a virtual research environment for the study of documents and manuscripts 1 1 research...

A Virtual Research Environment for the Study of Documents and Manuscripts

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• Research administration

• Resource discovery

• Data creation, use and analysis

• Collaboration and communication

• Publication, curation and preservation

Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities

Survey Findings


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•Research administration: Interviewees want seamless access to information about events, including conferences, lectures and seminars; research and researcher interests of individuals within the institution and beyond; and information regarding grants and funding opportunities, all of the above accessible in one, easy to navigate place.

•Resource discovery: Interviewees wish to make the process of finding resources and research material more efficient by linking datasets and databases so that they can be cross searched with a single search term and the results returned to personal area for future reference.

•Data creation, use and analysis: Interviewees want a secure area in which they can store material such as saved searches, images and texts; create notes and annotations and use tools to enhance, manipulate and compare items.


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• Collaboration and communication: Interviewees want tools to enable them to work collaboratively on documents, to share material with collaborators and to view material simultaneously with colleagues wherever they might be based. At the same time interviewees want to communicate either through video conferencing or real time chat facilities and to enable a collaborator to point/highlight and annotate items throughout the discussion.

• Publication, curation and preservation: Interviewees wish to store, publish and archive their work both on personal web pages for open access or in a more secure area for academic material. Interviewees want to be sure that their work and the work of those around them is preserved and made available both within Oxford and externally to promote the division and its work.


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A Virtual Workspace for the Study of Ancient DocumentsAHRC-EPSRC-JISC e-Science Demonstrator Project (September-December, 2006)

Aims and objectives:

To deliver a proof of concept of a system that will enable a researcher to:

Select, display, store and organise texts and images, in a ‘personal workspace’

Add annotations to these items to store personal thoughts and responses

Support collaboration by allowing multiple researchers in separate locations to share a common view of the workspace, in conjunction with real time communication via Chat, VoIP and desktop integration with AccessGrid

Allow a collaborator to comment, point/highlight, discuss and annotate the items in the shared workspace

Search across multiple, distributed data sets, images and text


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Jabber Service

Image Store

Uportal Container

Chat Search Facility

Access Grid

Image Upload

Annotation Store

Coordination Servlet

Tile Maker

Background Removal

Image Enhancement Tools

Access Grid

Service

Image Viewer

Vindolanda / other data

sources

BVREH hosted tools/Services

3rd Party tools/Services


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Jabber Service

Image Store

Uportal Container

Chat Search Facility

Access Grid

Image Upload

Annotation Store

Coordination Servlet

Tile Maker

Background Removal

Image Enhancement Tools

Access Grid

Service

Image Viewer

Vindolanda / other data

sources

BVREH hosted tools/Services

3rd Party tools/Services


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Further functionality

Integrated searches across databanks of texts and images, e.g.

Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis APIS Vindolanda Tablets Online databases of Greek and Latin inscriptions on-line reference resources, dictionaries

Lexicon of Greek Personal Names LDAB Fayum Villages Database etc.


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A tool to highlight selected section of the text or image with magnification facility

Adjust contrast/brightness of whole image and parts of image

Rulers and grids

•Cut sections of text from elsewhere in the document to see if a word or a group of letters fits


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Databank of alphabets: grids to drag letters from digitised texts to build up a custom alphabet for that document and stored for cross-searching

•Ability to place documents in archaeological context (on-linewhere possible) and connect with related documents and other artefacts.


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a Virtual Environment for Archaeology


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Development methodology

&

further plans


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Workpackage 1: Project ManagementWorkpackage 2: User Needs AnalysisWorkpackage 3: System Analysis and DesignWorkpackage 4: Development: Building and InteractionWorkpackage 5: DocumentationWorkpackage 6: DeploymentWorkpackage 7: User TrainingWorkpackage 8: EvaluationWorkpackage 9: Dissemination