Designing a national “Virtual Laboratory” for the humanities

Toby Burrows

The Australian HuNI project

NeCTAR Project• National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources

• Australian government funding programme (part of SuperScience initiative): A$47 million (2010-2013)

• Programmes: Virtual Laboratories (5) Research Cloud (4) eResearch Tools (15) National Servers (2)

www.nectar.org.au

Virtual Laboratories (Stage 1)

• The Genomics Virtual Laboratory (GVL) (lead: University of Queensland)

• Climate and Weather Science Laboratory (lead: Bureau of Meteorology)

• The Characterisation Virtual Laboratory: Research Environments for Exploring Inner Space (lead: Monash University)

• The All-Sky Virtual Observatory (lead: Astronomy Australia Ltd)

• Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI): Unlocking and Uniting Australia's Cultural Data (lead: Deakin University)

Virtual Laboratories:What are they?

NeCTAR criteria• Cross-institutional

• Cross-disciplinary

• Integration of existing data

• Integration of existing tools

• Data-centred workflows

• Collaboration

HuNI responses• Multiple institutions (13 partners)

• All humanities disciplines

• Cultural datasets pooled as Linked Data

• Existing tools adapted to work with Linked Data

• Linked Data + tools

• Collaborative tools

Digital Object Collections

Publications

Descriptions / M

etadata

Annotations

Excerpts

Representations

Classifications

Exhibitions

RESEARCHERS INSTI TUTIONS

Citations

Collections

Entities layer (Linked Data)

HuNI: Cultural datasets

• Australian Dictionary of Biography

• AustLit (Australian literature)

• AusStage (performing arts)

• Design and Art Australia Online

• Cinema and Audiences Research Project

• AUSTLANG: Australian Indigenous Languages Database

• AIATSIS Mura catalogue (Australian indigenous materials)

• bonza: National Cinema and Television Database

• Australian Media History Database

• Circus Oz Living Archive Video Collection

• Australian Film Institute Research Collection

• Dictionary of Sydney

• Trove (National Library of Australia)

• Vocabularies: PeopleAustralia (National Library of

Australia) Gazetteer of Australia (Geoscience

Australia) Object Name Thesaurus (Powerhouse

Museum)

HuNI: Tools

• OHRM (University of Melbourne): modelling entity relationships and publishing information about collections into aggregated frameworks

• LORE (University of Queensland): annotation, federated searching, visualisation, aggregation and sharing of compound digital objects

• Heurist and FieldHelper (University of Sydney): aggregating data, modelling entity relationships and publishing collections of data to the Web (including maps and timelines)

• MaVRec (RMIT University): building virtual collections

• EoPAS (PARADISEC – Sydney and Melbourne): annotating audio and video files

• OCCAMS (Australian National University): annotation, analysis and management of online cultural collections

• AusStage (Flinders University of South Australia): visualisation and mapping

• VIVO (Cornell University): Linked Data storage, management and publishing

HuNI timeline

• May 2012: Contract signed

• June 2012: Project Manager appointed

• Nov. 2012: Linked Data Server, data from initial group of datasets – DAAO, ADB, OHRM databases, PARADISEC, Media Archive Project, AusStage

• Apr. 2013: Initial tools – search and browse, authentication, annotation, compound object publishing, virtual collections

• May 2013: data from second group of datasets, Semantic Mediation and Mapping Service, remaining tools

• Dec. 2013: Completion! And handover...

HuNI Partners• Deakin University (lead partner)

• University of Western Australia

• Australian National University

• University of Queensland

• University of Melbourne

• University of Sydney

• University of New South Wales

• Flinders University of South Australia

• Macquarie University

• RMIT University

• Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)

• VeRSI

• Intersect

HuNI Project Governance

HuNI User Community

NeCTAR Directorate

HuNI Steering

Committee

HuNI Project Team

Technical Working Group

Expert Data Group

Expert Advisory Group

User Engagemen

t Group

User Reference

Group

Wider Interest Group

CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

VeRSI Intersect University of Western Australia University of Queensland University NSW Flinders UniversityUniversity of Melbourne University of Sydney Australian National University RMIT University Macquarie University AIATSIS

HuNI Project Team

Deakin University

Prof Deb VerhoevenChair, Media and CommunicationsHuNI Project Sponsor

VeRSI Alex HawkerHuNI Project Manager Conal TuohyeResearch AnalystHuNI Technical Coordinator Dr Richard RothwellSenior Software EngineerHuNI Tool Integration Coordinator Elizabeth TathamHuNI Communications Officer

Intersect Ingrid MasoneResearch AnalystHuNI Information Services Coordinator Marc Ziani de FerrantiUser Interface Designer Dr Anne CreganeResearch AnalystHuNI Interoperability Liaison

University of Western Australia

Dr Toby BurrowsManager, eResearch SupportHuNI Community Liaison and Uptake Coordinator

HuNI: Humanities Networked Infrastructure

More about HuNI

Web site: http://huni.versi.net.au

Wiki: http://apidictor.huni.net.au/trac/

Contact: info@huni.net.au

c/o School of Communication and Creative Arts

Deakin University

Melbourne (Burwood Campus)

“HuNI as a scholarly collaboration system” (Steven Hayes, University of Sydney)