News Archive

A CCH research team described a new framework for the digital edition of Anglo–Saxon legal codes at a Workshop on Digital Editing, which took place at the Institute of Historical Research on 18th November and included speakers from a range of different projects with an editorial focus. This was part of a series of annual workshops organized by the AHRC-funded Early English Laws project, which is a three-year collaborative venture between the IHR and CCH. The presentation focused on the development of a collaborative online editing environment that editors around the world will use to submit their editions of the legal codes.
 
For more information please see the project web site.

Eighty people attended a reception at King's College's Maughan Library on 25th November to celebrate an important stage in the progress of the
Henry III Fine Rolls Project, a major colloborative effort involving King’s College London’s Department of History and Centre for Computing in the Humanities with The National Archives and Canterbury Christ Church University, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Guests including Lord Douro, Chairman of King’s College London, Professor Rick Trainor, Principal of King’s College London, and Professor Sir Alan Wilson, AHRC Chairman watched a presentation by project team members that explained the importance of the rolls in English history and showed how the project website offers full English translations along with a complete set of high-quality images and a faceted search facility.

The official launch of
PASE IIand
PASE Domesdayin the Department of History, King's College London on the 26th October, 2010 marked a significant milestone in the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) project; a highly collaborative project between members of King's College London and the University of Cambridge that was funded by the AHRC.
See
herefor further details of the project and its launch.

King's Visualisation Labhosted a two-day symposium (29-30 October 2010) on the use of Virtual Worlds in Humanities Research. The symposium, funded by the Mellon Foundation, was attended by representatives of a seven-university consortium from USA and Europe and technical consultants from the private sector. The consortium agreed a detailed programme of activities that promises substantially to extend the technical and conceptual scope of virtual world applications for cultural heritage and humanities research.

Recipients of Third Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration Announced

A computer software tool developed by a King’s College London academic has won a Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration. John Bradley of the College’s Centre for Computing in the Humanities was awarded $50,000 for creating Pliny, a scholarly annotation tool.

The Mellon Awards honour not-for-profit organisations for leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities, as well as cultural-heritage not-for-profit activities.

Pliny is a software tool which facilities note-taking and annotation while a person is actually reading (a key element of Humanities research for many scholars), and furthermore allows readers to integrate their initial notes into a representation of an evolving personal interpretation. Pliny has components that go beyond annotation to help manage and organise the notes, even if there are thousands of them to work through. It can be used with materials in both digital (web sites, images and PDF files) and non-digital (books, printed journal articles) format. http://pliny.cch.kcl.ac.uk/

The software is named after the classical Roman author, naturalist and military commander Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), who was famous for expressing his curiosity about all things by constantly recording notes about them. According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, he left behind 160 books in very small handwriting.

In making the award to John Bradley, at an event in December in Washington DC, Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google, a man often called the ‘Father of the Internet’, said in his citation:

‘Within the crowd of scholarly annotation tools, Pliny stands out for at least two reasons. First, it can handle both direct annotation, marking up content which the scholar is permitted to modify, and indirect annotation, storing annotations separately from content. Second, and in contrast to many annotation tools, it has received widespread praise for working in ways that humanists actually work. Our Committee also praised Pliny for its re-use of widely available open source technology, the Eclipse project, as a foundation.’

John Bradley is Project Leader and Senior Analyst in the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), The primary objective of the CCH is to study the possibilities of computing for arts and humanities scholarship and, in collaboration with research partners across the disciplines, to design and build applications which implement these possibilities, in particular those which produce online research publications. In the recent Research Assessment Exercise CCH was ranked either first or as equal second within its sector.

John Bradley said: ‘We at CCH are very aware of the huge potential of computing methods and tools for Humanities research, with much of this potential still to be realized. I very much hope that Pliny can help to promote fundamentally new thinking about how computing can help scholars in the actual conduct of their research.’

Harold Short, Director of CCH, said: ‘The Mellon Award is richly deserved. It can be seen not only as just recognition of the intellectual innovation that underlies the Pliny software, but also as marking in a symbolic way his exceptional contribution to scholarship in the Digital Humanities over many years.’

