Where Do Humanities Computing and Digital Libraries Meet? [chapter]

Dino Buzzetti
2013 Communications in Computer and Information Science  
Introduction It is in libraries that humanists have always found their basic and essential instrumentation. Libraries can be described as the humanist's lab. Obviously this applies also to digital humanists, who deal with digital objects for research purposes, and to digital libraries that store collections in digital form. But digital objects produced for research purposes are not just inactive artefacts and 'digital library objects are more than collections of bits,' for 'the content of even
more » ... he most basic digital object has some structure' and to enable access and transactions additional information or 'metadata' is required. [1] So 'if, unlike print,' digital editions 'are also open-ended and collaborative work-sites rather than static closed electronic objects' (p. 77), [2] it can be legitimately asked how a digital repository for objects of this kind can enable effective access to the interactive functionalities they provide. In a digital research context, the issue of how the architecture of a digital library could meet the needs of the working practices increasingly adopted by digital humanists seems therefore of primary importance. But how can we define humanities computing and what are its requirements? A plausible answer can be found in the final report of a European Thematic Network on Advanced Computing in the Humanities (ACO*HUM): [...] we will attempt to define the core in terms of the traditional combination of data structures and algorithms, applied to the requirements of a discipline: (a) the methods needed to represent the information within a specific domain of knowledge in such a way that this information can be processed by computational systems result in the data structures required by a specific discipline; (b) the methods needed to formulate the research questions and specific procedures of a given domain of knowledge in such a way as to benefit from the application of computational processing result in the algorithms applicable to a given discipline. [3] In this understanding, digital objects representing primary source materials, should be endowed with specific functionalities capable of answering specific research questions. Accessing this kind of resources should not prevent the applicability of such functionalities and that is precisely the point where digital humanities and digital libraries can actually meet.
doi:10.1007/978-3-642-35834-0_2 fatcat:h76pjgtfofhujduo5qu6vqckeu