Attending: See listing here.

Purpose: Introduction of the UCLA Digital Humanities Incubator Group, some exemplary projects and exchange of ideas and comments from all attendees.

1. Introduction. Willeke Wendrich (NELC)
2. Current Projects. Zoe Borovsky (CDH), Todd Presner (Germanic)
3. Financial Overview. Willeke Wendrich (NELC)
4. Future Directions, Next Steps. Discussion.

1. Introduction.
As one of her last activities at UCLA Dean Spiegel granted extra funding for the creation of a digital humanities research group. The name proposed for this initiative is the UCLA Digital Humanities Incubator Group (UDHIG). Dean Spiegel asked Professor Willeke Wendrich (Dept. of NELC / Cotsen Institute of Archaeology) to be the first director of the group.

The funds ($180,000 for a period of three years) have been made available because the development of digital humanities at UCLA is in danger of lagging behind national trends. The Center of Digital Humanities (CDH) is mainly financed from educational funds. This results in the unfortunate situation that digital research projects can only be supported when they have a very clear instructional purpose. The new group is to function as an incubator for innovative projects that make use of Information Technology in the broadest sense. These funds will be used to employ a manager and a programmer to support faculty with a range of activities.

UDHIG’s purposes are:

• To give faculty members, both individuals and groups, support for writing grant proposals, by researching technologies, providing the information needed to formulate the technical portions, and by contributing a certain degree of programming and designer support, to enhance the grant proposal.
• To design software solutions in such a way that multiple projects can benefit from them. This requires close cooperation with the PI’s of the various ongoing projects.
• To have regular meetings where UCLA faculty, and specialists from other institutions exchange information on ongoing projects and developments, to benefit from a wide range of experiences.
• To keep abreast with and contribute to the rapid development of digital humanities research and education.
• To create a platform where new ideas and approaches can be developed.
• To discuss the consequences of newly developed forms of publication for merit reviews and tenure cases and define what constitutes high quality digital humanities research.
• To embark on any other activities that will stimulate the development of digital humanities at UCLA.
• To become self-sustaining by generating extramural grants to support our own program and activities.

Since a sharp delineation of the Humanities at UCLA would exclude campus units and disciplines that could potentially benefit greatly from participation in UDHIG, such as History and interpretative Social Sciences, the meeting of August 24 will include:

North Campus Faculty
The Research Library
Strategic Research Initiative
Center for Digital Humanities (CDH)
Academic Technology Services (ATS)
Experiential Technology Center (ETC)
Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE)

Members from each of these groups introduced themselves: see below.

2. Current Projects
Zoe Borovsky and Todd Presner introduced three projects. Links to these projects are available on the website.

UEE. Three main components: searchable articles on line; web assessment tools and reviews; and a digital database of photos from archaeological excavations. An important innovation in this project is that original data from excavations is integrated into a more traditional multimedia encyclopedia. This innovation exemplifies one of the directions where digital humanities are going. UEE will draw on some of the interface design developed for Hypermedia Berlin.

Hypermedia Berlin: this project has evolved from being a curriculum development tool to a research tool. It integrates history and geography in a cultural context, it shows the historical layer in each geographical location. Its next stage is to take advantage of the framework proposed for the UEE project—a collaborative effort between CDH and the Digital Library Program, with CDH designing and implementing the user interface, but drawing from the DL repositories. An editorial board will be formed and the content will include more scholarly articles.

Akhmatova project: this project offers, besides the online searchable text material, with all its modifications, a visual map of the entire corpus of text. This is a work-in-progress, allowing CDH to test several text-analysis platforms with an eye toward data mining and visualization tools that are currently being developed.

3. Financial Overview. Willeke Wendrich (NELC)
a. 5 major grant proposals per year
b. Generate extramural funds
i. Year 1: $0
ii. Year 2: $54K
iii. Year 3: $108K

4. Future Directions. Discussion.

• UDHIG will create a website for faculty interested in these technologies, where news, links and information will be posted and a forum for Q/A can be created. Also there will be periodical (two a quarter?) presentations to the whole group. A suggested model was Stanford’s “Brain Trust” meetings that include representatives from the private sector.

• Connections will be established and deepened with other campus centers and institutes, such as IDRE, YRL and SSCNET, as well as the CDL (e-scholarship). Thanks to these collaborations UDHIG will also contribute to redefine what e-research means for Humanities scholars.

• Collaborations will be sought with non-UCLA entities, both non-profit (i.e.: other universities) and profit (collaborations with suitable companies).

• These new projects will generate new knowledge and research methods by applying these new tools to traditional research. This is an important factor to consider, since often change and innovation is met with resistance.

• UDHIG will also insure that proper standards (i.e.: LOC, CDL etc) will be applied and followed in each projects

Additional points raised, not necessarily in order:
• A steering committee with faculty members was suggested.
• This has been attempted before, it would be good to find out why it did not survive, and it was suggested that we need strategies for getting technologists to interact with faculty members.
• UCLA has great expertise and technical knowledge, but faculty members who have succeeded in securing extramural funds find it difficult to locate and coordinate the expertise. The desire for a “one-stop-shop” was expressed. UDHIG can help by locating and coordinating those on-campus experts and perhaps researching how “one-stop-shops” at other institutions are organized and what they offer.
• There was much enthusiasm for and appreciation of the “sample projects” that were presented. Most agreed that providing examples helps faculty articulate their own technical projects, stimulates new ideas, as well as applying similar technology to their own projects and thus avoiding duplication of effort.