Appendix i: the charge to the commission
As scholars in the humanities and social
sciences use digital tools and technologies with increasingsophistication and innovation, they are transforming their
practices of collaboration and communication. New forms ofscholarship, criticism, and creativity proliferate in arts and
letters and in the social sciences, resulting in significant newworks accessible and meaningful only in digital form. Many
technology-driven projects in these areas have become enormouslycomplex and, at the same time, indispensable for teaching and
research.
For their part, scientists and engineers no
longer see digital technologies merely as tools enhancingestablished research methodologies but as forces creating
environments that enable the creation of new knowledge. The recentNational Science Foundation report “Revolutionizing Science and
Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure” argues for large-scaleinvestments across all disciplines to develop a shared technology
infrastructure that will support ever-greater capacities. Thosecapacities would include the development and deployment of new
tools; the rapid adoption of best practices; interoperability; theability to invoke services over the network; secure sharing of
facilities; long-term storage of, and access to, important data;and ready availability of expertise and assistance.
The needs of humanists and scientists converge
in this emerging cyberinfrastructure. As the importance oftechnology-enabled innovation grows across all fields, scholars are
increasingly dependent on sophisticated systems for the creation,curation, and preservation of information. They are also dependent
on a policy, economic, and legal environment that encouragesappropriate and unimpeded access to both digital information and
digital tools. It is crucial for the humanities and the socialsciences to join scientists and engineers in defining and building
this infrastructure so that it meets the needs and incorporates thecontributions of humanists and social scientists.
ACLS is sponsoring a national commission to
investigate and report on these issues. The Commission will operatethroughout 2004 and is charged to
- describe and analyze the current state of humanities and
social science cyberinfrastructure;
- articulate the requirements and potential contributions of
the humanities and the social sciences in developing acyberinfrastructure for information, teaching, and research;
- recommend areas of emphasis and coordination for the various
agencies and institutions, public and private, that contribute tothe development of this cyberinfrastructure.
Among the questions to be explored in
pursuing these three goals are:
Describe and analyze the current state of
humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure.
- What can be generalized from the already significant digital
projects in the humanities and social sciences? Which humanitiesand social science communities are most active, and why? Of those
that are not, which might soon, easily and/or profitably, engagemore deeply with digital technology? How have scholars developed
computing applications to accomplish their scholarly and expressivegoals? Where have they failed to do so, and what can be learned
from those failures?
- What new intellectual strategies, critical methods, and
creative practices are emerging in response to technicalapplications in the humanities? To what extent are disciplines in
the humanities transforming themselves through the use of computingand networking technologies? What are the implications of those
transformations?
- What organizations and structures have empowered or impeded
the digital humanities? What are examples of successful and durablecollaboration between technologists and humanities scholars? Where
and how are people being trained to support and engage in suchcollaborations? What has been the role of libraries, archives, and
publishers in these projects?
Articulate the requirements and the potential
contributions of the humanities and the social sciences indeveloping a national cyberinfrastructure for information,
teaching, and research.
- What are the "grand challenge" problems for the humanities
and social sciences in the coming decade? Are they tractable tocomputation? Do they require cyberinfrastructure in some other
way?
- What technological developments can we predict that will have
special impact in the humanities and social sciences in the nearfuture?
- Which are the most important functionalities necessary for
new research and development in cyberinfrastructure generally? Whatkinds of humanities or social science problems are theoretically
difficult or expressively complex, or challenge our ability toformulate a computable problem in some other way? What kinds of
humanities or social science problems are computationallyintensive, require especially high bandwidth, or present resource
challenges in other ways?
- What are the barriers that confront humanities and social
science users who wish to take advantage of state-of-the-artcomputational, storage, networking, and visualization resources in
their research? What can be done to remove these barriers?
- What impact will the availability of high-performance
infrastructure have on enabling cross-disciplinary research? Whatwill high-performance infrastructure mean for the broader social
impact of humanities and social sciences?
- What can be done to improve education and outreach activities
in the computer-science and engineering community to broaden accessto high-end computing? How can computing expertise in the
humanities and social sciences themselves be increased?
Recommend areas of emphasis and coordination
for the various agencies and institutions, public and private, thatcontribute to the development of humanities
cyberinfrastructure.
- What investments in cyberinfrastructure are likely to have
the greatest impact on scholarship in the humanities and socialsciences?
- What research infrastructure should be coupled with
cyberinfrastructure?
- How can private and public funding agencies coordinate their
efforts and cooperate with universities, research libraries,disciplinary organizations, and others to maximize the benefits of
cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences?
- How should new investments in infrastructure and technologiesbe administered so as to include the humanities?
