Project Bamboo
http://projectbamboo.uchicago.edu/
Not sure if you have heard of Project Bamboo, but it is a effort to find ways to utilize and incorporate technology into humanities research to advance the field(s). Sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, the end goal is a proposal for an implementation strategy, including standards and the like. My husband has been attending the most recent workshop on behalf of Blackboard (because they want a seat at the table as the standards are being set of course!!!) and it’s basically been a 202 extravaganza. At the table? Librarians, philosophers, artists, lit profs, computer scientists, even a few iSchool professors (Larson and Kansa), etc. This led to lengthy debates about the meaning of what they were actually trying to do, how explcitly they should define it, how to carve up their worlds, why the sky is blue, etc. One of the main things that they apparently kept coming back to was, of course, The Tradeoff. Who does the work and who reaps the benefits.
Pretty cool stuff though, and hearing his recap (”classification”, “ontology”, “schemas”, “data interoperability”, “buzz”, “buzz”, “buzz”) was essentially like a mini-study session for the midterm.
If anyone is interested in contributing – especially those philosophers among us – there are links to join off of their site.
http://projectbamboo.uchicago.edu/join-us
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