One of the CCH‘s Professors of Humanities Computing, Willard McCarty, has been using Pliny intensively in preparation for study leave, and has this to say: ‘Pliny is one of those very rare software programs that embodies a profound understanding of the human activity that it enables. It is designed in the best tradition of computing, not to automate human work but to augment human intelligence. The particular activity it is designed to enable is one of the most ancient scholarly acts, perhaps also the most essential: the making of commentaries. The scholar's central role is to mediate between cultural artefacts and the society of which he or she is a part. Commenting is how the scholar does that. Pliny is the best tool for the job I have ever encountered --and I've been looking for decades.’

The awards event marked The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s third annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC) competition, in which a total of $650,000 was awarded in prizes to ten not-for-profit institutions. The panel that decided the awards included Sir Timothy Berners-Lee (Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the World Wide Web), Mitchell Baker (CEO, Mozilla Corporation), John Seely Brown (former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp.), John Gage (at the time, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; now, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers), and Tim O'Reilly (Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media).

The Dead Sea Scrolls project, in which Simon Tanner of KDCS is involved, has made international news:

CNN online
New York Times
Guardian

Further information about the project can be found here:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?year=2007&news_id=679

A collaborative project between the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s and New York University, is among the first to receive a new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joint Information Systems Committee.

See the King's news highlights for further information.

A new edition of the collected works of Thomas Middleton, co-edited by Dr John Lavagnino, was published on 22nd November 2007. A launch was held at The Globe on 21st November, with a talk given by Professor Gary Taylor (Florida State University, co-editor)

A selection of articles covering the publication of the edition can be found below:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/story/0,,2212452,00.html

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article2843935.ece

Digital Arts & Humanities is a new community website hosted by King's College London and developed by the AHRC ICT Methods Network. The site is an open platform for the exchange of ideas and methods and for making contacts within the arts and humanities ICT community.

Anyone with an interest in the digital arts and humanities is invited to join. The site features an ICT events calendar, group forums and blogs and other community tools for all members.
www.arts-humanities.net/

23rd May 2007, at King's Maughan Library

A unique project digitalising the 'Fine Rolls' of Henry III was launched in May at King's Maughan Library in Chancery Lane. The Library was the former Public Record Office building where the rolls were housed for over a century before their move in the 1990s to the new home of The National Archives at Kew.

26th January 2007, at the National Gallery

Over 250 delegates from museums, universities, libraries and commercial organisations attended a King’s conference exploring digital copyright issues in the arts and humanities, held in conjunction with the Museums Copyright Group at the National Gallery on January 26th.

The event, entitled 'Connecting Culture and Commerce: Getting The Right Balance' was organised by King’s Digital Consultancy Services (KDCS), and attracted an international audience. A fascinating debate on the issue of broadcasting copyright between the BBC’s Creative Director, Alan Yentob, and Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, prompted a lively discussion.

Simon Tanner, Director of KDCS commented:

"The day was a huge success, particularly because we had so many different sides of the debate represented. The day brought these together and a real sense of cohesion and common purpose was established. This in its own right is a significant step forward and one we are proud to be associated with."

The presentations and audio recordings from the day will be available from the KDCS website at King’s in the near future (www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/mcg2007/).

Memories, Communities, Technologies conference, Monash Centre, Prato - 4th-6th October 2006

Memories, Communities, Technologies is a project exploring the rich interplay between memories, communities and technologies at the nexus between the humanities, sciences and information technology. The project is led by Professors Sue McKemmish and Marian Quartly (Monash University), Professor Eric Ketelaar (Monash University and University of Amsterdam), and Professor Harold Short (King's College London) with support from memory institutions, community and industry groups, and other Australian and international academics.

CCH was involved in organising the Prato conference, which will explore the issues further, define the research agenda, identify possible projects and sources of funding, and develop an international stakeholder group.

For further information see http://www.memct.net/

PBW, The Prosopography of the Byzantine World project,launched the first version of its online database on Thursday 24 August (http://www.pbw.kcl.ac.uk), to coincinde with the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies (London 21-26 August: http://www.byzantinecongress.org.uk/).

See here for further details.

The PASE Project and related work of the CCH forms a prominent part of Alex Burghart's article "Web works" in the latest issue of the Times Literary Supplement, for 13 October.

The article will appear in the TLS online archive in due course. Please see http://www.the-tls.co.uk for further information.

A feature about the project to put Desmond Tutu's Archive online, which is co-ordinated by CCH.
http://education.independent.co.uk/higher/article1528266.ece

The CCH is the focus of a new video on the Research-TV web site, which looks at the Desmond Tutu archive.

