HPC Wire article: The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: 18thConnect

The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social
Science Computing: 18thConnect

by Kevin D. Franklin and Karen Rodriguez'G, ICHASS

In this series of articles Kevin D. Franklin and Karen Rodriguez'G
examine computational tools and approaches at the interface of humanities, arts
and social science.

18thConnect: Digitizing the Canon

For the humanities scholar who may have only recently mastered library and
archival finding aids beyond the archaic card catalog, the possibility of
retrieving source materials at the flash of a keystroke (well maybe a few...) is
very heady stuff. Very. But even as scholars rub their hands together and
salivate at the possibilities that advanced computer technologies bring to the
archival table, questions of open access and issues of intellectual ownership
and copyright infringement have emerged as fast as the world's knowlege
repositories (and Google) are digitizing texts. Accessibility is particularly
important to historians, for example, where research in primary sources can
often only be accomplished with an expensive plane ticket, extended sabbatical
leave, and a pocketful of increasingly dwindling research monies ...

For Laura
Mandell and Robert Markley, professors of English at Miami University-Ohio
(MU) and University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), respectively, the possibilities of internet-enabled
research are tremendous. Mandell and Markley are the lead organizers of 18thConnect, a collaboration between MU, UIUC, and the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which will provide the
first comprehensive means of digitally organizing materials produced before
1800 ...

Please click here to read the full article from HPC Wire. To see 18thConnect's website, click here.

About the authors

Kevin D Franklin is the Executive Director of the Institute
for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science (ICHASS),
Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA), Research Professor
- Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(UIUC), and Adjunct Associate
Professor - African American Studies (UIUC). Karen Rodriguez'G is Public
Relations Liaison for ICHASS and a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at
UIUC. Founded in 2004 at UIUC, ICHASS charts new ground in high performance
computing and the humanities, arts, and social sciences by creating both
learning environments and spaces for digital discovery. ICHASS presents
path-breaking research, computational resources, collaborative tools, and
educational programming to showcase the future of the humanities, arts, and
social sciences by engaging visionary scholars from across the globe to
demonstrate approaches that interface advanced interdisciplinary research with
high-performance computing.