Scientists' techniques help unlock data for arts and humanities scholars
‘Data mining and analysis are not just for scientists’ is the message coming strongly out of an international Jisc-funded competition, the ‘Digging into Data Challenge’.
Entrants have been challenged to answer the question "what would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?" That is, how can analysis done over immense quantities of digital data be employed in humanities and social science research? What would you do with a million books? Or a million pages of newspapers? Or a million photographs of artworks?
Eight international research teams from the UK, US and Canada will be using a variety of data analysis tools to demonstrate that techniques currently used in the sciences can leverage open, new avenues for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
The winners of the competition are announced today by the four leading research agencies sponsoring the competition: Jisc, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), both of the United States.
Investment from the four agencies together amounts to over a million pounds, allowing new links to be forged across the different countries, as well as breaking down disciplinary boundaries.
U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach said: “Trying to manage a deluge of data and turn bits of information into useful knowledge is a problem that affects almost everyone in today's digital age."
Jisc Digitisation Programme Manager Alastair Dunning said: "Scholars have been searching and browsing through digital versions of newspapers, images for several years. The Digging into Data challenge moves this to the next level, allowing sustained analysis over whole entire collections of digitised data."
Highlights among the winning teams include one project analysing over 23,000 hours of recorded music from the Internet Archive, looking at a breathtaking range of styles, regions and time periods: A Capella to Zydeco, Appalachia to Zambia, and Medieval to Post-Modern. Another will be analysing high-resolution images of manuscripts, maps and quilts, and using digital tools to help identify the artists behind the original objects.
Read more information about the Digging Into Data competition