Intellectual Needs Shaping Technical Solutions

Welcome to the Building Blocks Workshop Website

I am very pleased to welcome you as one of 90 participants to the NINCH Building Blocks Workshop, gathering in Washington DC, September 20-24, 2000.

We will be meeting at the Wyndham Washington Hotel, 1400 M St, NW. For information about the hotel, including travel directions, see Wyndham Washington.

Objectives

As digital technologies have the potential for changing, even transforming, the ways that both scientists and humanists do their work, the overall goal of Building Blocks is to define and create ways that our intellectual needs can shape technical solutions.

Over the four days of our meeting, our objectives are:

How We Work: to review current scholarly and pedagogical practice, with particular attention to the use of primary source materials (using the returns to our Questionnaire, Working With Materials; for summaries of the returns in your field, see Field Areas );

What Do We Need: to articulate by field and across disciplines the most pressing needs in the humanities that networked computing can address;

Where Do We Go From Here? to outline short-term, practical, collaborative projects; and to outline areas to be potentially included on a longer-term research agenda to be developed with computer scientists.

Format

The meeting will alternate workshop sessions specific to each of the fields ("field meetings") with topical sessions designed to inform the field meetings with leading examples of current problem-solving projects. These presentations will be followed by cross-disciplinary discussion groups to consider the ramifications of the topical presentations. Every day we will also hold plenary meetings in which we can all discuss the results of field meetings, topical sessions and cross-disciplinary discussions. See Agenda.

Project Roots

Building Blocks has its roots in a broader Computer Science and the Humanities initiative that has as its objective the staking out of common ground where the interests and needs of those working in the arts and humanities overlap with those working in computer science and information technology. This is a joint initiative of NINCH, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). It was kicked off with a Roundtable meeting between humanists and scientists at the National Academies of Science, March28, 1997, co-chaired by the then presidents of ACLS and the National Academy of Engineering. A report on this meeting is available.

First Steps

Building Blocks is the first step in the Computer Science and the Humanities initiative, designed to create a framework of shared understandings and vocabulary with which to build practical agendas for working with computer scientists. First we intend to articulate the root intellectual and information needs of humanists at this time of great change within the disciplines. Then, as we begin the work of mapping out the issues to be included in a long-term research agenda for joint humanist-scientist work, we will, by the end of this meeting, outline a number of short-term projects that can answer some of the most immediate needs articulated here.

Previous Work

Building Blocks itself builds on two seminal projects conducted by the J. Paul Getty Trust: "Object, Image, Inquiry," an in-depth examination (1985-1988) of the research process of a small group of art historians, conducted by the Getty and Brown University, and a 1995 report, "Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage," papers and comments on eight critical areas of what should be on a research agenda for arts and humanities computing. For more information and comment, see Previous Work

Next Steps

The next steps of this project, beyond developing the short-term project outlines with participating learned societies and submitting them to founders, is a series of three annual Computer Science and the Humanities conferences, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, to commence fall 2001. Part of the agenda of these meetings will be to carry forward the conclusions of Building Blocks and pursue the construction and implementation of the longer-term research agenda.

Acknowledgements

Building Blocks has been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Delmas Foundation. It has also been made possible by the moral support and commitment of time of the 26 learned and professional societies that are at the core of this project. I want to thank the staff, trustees and boardmembers of all of these organizations for making this event possible. Most of all I want to thank those who have designed this project for their commitment of time and energy: all members of the five field committees, those serving on the Building Blocks Steering Committee and the Computer Science and Humanities Steering Committee.

David Green

September 10, 2000