.
The academic research workstations are particularly interesting.
Named the Computer-Aided Reading Environment (
The library has negotiated with French publishers agreements to
permit electronic storage and use of works still in copyright, thought
the initial agreements are for a limited period. Perhaps for this
reason, there are no plans to allow remote access to the digital
collection; all access will be from the main site in Paris.
The intention is to build a strong corpus of French literature and
reference texts. The main domains identified for digital holdings are
French literature, anthropology, philosophy, history, ethnology,
economics, law and the history of science. The corpus is expected to
contain both original texts and modern editions which include
commentary on the originals.
Holdings include bibliographic databases, directories, controlled
vocabularies (for example the Getty Art History Information
Program's Art and Architecture Thesaurus),
indexes to artists, etc. These databases are created by other
organisations and distributed and managed by
Data is obtained from the following sources:
Note that deposit of data with the
About 1,000 data sets are held with complete documentation.
In June 1994,
If InfoFLOW goes ahead in the shape currently
envisaged, it would have, potentially at least, a large area of overlap
with
It is suggested that accession decisions will be taken by external
subject experts contracted for this purpose.
It is also a centre of excellence for scanning and
OCR of ``difficult'' materials (such as carbon
copies); and it administers part of a postgraduate programme at the
university.
Among
Most work at present is in support of research; but it is felt that
support for teaching activities will grow.
In the furtherance of its research activities, it has assembled a
collection of digital resources. However, the Centre does not get
involved with the commercial aspects of marketing and distribution.
It supports both research and teaching functions.
Some data sets receive a high level of use; up to 400 accesses per
month in one case.
Its structure is relevant to the proposed
The
It has a diverse collection of humanities data sets (see below).
Most are in text form, with a few in image form. The texts are encoded
with
Because of contractual obligations with the vendors who supply the
texts and the search software, access to the on-line text service is
restricted to University of Virginia students and staff.
The final product of the project is to be a networked national
information system for the humanities, called ``The Norwegian
universities' databases for language and culture'', which will
integrate these diverse resources to allow (inter alia) multi-
disciplinary research. It will also allow for improved public access.
An article by C. Ore describing the project is to appear in the
Norwegian special issue of Computers and the Humanities,
in 1995.
The project aims to build a database of copyright holders, initially
for literary works in the English language whose papers are housed in
archives and manuscript repositories. The database is intended to be
freely accessible via the Internet. Early work suggests that 8,000
authors should be included in the first phase, and that this may be
achieved by 1995.
Currently based on text, the 50,000-record database is being
enhanced to include images and video clips. Additionally, work is in
progress to allow remote access to these enhancements. The text
portion is already available to over 25 remote sites around the world
via the Internet.
The project is taking place at the University of Sheffield
and Oxford University.
Hartlib had the self-appointed task of collecting and disseminating
knowledge; his surviving papers cover every aspect of 17th century
intellectual life, including education, language and literature,
philosophy, science, religion, politics and agriculture. The database
will include hypertextual links between the page images and text
transcriptions.