The archive, which will contain speeches, film footage, interviews, photographs and even personal letters, is being developed in partnership with the Universities of Witwatersrand, the Western Cape, Cape Town and FortHare and will offer, among other things, a unique view of South Africa during the apartheid era.

Other recent projects featured include How Kew Grew – a Virtual Reality DVD commissioned by Kew Gardens as part of preparations to mark their 250th anniversary.

This year, Thursday 29 June to Saturday 1 July 2006, CCH hosted the seventh Computers, Literature and Philology conference (CLiP). For more details, please visit the CLiP 2006 website.

It is with the greatest pleasure that we announce that Willard McCarty is the 2006 recipient of the Richard J Lyman Award from the US National Humanities Center.

The purpose of the award is "to recognize scholars who have advanced humanistic scholarship and teaching through the innovative use of information technology". The award is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, and is the most prestigious in our field of Digital Humanities. The award sum is $25,000.

Willard is the fifth scholar to receive the Lyman. The first, in 2002, was Jerome McGann, and the 2005 recipient was John Unsworth.

Willard received the award in a ceremony in New York on Wednesday 17th May. He will be giving a public lecture at the National Humanities Center in Washington D.C. in early November.

Further information about the award can be found on the NHC website at: http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/lymanaward/lymanaward.htm

Digital Humanities Workshop
Wednesday 19th April 2006
One-day course

The London Taster Course Programme aims to provide Year 12 students with a taste of what life at university is like. Students can choose a course they wish to attend from a variety of subjects within 19 different university institutions. These tasters provide an introduction to new and eye-opening subjects that do not necessarily relate to AS/A Level or any other examination syllabuses. All courses are non-residential and free of charge. Visit www.london.ac.uk/tasters for more information

CCH's Digital Humanities Workshop is a brief, hands-on overview of what computers can do for the arts and humanities, illustrated through database construction and text-analysis.

In the morning students will design and build a database of music CDs and in the afternoon find and investigate clues in a large text.

Students attending the course should have familiarity with one or more standard computing applications.

If you're interested in applying, please contact Sarah Allen quoting course code KC15.

Thursday 6 April 2006
Adventures in Space and Time: Spatial and Temporal Information in the Digital Humanities
Martyn Jessop (CCH)
CCH Seminar room

This event was cancelled and may be rescheduled. Check the Forthcoming Events page for a new date.

Tuesday 16 March 2006
Choice in the digital domain - will copyright extend or stifle choice?
Simon Tanner (CCH)
CCH Seminar room

An abstract of the seminar 'Choice in the Digital Domain' is available.

Thursday 26 Jan 2006
Crosstalk in Humanities Computing
John Nerbonne (Groningen, The Netherlands)
CCH Seminar room

An abstract of the seminar 'Crosstalk in Humanities Computing' is available.

Thursday 23 February
Computational paleography: pilot case study and results
Arianna Ciula (CCH)
CCH Seminar room

An abstract of the seminar 'Computational paleography: pilot case study and results' is available.

Further information on the Seminars in Humanities Computing 2005-2006 is also available.

CCH together with the University of Siena-Arezzo (Dipartimento di Teoria e Documentazione delle Tradizioni Culturali, Scuola di Dottorato in Scienze del Testo and CISLAB) and the Fondazione Ezio Franceschini of Florence, have organised a forum for medievalists to discuss the principles and purposes of the critical edition produced with the support of humanities computing tools, methods and aids. For the programme and more information please visit the website of the seminar.

CCH offers four bursaries (500 euros for non-Italian residents and of 250 euros for Italian residents) to young scholars interested in attending the seminar. If you want to apply, please send a request and your CV to the conference office. Registration (free) is required for the workshop only and it needs to be proposed to the conference office. The seminar is part of the academic programmes of the class of Computing for the study of the ancient and medieval world (Informatica per lo studio del mondo antico e medievale), of the PhD in Textual studies (Scienze del Testo) of the University of Siena and of the Class on advanced philology of medieval Latin (Corso di Perfezionamento in Filologia Mediolatina) by SISMEL.

CCH is home to the King's Visualisation Lab, which specialises in visual representation for archaeology, historic buildings, cultural heritage organisations and academic research.

CCH is host to the AHRC ICT Methods Network, which is a major new initiative that provides a national forum for the exchange and dissemination of expertise in the use of ICT for Arts and Humanities research across the whole range of subjects covered by the AHRC.