Confluence
Confluence was officially made available to the whole Network membership at ANZAMEMS in February 2007. It had been available to the NEER Management Committee since December 2006. Ela Majocha, who was appointed as a part-time Research Officer in December 2006, was responsible for promoting Confluence to NEER participants and training them in its use. She also gave new participants access to Confluence, and provided an on-line help service for participants using Confluence. She organized training sessions during the NEER Conference in July, and later presented a training session over the Access Grid for participants around Australia. She also organized a subsequent training session for a group of participants at UWA.
Confluence has been demonstrated and discussed at several conferences, including the NEER Conference in Perth, the e-Research Australia Conference in Brisbane, the CARMEN meeting at Prato, the Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium in Brisbane, and the APAC Conference in Perth. It will also be discussed at the HCSNet workshop "Collaboration and Communicative Tools for Distributed Communities" in Brisbane in December.
Confluence has produced considerable interest in the e-Research community and among Early European groups. Three groups associated with the CARMEN meeting have expressed interest in having their own spaces in Confluence, and so has a research group from Curtin University who are studying research networks in the humanities. The DVC (Research) at UWA, Professor Doug McEachern, is also watching its progress closely.
Confluence is being actively used by the NEER Management Committee, NEER staff, and several research clusters. Many of the more than 300 individual users have updated their personal details, and a growing number are actively developing and maintaining their personal spaces.
Work Required in 2008
Confluence will continue to require some support and promotion in 2008. A software upgrade to the latest version will also be required.
PioNEER
The Memorandum of Understanding for PioNEER was negotiated and signed with the University of Western Australia Library. The DigiTool software was acquired by the Library's I.T. Section and installed on a shared server. NEER staff worked with Library I.T. staff to customize DigiTool - including setting up a "collections" structure for browsing, and locating and providing test files for uploading. Ela Majocha also did considerable preparatory work on identifying potential sources of material for the repository and finding out how much relevant material is already available in Australian institutional repositories. This stage of the project was demonstrated at the NEER Conference in July.
Problems with the server on which DigiTool was housed then led to the Library acquiring a separate server exclusively for DigiTool. The DigiTool software had to be re-installed on the new server, and customized again for PioNEER. This had the effect of postponing NEER's access to PioNEER for more than three months. The test version of PioNEER can be seen at this Web address.
PioNEER will shortly be ready for NEER staff to have access, for the purpose of setting up the workflows for depositing material into the repository. There will be two basic workflows:
- self-archiving of material by NEER participants;
- depositing of material by NEER staff on behalf of NEER participants.
Work Required in 2008
Setting up these workflows should be completed early in 2008. PioNEER can then be made available to NEER participants for depositing material. The extent to which NEER staff (or a practicum student) can locate and deposit material will depend on progress with the Europa Inventa project.
Europa Inventa (Australian Collections Service)
The Australian Collections Service, now known as Europa Inventa, is the digital services project with the highest current priority. Ela Majocha and a UWA Arts Practicum student, Emma Helsby, have been working to identify holdings of Early European items in Australian public institutions, beginning with artworks and historic objects. Most of the museum and gallery databases they looked at were difficult to use, and it was hard to uncover relevant material. They also identified holdings of medieval manuscripts in Australian libraries which supplement and expand Sinclair's 1969 catalogue. These are proving to be somewhat easier to trace.
It is important that the database records in Europa Inventa conform to an internationally accepted standard, so they can be shared and enhanced. Several different metadata standards and frameworks were evaluated, and a decision was made to use CDWA Lite (Categories for the Description of Works of Art, maintained by the Getty Museum) for artworks and non-textual objects. The MODS framework (Metadata Object Description Schema, maintained by the Library of Congress) was selected for describing manuscripts and other text-based materials.
As a first stage, a FileMaker Pro database for artworks was set up, with a structure based on CDWA Lite. Emma Helsby created almost 800 database records for paintings and drawings, using information derived from printed catalogues and on-line databases. A snapshot of this database can be viewed from this page.
A similar database for manuscripts, with a structure based on MODS, is currently being set up. The Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive (IVRLA) has provided templates and instructions for a similar database which they established. The MODS database will be set up, and some initial records created, before the end of 2007.
The Europa Inventa service was promoted and discussed at the following events: the NEER Conference in July, the CARMEN meeting in September, the EU meeting on "Intelligent Access to Digital Heritage" in Tallinn in October, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium in November. A good working relationship has been established with the Helsinki University of Technology's Semantic Computing Research Group, which developed the MuseumFinland software which will be used to deliver the Europa Inventa service. Professor Eero Hyvönen from HUT visited UWA in July and spoke at the NEER Conference. Contact has also been made with researchers at Curtin University (Digital Ecosystems for Business Intelligence Institute) and the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (Amsterdam), who have offered their assistance in developing the Semantic Web aspects of the service.
Work Required for 2008
Semester 1:
- Continue to identify and add records for artworks and manuscripts
- Make regular database snapshots available on the Web
- Install the MuseumFinland software
- Export records in XML format and load them into the MuseumFinland software environment
Semester 2:
- Identify available "concept, name, and place" frameworks (ontologies) and load them into the MuseumFinland software environment
- Add concept, name, and place information to the records
- Make the full database available for browsing and searching on the Web
Database Subscriptions
New subscriptions to Early English Books Online: eight, plus one in progress. Total = 41 people. (Eight University of Melbourne subscriptions additional to this were no longer required.)
New subscriptions to Brepols databases: nil. Total = 30 people, with access to 68 databases between them.
Brepols Internships
The Brepols internships were advertised early in 2007, and nine applications were received and assessed. Internships were subsequently offered to Roza Faunce (Melbourne) and Alicia Marchant (UWA/Gent). Considerable work was done on clarifying the details of the work programme with Simon Forde at Brepols, and on assembling the texts and data required for the Europa Sacra project. This proved to be much more difficult than expected; there are no copies of the first edition of Eubel's Hierarchia Catholica in Australia, for example, and no second-hand copies available to purchase. Roza also embarked on an extended research trip to Europe in the middle of the year and was unable to start her internship. A meeting was held in Gent in October which documented the work programme in detail, and also set out what is expected from the interns, who are expected to start work shortly.