8.1 UK Services
8.1.1 British Atmospheric Data Centre (
8.1.1.1 Overview
This Centre provides data on the atmosphere and its boundaries to
researchers working in the area of atmospheric sciences, global climate
change and earth observation. Like others which hold data on other
physical sciences (e.g. oceanography, solar-terrestrial physics, etc.),
the Centre provides access to experimental data sets, many of which can
be very large, and very quickly generated (for example, the digital data
from satellite observations). Such data sets are thus rather different
from those typically used by humanities disciplines, but other aspects
of the service provided by such Centres are very similar.8.1.1.2 Key services:
8.1.1.3 Extent
Data relevant to atmospheric science in its widest sense.8.1.1.4 Source of funding
National Environmental Research Council. 8.1.2 Computers in Teaching Initiative (
8.1.2.1 Overview
There are 20 8.1.2.2 Key services:
8.1.2.3 Extent
Each centre typically consists of two or three persons; their
holdings of software and data sets can amount to some hundreds of
items. The humanities-related centres cover the following subjects:
8.1.2.4 Source of funding
Higher Education Funding Councils. 8.1.3 ESRC Data Archive (
8.1.3.1 Overview
The Archive's primary mission is to promote wider and more
informed use of data for teaching and research. As well as encouraging
current use, there is a strong emphasis on long-term preservation. In
January 1993 the Archive set up a
History Data Unit, with funding from the
8.1.3.2 Key services
8.1.3.3 Extent
Disciplines include social sciences, economics, history, geography,
and law. 8.1.3.4 Source of funding:
8.1.4 Global Environmental Change Data Network Facility (
8.1.4.1 Overview
This is a project initiated by the
8.1.4.2 Key services:
8.1.4.3 Extent
The project is still in its initial pilot phase. The aim is to
cover all the relevant materials held at all the participating
institutions.8.1.4.4 Source of funding
Inter-Agency Committee on Global Environment Change
and 8.1.5 Manchester Information Datasets and Associated
Services (
8.1.5.1 Overview
This organisation exists for the installation and management of
strategic research and teaching data sets for access and analysis by
the UK academic community, and the provision of the services required
to facilitate and support this. It specializes in the provision of
on-line access to large- scale data sets and the software needed to
process them for research and teaching purposes. Principal examples of
the data are the 1981 and 1991 census data, and government survey data
sets. Data sets are currently stored in software-specific formats.
Software supported include SIR, Ingres, BRS/Search and SASPAC.8.1.5.2 Key services:
8.1.5.3 Extent
A large number of the data sets managed by 8.1.5.4 Source of funding
8.1.6 NetEc
8.1.6.1 Overview
``NetEc'' is a term that unites a number of projects for
networked interaction in academic Economics. At the time of writing,
there are three projects, called BibEc,
WoPEc and CodEc. They aim to improve the
communication of new research results in Economics via electronic media.
Traditionally, new research results have been published in paper
documents called ``working papers'' or ``discussion papers''.
The aim of BibEc is to enhance the awareness of these
papers in the academic community by establishing means to announce the
publication of new papers via electronic media. The aim of WoPEc
is to build a collection of electronic working papers in postscript
format, for free retrieval by anybody with Internet access. CodEc,
which opened in June 1994, aims to build a collection of software
routines which are useful in the study of Economics. 8.1.6.2 Key services:
8.1.6.3 Extent
Over 20,000 bibliographic references (late 1993), growing rapidly;
small number of papers.8.1.6.4 Source of funding
Managed on a voluntary basis. 8.1.7 Office for Humanities Communication (
8.1.7.1 Overview
This organisation aims to influence, and to provide a centre of
expertise on, academics' use of computers in all aspects of their work
(compare the 8.1.7.2 Key services:
8.1.7.3 Extent
The office, which consists of three people, covers all the
Humanities disciplines in Britain.8.1.7.4 Source of funding
British Library Research and Development Department. 8.1.8 Oxford Text Archive (
8.1.8.1 Overview
The 8.1.8.2 Key services:
8.1.8.3 Extent
More than 1,300 texts, mainly in the domains of literature and
linguistics, in many languages. 8.1.8.4 Source of funding
Funded by Oxford University Computing Services and a
grant from the Text Encoding Initiative (8.1.9 UK Office for Library and Information Networking
(
8.1.9.1 Overview
8.1.9.2 Key services:
8.1.9.3 Extent
Consists of seven fulltime staff; areas of interest are:
8.1.9.4 Source of Funding
British Library Research and Development Department
and 8.2 Comparable services based outside the UK
8.2.1 Bibliothèque Nationale de France (
8.2.1.1 Overview
This library is currently building a data service which will be
one of the largest, if not the largest, in Europe. It will consist of
a public library, which will succeed the Bibliothèque
Nationale as France's major repository of printed books.
