NINCH >> Computer Sciences and Humanities Steering Committee for Computer Science and the Humanities August 12, 1998 Description The Steering Committee for Computer Science and the Humanities is established to forward the goals formulated in roundtable discussions held at the National Academy of Sciences on March 28, 1997, and March 26, 1998. Representatives from the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and the National Academy of Engineering; The Coalition for Networked Information; the American Council of Learned Societies; the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage; and the American Historical Association comprise the current committee. The Committee functions in the following ways:   1. Choreography. The committee will not undertake to design new initiatives or projects, but will bring together stakeholders in the computer science and humanities communities to foster collaboration that promotes the application of information technology to the understanding of the human record. Means of collaboration will most likely entail events such as conferences, workshops, roundtables, topical meetings, and publications; as much as possible, existing venues will be used as forums. As a logical outcome of its collaborative activities, the committee will also serve as an active incubator to stimulate and evolve projects, whether underway or potential, that are identified as the most promising means to achieve solutions to contemporary challenges. This process is meant to encourage an intellectually rich and vibrant cross-section of constituencies to take responsibility for some of the key challenges confronting them, and to work together to determine their solution. The committee's activities will always attempt to facilitate the crossing of existing, traditional boundaries--boundaries reified by disciplinary organization, campus geography, or methodology--while also working to bring practitioners in related disciplines together, recognizing the constraints of communication between innovators and practitioners within the humanities community, and similarly between computer scientists and their colleagues in differently focused sub-disciplines or areas of research.   2. Translation. The committee, with its representatives from computer science, engineering, and humanities organizations, will serve to mediate between the various disciplines, promoting interaction by finding a common lexicon and terms of expression that articulate issues and challenges that, while shared, are often not recognized as mutual because of differences in terminology or received methodological preferences. This committee function is designed to make apparent the similarities of humanities and computer science needs, approaches, and potential technical applications, as well as the differences. Demonstrating the differences and similarities, it is hoped, will sharpen the understanding of the issues at hand, and spur an appreciation of the benefits of including the humanities in larger scientific and technical enterprises.   3. Support. As a logical outcome of its translation function, the committee will identify funding sources, such as government and private agencies and foundations, that can provide financial support for the cross-disciplinary enterprises that come about through the committee's strategic work. The committee will also promote collaborative participation in national IT competitions, such as the Digital Library Initiative and the Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) program.   Conceptual Structure The Steering Committee, over the course of the next three years, will focus on Knowledge Representation (KR) as its major structuring theme. Knowledge representation, while complex, is of intrinsic importance to the humanities and computer science. Solutions to current problems in the area of KR would lead to the intellectual enrichment of both communities, and contribute to an enhancement of teaching, learning, and research at the national level. Aspects of Knowledge Representation include traditional (often three-dimensional) representations of knowledge; digital re-presentations of these inherited forms; and knowledge originating in digital format. Related topics of exploration might concern the cognitive processes associated with different or variant forms of knowledge; strategies of learning; metadata; the interrelationships of digital and analog forms; distributed intelligence; and the boundaries of representational formats and how they are determined, manipulated, and reconceived. The committee will attempt to cohere a variety of expertise around these and related issues, with the hope of establishing the most efficient and effective ecology for the preservation and archiving of, and access to, the human record.   Humanities Informatics The chief goal of the committee's activities is to foster the establishment of a scalable, extensible humanities informatics for the ongoing storage and retrieval of the human record, and the means to create new knowledge upon a stable base. To accomplish this, the committee will encourage national, interdisciplinary participation in the construction of this desired ecology. While at present a nascent concept, current computational engineering integrated into humanities research and methodological practices might focus upon the development of tools for recognition and retrieval of vast arrays of data; advanced visualization recognition; semantic relationship search and analysis; awareness schemes; and an evolutionary digital platform for archiving. Establishing Humanities Informatics as an academically recognized, integral component of, and bridge between, computer science and the humanities disciplines could encourage future research and development of mutual benefit while contributing to an advanced understanding of knowledge representation and information preservation in the digital era.   Steps The committee will undertake a series of steps to fulfill its charge; a draft timetable of these events will be determined within the next few months. 1. Building Blocks ACLS has inaugurated a project among its member organizations focusing on the integration and potential utility of computer technolgy. During the first iteration of this project scholarly societies, which include the American Historical Association, Renaissance Studies, the American Academy of Religion, the College Art Association, and others, will ask of themselves:   what are the essential characteristics of the discipline and its methodologies and how can technology preserve and perpetuate the core disciplinary activity is it possible to establish a consensus around key aspects of the new technological approaches (e.g., encoding, abstracting, search tools)   Referred to as Building Blocks, this project will bring scholars together for meetings and workshops during the next year, within a field, across fields, and with innovators from whom they could learn, culminating in a report of valuable and heretofore unavailable information about a variety of scholarly processes and areas of potential technological convergence.   2. Archives. The topic of archiving in the digital era entails knowledge representation, informatics, and technical applications across disciplines if a solution to many of the persistent problems is to be reached. The committee will encourage and assist organizations involved with archives and related issues to submit proposals for funding workshops and other events in the coming year that demonstrate some of these problems and foster collaborative means to address them.   3. Conference of best practices. A conference that demonstrates exemplary research in computer science and the humanities with broad applicability is of value to all constituencies, and was emphasized as a priorty at both NAS roundtable discussions. Given this national interest, the steering committee will explore organizational issues and funding opportunities for what may be an annual series of demonstrated best practices. This would be in addition to and complement the proposed series of ACLS conferences recommended as part of the Building Blocks project. The information gathered from these venues could help progress in humanities and computer science convergence enormously.   4. Widening circles. During the next 18 months, the committee will explore means by which computer science and humanities practitioners can profitably meet and perhaps collaborate with project members of the national Digital Library Initiative program; directors and staff of electronic text and imaging centers; managers and developers of industrial IT; and representatives of national funding agencies and foundations. Identifying young faculty, and when appropriate graduate students, whose work has potential for cross-disciplinary collaboration and application, will be ongoing. In light of extensive foreign activity in these areas, communication with overseas project developers is essential.   5. Background information. As part of its ongoing charge, members of the steering committee or their designates will continually seek and promulgate information relating to the following categories: exemplary projects underway or planned that are of interest to computer science and humanities practitioners; areas of research conducted by graduate students in the humanities and computer sciences that would benefit from cross-disciplinary collaboration; key potential players in collaborative projects; key organizations or programs that might be brought into collaboration; existing conferences and workshops where faculty and researchers from different disciplines could profitably interact and be provoked into new thinking; traveling exhibits; new funding initiatives relevant to the committee's purview.   Assessment The steering committee will continually assess its mission, relevance, and the feasibility of its undertaking. Members Marjorie Blumenthal Executive Director Computer Science and Telecommunications Board National Research Council David Green Executive Director NINCH Charles Henry Chair Vice Provost University Librarian Rice University Stanley Katz Director Center for Arts & Cultural Policy Studies Princeton University Joan Lippincott Associate Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information Steven Wheatley Director of Programs American Council of Learned Societies