Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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SPQR—Support<strong>in</strong>g Productive Queries for Research
The SPQR 672 project is driven by the research outcomes of the LaQuAT project, which determ<strong>in</strong>ed
that a relational database model might be too “<strong>in</strong>flexible” for <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g heterogeneous and “fuzzy”
data sets <strong>in</strong> the humanities. Because of the limitations of the relational database model, the SPQR
project is <strong>in</strong>vestigat<strong>in</strong>g an approach that will make use of l<strong>in</strong>ked data and Semantic Web approaches
and will use the Europeana Data Model (EDM) as its central ontology. The classical data sets that will
be used <strong>in</strong> this experimental project <strong>in</strong>clude both the projects <strong>in</strong>volved <strong>in</strong> LaQuAT (HGV, Project
Volterra, Inscriptions of Aphrodisias) and new projects, such as the Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania,
the Pleiades Project, the LGPN, and the ANS’s database of co<strong>in</strong>s and papyri.<strong>in</strong>fo. The ma<strong>in</strong> goal of the
SPQR project is to “<strong>in</strong>vestigate the potential of a L<strong>in</strong>ked Data approach for l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g and <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g
datasets related to classical antiquity.” The project has many other research objectives 673 <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g
determ<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g how to represent the humanities data found <strong>in</strong> relational databases so that they can be
exposed as l<strong>in</strong>ked data; how to best transform and expose the targeted data sets; how to provide
“<strong>in</strong>tegrated views” of “multiple heterogeneous datasets” so that researchers can browse and query them
<strong>in</strong> different ways; and, perhaps most important, how to provide a useful <strong>in</strong>terface or means of access to
the <strong>in</strong>tegrated datasets so that researchers can follow “paths though the data from one dataset to
another via common attributes (e.g., names, places or dates).” The SPQR project architecture plans to
make use of REST-based services, RDF, SPARQL, SOLR, and a triplestore. In addition, to ensure a
greater level of <strong>in</strong>teroperability with the “wider <strong>in</strong>formation space,” they will use standards such as
EDM and OAI-ORE, and exist<strong>in</strong>g doma<strong>in</strong>-specific vocabularies and ontologies.
BUILDING A HUMANITIES CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
Def<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g Digital Humanities, Cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure, and the Future
Build<strong>in</strong>g a cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure for the humanities <strong>in</strong>volves th<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g both about digital humanities
research and its current state as a discipl<strong>in</strong>e. In a recent article, Christ<strong>in</strong>e Borgman has outl<strong>in</strong>ed many
of the challenges faced by the digital humanities community as it attempts to possibly come together as
a larger discipl<strong>in</strong>e and struggles to plan for a shared cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure:
The digital humanities are at a critical moment <strong>in</strong> the transition from a specialty area to a fullfledged
community with a common set of methods, sources of evidence, and <strong>in</strong>frastructure – all
of which are necessary for achiev<strong>in</strong>g academic recognition. … Digital collections are
proliferat<strong>in</strong>g, but most rema<strong>in</strong> difficult to use, and digital scholarship rema<strong>in</strong>s a backwater <strong>in</strong>
most humanities departments with respect to hir<strong>in</strong>g, promotion, and teach<strong>in</strong>g practices. Only
the scholars themselves are <strong>in</strong> a position to move the field forward. Experiences of the sciences
<strong>in</strong> their <strong>in</strong>itiatives for cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure and eScience offer valuable lessons (Borgman 2009).
Borgman ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed that <strong>in</strong> order for the digital humanities to be successful, scholars would need to
beg<strong>in</strong> mov<strong>in</strong>g more actively to build the necessary <strong>in</strong>frastructure and to promote their own <strong>in</strong>terests.
Her article sought to serve as a call to action for scholars <strong>in</strong> the digital humanities with a focus on six
factors that will affect the future of digital scholarship <strong>in</strong> the humanities: publication practices, data,
research methods, collaboration, <strong>in</strong>centives, and learn<strong>in</strong>g. Each of these themes is discussed later <strong>in</strong>
this section.
672 http://spqr.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/
673 http://spqr.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/page_id=8