However, it will also include a vast collection of books, images, sound
and motion pictures in digital form. The digital resources will
include Frantext and several other substantial
collections. It is due to open in 1997. 8.2.1.2 Key services
The library will provide facilities at its site for members of the
public and accredited researchers to refer to digital documents. Large
numbers of workstations, some specially developed, will be available
for consultation of these resources. The number of workstations
envisaged by the year 2000 is:
8.2.1.3 Extent
The digital collection is due to include books, journals, and
secondary literature, extending to:
8.2.1.4 Source of funding
French Government. 8.2.2 Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities
(
8.2.2.1 Overview
This center was established by Rutgers and Princeton Universities
in 1991 and is funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities to act as a national focus within the USA for the
creation, dissemination and use of electronic texts in the humanities. 8.2.2.2 Key services:
8.2.2.3 Extent
Bibliographic database; other material is mostly primary source
texts in the humanities. 8.2.2.4 Source of funding
Rutgers and
Princeton Universities, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.
A subscription-paying ``consortium'' of member institutions will
start in 1995, and there are also plans for associated grant-funded
projects. 8.2.3 Canadian Heritage Information Network (
8.2.3.1 Overview
This agency has 21 years of experience acting as an information
service for the museums and heritage communities both in Canada and
elsewhere.It creates national collection databases for humanities,
natural sciences and for archaeological sites from data contributed by
museums and heritage agencies across Canada. Beside these national
databases, 8.2.3.2 Key services:
8.2.3.3 Extent
The range of materials covered includes heritage information,
archaeology, humanities, and the natural sciences. 8.2.3.4 Source of funding
Communications Canada, an agency of the Canadian
Government. 8.2.4 Dansk Data Arkiv (
8.2.4.1 Overview
This Archive preserves and disseminates data sets in the domains of
social sciences, history and medical research, almost exclusively from
questionnaire-based surveys. Early holdings were in social sciences,
the other domains having been added since 1985. On an exceptional
basis, the archive may accept electronic texts outside the domain of
history. It supports both research and teaching functions. The current
level of use is rising ``rapidly'', but is currently approximately
250 requests, representing 750 data sets, per year.
8.2.4.2 Key services:
8.2.4.3 Extent
Archives data from the following disciplines:
8.2.4.4 Source of funding
Danish Ministry of Culture. 8.2.5 DANTE InfoFLOW
8.2.5.1 Overview
8.2.5.2 Key services
InfoFLOW would hold metadata in a series of servers in different
countries, with the actual data sets being held mainly by the data
provider (i.e. on systems not under the control of
8.2.5.3 Extent
The proposal envisages a service to serve all disciplines (not just
Arts and Humanities). Users would refer to the metadata by 8.2.5.4 Source of funding
Not determined yet; likely to be drawn from infividual information
providers, national networks and the
European Union. 8.2.6 Netherlands Historical Data Archive (
8.2.6.1 Overview
This institution, which is located at the University of
Leiden, provides services and resources for research and (to a
lesser extent) for education. Its central aim is to collect, document,
store and disseminate research files created by historians working
within academic and official institutions.8.2.6.2 Key services:
Holds about 100 data sets, mainly structured social and economic
history files.8.2.6.3 Source of funding
Approximately 50 per cent from projects of the Dutch Ministry
of Education or National Science Association; the
balance from other external projects. 8.2.7 Getty Art History Information Program (
8.2.7.1 Overview
This is one of seven operating programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust,
based in Santa Monica, California. Its purpose is to make
computer-based art-historical information accessible to scholars. It
collaborates with a number of US and international organisations in a
wide range of research and development projects.8.2.7.2 Key services
Initiating and supporting programs in four major areas:
8.2.7.3 Extent
Amongst major research resources developed by
8.2.7.4 Source of funding
The J. Paul Getty Trust. 8.2.8 Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (
8.2.8.1 Overview
This centre exists to provide information and consultancy services
for Norwegian research projects involving the use of computers in the
humanities. 8.2.8.2 Key services:
8.2.8.3 Extent
All holdings and activities relate to the humanities. 8.2.8.4 Source of funding
Until 1992, the 8.2.9 Norwegian Social Sciences Data Archive (
8.2.9.1 Overview
This is the primary archive service in Norway for the preservation
of electronic research data. It started as an archive for social
