Articles from 2023
Koraljka Golub and Ying-Hsang Liu
February 21, 2023
The book Information and Knowledge Organisation in Digital Humanities: Global Perspectives aims to explores the role of knowledge organisation in the digital humanities. By focusing on how information is described, represented and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities. Although knowledge organisation has in the past been viewed as one of the major disciplines within the field of Information Studies, it has found applications in numerous areas because the need to organise data, informa¬tion or knowledge is omnipresent. However, we have also witnessed that, in many domains of human endeavour, information is being organised ad hoc, often resulting in systems that underperform and even effectively prevent access to data, information and knowledge. In order to help ensure that the best solutions are found for knowledge organisation in the digital human¬ities, it is important to bring the two communities of research and prac¬tice together, to explore potential solutions and jointly address challenges. This book attempts to achieve that by providing state-of-the-art examples of interdisciplinary projects and case studies while also discussing the chal¬lenges and suggesting a future agenda. Our hope is that this volume helps set the stage for evolving knowledge organisation in DH into a truly transdisci¬plinary approach that seamlessly harnesses the synergies of its component parts.
Zoe Bartliff
June 16, 2022
As digital collections and research materials become increasingly prevalent, voluminous, and heterogeneous the issue of facilitating access to this material concurrently increases in complexity. Effective use of metadata has proven the key to unlocking avenues of access within cultural heritage collections of various types, increasing the discoverability and usability of research data (Clarke et al., 20191, Orgel et al., 20152, Burke & Zavalina, 20203). Considerations of access are multi-faceted and, with reference to cultural heritage collections, incorporate a range of elements, each interlinked with one another. Of particular interest to my research are the practical concerns of facilitating access, the conceptual challenges of facilitating user engagement with content and, most recently, the legal and ethical ramifications of access. Each of these branches of investigation, both in relation to archival collections and the study of medieval texts, have centred on the use of metadata and as such has encountered corresponding benefits and challenges. The variety and potential wider applicability of these investigations are the focus of this post.
Catherine Barnes
May 29, 2022
I live and teach on Kaurna land in Adelaide, South Australia. Over the past Summer I had the pleasure of teaching resource description and discovery to students in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although I was physically located in Australia, the students and staff welcomed me to the culture and customs of their land. Each communication was prefixed with Kia ora, a Māori language greeting, and contained many other Māori language terms, used interchangeably with English. I found myself enjoying the bilingual nature of our exchanges and we spent many discussions on how communities are not only represented in our own language but that of our databases. Whilst I was teaching, I was learning not only about their culture, but also my own.