Mr Michael Lynch1, Ms Eve Ansell2, Dr Nichola Burton3, Dr Ian McCrabb4, Dr Peter Sefton5
1The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 2Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation, St Lucia, Australia, 3Australian Research Data Commons, Caulfield East, Australia, 4Systemik Solutions, Sydney, Australia, 5The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Biography:
Mike Lynch (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-5307) is a data science group lead at the Sydney Informatics Hub, with expertise in research data management, open standards for research data and the application of modern IT development and deployment practices to research software.
Eve Ansell (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3467-9782) is the HASS Data Science Lead for QCIF. With a background in linguistics and a Graduate Digital Research Fellowship with the Australian Text Analystics Platform, she is a strong advocate for digital tools for humanities researchers.
Nichola Burton (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4470-4846) is the Programs Architect (HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons) for the Australian Research Data Commons, with a background in psychology research. She works with the HASS and Indigenous research communities to find out what their data and digital research requirements are and develop infrastructure to meet their needs.
Ian McCrabb is the founder and managing director of Systemik Solutions, a Sydney-based IT consulting group focused on open-source digital humanities platforms and research sites.
Peter Sefton (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X) is an eResearch expert, specialising in software development, research data management and metadata, currently leading the technology and infrastructure team for the Language Research Data Commons project at the University of Queensland.
Abstract:
Digital platforms and technologies allow humanities researchers to curate new collections and work with archival collections in new and exciting ways. However, keeping these collections available for future researchers is difficult – they often become the hostages of legacy platforms and are dependent on the efforts of small teams in one institution. The ARDC’s Community Data Lab is attempting to foster a cooperative national approach to working with HASS and Indigenous data.
This BoF is an opportunity for technologists, librarians and researchers to share the challenges of supporting researchers in the digital humanities in a sustainable way.
Participants will be invited to identify collections or platforms in their institutions which would benefit from tools and platforms being developed at a national level, discuss requirements from researchers which are not being currently met – whether these are technical, organisation, or capabilities – discuss how standard vocabularies, schemas and migration practices can help build a sustainable digital humanities commons, and share approaches which have been successful in helping humanities researchers to engage with digital technologies.
The session will conclude with a discussion of practical steps we can take which will help participants maintain engagement with their peers in other institutions and in national funding bodies.