sciences, but is now active in other fields.8.2.9.2 Key services:
8.2.9.3 Extent
Archives data from the following disciplines:
8.2.9.4 Source of funding
60 per cent from the Research Council of Norway,
balance from special projects and the provision of services. 8.2.10 Research Libraries Group (
8.2.10.1 Overview
8.2.10.2 Key services:
8.2.10.3 Extent
8.2.10.4 Source of funding
There are three revenue streams:
8.2.11 University of Virginia Electronic Text Center (
8.2.11.1 Overview
An ``Electronic Text Center'' was founded at the
University of Virginia in 1992. It exists to create and
support a new broadly based user community within the humanities at the
University, and to establish the use of electronic texts as a mainstream
resource for pedagogy and research in the University. 8.2.11.2 Key services:
8.2.11.3 Extent
Originally the Center started up with commonly available humanities
resources in English and Latin, such as the Oxford English
Dictionary, the Patrologia Latina and a
collection of texts from the Oxford Text Archive. This
corpus has since been added to by data sets generated by the
University's staff and students, and it is expected to grow continually
in this way. English is the main language, but there are also texts in
many other languages including French, German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
8.2.11.4 Source of funding
University of Virginia, Alderman Library. 8.3 Example projects
In this section we list a number of projects in the Arts and
Humanities which are concerned with the creation or dissemination of
resources of potential relevance to the 8.3.1 Network and metadata projects
8.3.1.1 Georgetown Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text (
From 1989 to 1992, the 8.3.1.2 Norwegian Documentation Project
This project at the University of Oslo started in
1991, and is due to last six years. Its objective is the conversion of
paper based archives of the so-called collection departments at
universities in Norway ranging from the Viking ship museum to the
lexicographic departments.8.3.1.3 Writers And Their Copyright Holders (
This project is a collaborative venture between the
University of Reading library and the Harry Ransom
Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas,
Austin. It started in April 1994. 8.3.1.4 InfoServices
This a co-operative project in the Netherlands between the
National Research Network (8.3.1.5 The Nordic WAIS/World Wide Web Project
This project was funded by NordInfo and involved the
Danish Technical Library and the Lund University
Library. Its primary goals are to develop tools for automated
processing of 8.3.1.6 The Allison Research Index of Art and Design (
8.3.2 Art and Art History projects
This group is represented because of the increasing importance, to
art historians and other scholars, of networked information, including
high quality images. 8.3.2.1 Remote Access to Museums and Archives (
This is an experimental project which demonstrates network links
between participating museums in six European countries. It allows
images and text (primarily) stored in these museums to be found and
viewed from terminals in the other locations. One of the museums also
contributes video clips with sounds. At present, the project is at
demonstration stage. It is hoped that permanent connections will be
established at a later stage. It is funded by the European
Union under its
Esprit III initiative. 8.3.2.2 Beazley Archive
This is an archival collection of photographs, notes and drawings
relating to ancient Greek art located in the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford.8.3.2.3 Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture
This is a project at the Courtauld Institute of Art,
sponsored by the British Academy, to create a complete
record of the surviving heritage of sculpture produced in Britain and
Ireland between c.1066 and 1200, by means of scanned monochrome
photographs, and textual descriptions. It is intended to make available
the images to visitors and wider distribution may also be considered. 8.3.2.4 Database of Ancient Greek Sculpture
This project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is based
at the
Ashmole Archive, King's College London. Its purpose is to
research and process the complete evidence for all known ancient Greek
sculptors, including ancient texts, epigraphy, sculptures, coins, etc
and to link this mass of data together in a systematic way in order to
create a major new research resource. It will include a large number of
images, based largely on the photographs of the Ashmole Archive, but
including also material obtained from a number of museums and other
institutions. 8.3.2.5 Witt Computer Index
This is a major art history project funded by the Getty Art
History Information Program and the Courtauld Institute
of Art. It is based on the holdings of the Courtauld's Witt
Library --- photographs and illustrations of American and
18th century British paintings and drawings. It is creating a
comprehensive database of information about these works, using the
Iconclass system to classify and describe each work.
