Hello everyone,
This Saturday I am flying to Kenya to participate in the Workshop on the Discoverability of African Scholarship Online organised by the OpenUCT Initiative and Carnegie Corporation (some info at http://openuct.uct.ac.za/events/workshop-discoverability-african-scholarship...).
As the workshop's documentation states it,
The requirement by funders and research agencies that open access outputs
not only be online, but also that content be curated and archived in repositories and databases with associated metadata in line with international best practice, additionally means that the content generated by the North will generally be shared in a fashion that facilitates optimal findability and interoperability.
Visibility and interoperability with other online platforms and databases is crucial not only in terms of boosting access to knowledge, but also in facilitating new forms of digital and inter-disciplinary research that are made possible through text mining and federated search functionality. The growing divide in content visibility and curation is therefore also highly undesirable in that it threatens to decrease the scope of the global knowledge corpus by virtue of the fact that knowledge from certain parts of the world will be less likely to have been curated and shared in line with the international protocols that facilitate content exchange and digital scholarship.
[...]
There is evidence that individual African scholars have taken the
initiative of establishing their own websites and promoting academic output online through personal or disciplinary-oriented channels. Undertaking research, digitising the outputs (or even having them 'born digital' in original electronic form) and putting these online is however not sufficient. Some strategy is required in order to approach the exercise in an efficient and cost effective manner so that research can be visible, discoverable and communicated in order to create and maximise value. These activities require specific competencies and activities which have only come into being in recent years; while rapidly emerging globally, they are generally in short supply or still largely unknown amongst many African academics, and to some extent within institutions as a whole.
I am particularly keen in having a conversation about the importance of networks when it comes to creating a critical mass if not a culture of research sharing. The evolution of free/affordable technologies that enhance access, dissemination, archiving/harvesting, citation and measurement of research has been fast in many developed economies, but their adoption in other countries and cultures is not without challenges (and opportunities) of all kinds. The burden of the individual researcher to enhance the visibility of his/her individual research can be a full time occupation for which a particularly privileged setting/working/social conditions and technical expertise is often needed.
I am sharing with you these thoughts because I am interested in what role the digital humanities can play in this context. Are DH research projects/outputs merely a subgroup of all research subject to online discoverability, or are the digital humanities a potentially key player in the development of strategies to make research visible and accessible online? Is the development of technologies and strategies to enhance the discoverability, accessibility, sustainability, preservation etc. of [particularly social sciences, arts and humanities] research?
I believe that the "global" digital humanities face some of the same challenges as African reseachers in terms of getting the work to be seen, cited, recognised, and in terms of being able to create international networks, access funding and other research development opportunities, etc.
Any thoughts from you will be incredibly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
All the best,
Ernesto
*Dr Ernesto Priego*Lecturer in Library Science #citylis City University London
MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...
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