This makes it possible for information about the works to be accessed
under a wide range of headings
--- by artist, date, and subject, and in ways not previously
possible. Currently the database is entirely textual, and no images of
the works are included. 8.3.3 Text and image projects
This group is represented because of the increasing number of
projects which are ``text''-based but where the inclusion of
images, in particular of manuscripts, significantly enhances the
usefulness of the resource as a research tool. 8.3.3.1 Archivo Digital de Manuscritos y Textos Españoles
(
Based at the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, this
project has the objective of capturing in digital form a large
collection of manuscripts and incunabula. The result will include
monochrome and colour images, and a modern interpreted version of the
documents in full text, tagged with 8.3.3.2 Canterbury Tales Project
This is a project, with major funding from the British
Academy, to digitize in text and image form all 83 manuscripts
and four pre-1500 printed editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
together with some analyses. The project is in its early stages. 8.3.3.3 Electronic Peirce Consortium
This is a project to scan and transcribe the manuscript works of
Charles Saunders Peirce, the 19th century American philosopher. The
project may grow to include up to 100,000 pages (depending on funding),
though only 500 pages are available initially. The project is based at
a number of institutions in the US, including
Georgetown University, Brown University and
Texas Tech. 8.3.3.4 Wittgenstein Archive
This project is based at the University of Bergen,
Norway. It is preparing all Wittgenstein's unpublished manuscripts
(over 20,000 pages) in machine-readable and facsimile form, for which
purpose it has also developed a sophisticated mark-up scheme, and
software to process it. 8.3.3.5 Hartlib Papers
The Hartlib Papers project, sponsored by the British Academy
and the Leverhulme Trust, is based at Sheffield
University. It is preparing a text and page-image database of
the manuscripts of Samuel Hartlib, who lived in the 17th century. The
database will include some 20,000 leaves of manuscript, plus printed
material in four languages.8.3.4 Language corpus projects
8.3.4.1 International Computer Archive of Modern English
(
This is an informal international organization of linguists and
scientists working with English machine-readable texts. Its aims are
to collect and distribute information about English language materials
available for computer-aided linguistic research, to compile an archive
of English text corpora in machine-readable form, and to make material
available to research institutions. The Norwegian Computing
Centre for the Humanities acts as a distribution centre for
8.3.4.2 British National Corpus (
This is a collaborative project jointly funded by the
8.3.4.3 Corpus of Contemporary Spanish
This project, based at King's College London, aims to
create a corpus of 20 million words drawn from a wide range of sources
and subject areas, and covering both Iberian peninsula and
Latin-American Spanish. The first phase of the project --- 5
million words of Iberian Spanish --- is nearing completion. It is
intended that the corpus will be published on CD-ROM and over the
networks. 8.3.5 Historical, musical and specialist interest projects
There is a very large number of historical projects, a growing
number of music and music history projects, and a wide variety of
projects concerned with highly specialist interests. One project from
each area is described briefly below. The 8.3.5.1 Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire
This is a major project of the British Academy,
housed at King's College London. Its goal is to record
all surviving information about every individual mentioned in Byzantine
sources during the period from 641 to 1261, and every individual
mentioned in non-Byzantine sources during the same period who is ``relevant''
(on a generous interpretation) to Byzantine affairs. It is intended to
make the material available, with sophisticated search tools, both on
CD-ROM and on-line. 8.3.5.2 Thesaurum Musicarum Latinarum (
This is an evolving database that will eventually contain the entire
corpus of Latin music theory written during the Middle Ages and the
early Renaissance. The project is run by a consortium of universities;
the Project Office is centered at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Special provision is made in the database for musical notation, both by
encoding in a standard manner and by the inclusion of scanned images
compressed in 8.3.5.3 Syriac Computing Institute
This Institute, at Cambridge University holds a number
of texts about, and in, Syriac. These include the Syriac
Electronic Data Retrieval Archive(SEDRA) and four
new testaments in syriac (versions according to the siniaticus and
curetonianus manuscripts, and peshitta and harklean versions), all of
which are available for research use.
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