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Canberra.
The final speaker in this session at DHA 2012 is Antonina Lewis, who begins by highlighting the question of entities in describing linked data. Along with additional issues, such as data storage and retention, they raise a range of key questions for the creators, custodians, and curators of linked data.

Importantly, interpretation of data requires context; this is especially true for collections of coded data, where coding schemes and the various provenance of data sources are also crucially important for meaningful interpretation.

Antonina herself works on a rich archive of the source material used for Australian opinion polls from …

Canberra.
The second speaker in the linked data panel at DHA 2012 is Steven Hayes, who begins by introducing the network model of representing relationships between entities. This model has been employed by the Heurist database system, which Steven says represents a new ‘linked data’ mindset in humanities research.

From the perspective of that mindset, how linked are our data? Steven presents a number of criteria for ‘proper’ linked data: are they available online, in machine-readable form, using non-proprietary formats, using RDF standards, and linked to other RDF repositories, for example (the linked data checklist proposed by Tim Berners-Lee)?

Steven …

Canberra.
Following the plenary panel, I’ve made it to a Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 panel on linked data, which opens with Toby Burrows. He begins by outlining the shape of what we now call e-Research: it ranges from supercomputing, large data visualisations, and other major, expensive projects mainly in the ‘hard’ sciences through to work being done in the humanities (notably excluding mere digitisation initiatives).

In the humanities, why do we bother? We could simply remain within our own niche areas, or leave the computational work to someone else; humanities work also adds to the problem by introducing further, major …

Canberra.
The final panellist on this DHA 2012 panel on ‘Big Digital Humanities’ is John Unsworth. His definition of the digital humanities is narrower than that of the others: he defines it as a form of humanities scholarship that builds centrally on computational methods – for example, research which uses ‘big data’ resources to do work which could not be done in any other way.

John uses the Hathi Trust Digital Library as an example: a collection of some 10 million (and growing) digitised publications which emerged in tandem with the Google Books initiative and is supported by libraries which …

Canberra.
The next panellist at the DHA 2012 ‘Big Digital Humanities’ plenary is Harold Short. He begins by reviewing the different types of digital humanities infrastructure which are now being developed, and notes activities at institutional, national (including the recent Research Data Storage Initiative in Australia), and international levels here. This is a new development – for too long, digital humanities have piggybacked onto existing science infrastructures, but now they are increasingly developing tools to suit their own, specific needs.

At national levels around the world, there are various major initiatives (such as the National Library of Australia’s Trove project …

Canberra.
The second day of Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 starts with a panel on the ‘Big Digital Humanities’ involving Peter Robinson, Harold Short, and John Unsworth. Peter begins by noting the fairly recent history of humanities computing, and the rapid development of this area. This has led to many initiatives to teach more digital humanities methods to graduates – but is this actually useful? The aim must be to get better, not necessarily bigger. Just getting bigger would mean to fail.

There is a substantial push towards the digital – more and more of our culture (including existing works) is …

Canberra.
The final speaker in this session at DHA 2012 is Ned Rossiter, who shifts our focus to the question of labour. He highlights what he calls the new zeal in visualising humanities research, but suggests that there isn’t enough drive towards new research methods, or towards the recognition of labour issues in the industries which digital humanities research investigates.

His example here is a study of the global logistics industry, with specific focus on transit labour in a number of cities in Asia, Australia, and Europe; logistics is key to forms of differential inclusion (for example through special administrative …

Canberra.
The next speaker at DHA2012 is Zoë Sofoulis, whose focus is on cross-connections between urban water management and humanities research. Humanities perspectives are often overlooked in national infrastructure planning and development, which means that social concerns are often ignored in such processes; the same is true also for national research strategies, even though humanities research is often vastly less expensive than research in conventional science and technology sectors. Over 50% of researchers are in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) field, but 95% of the research funding goes to the science, technology, engineering and manufacturing (STEM) sector.

(Hard) …

Canberra.
The next panel at Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 is starting with Tony Bennett, whose interest is in visualising socio-cultural relations. Franco Moretti has set out the differences between ‘seeing like a state’ (top-down, from above) and ‘seeing like a novellist’ (from within the space itself, in a contextually situated fashion). There’s also a way of ‘seeing like a sociologist’, Tony suggests – a map which makes visible the underlying social universe.

Tony’s aim here is to compare major studies on cultural tastes in Britain and Australia, using multiple correspondence analysis: a form of geometric data analysis which generates two …

Canberra.
The final speaker in this DHA 2012 session is Julie Freeman, whose interest is also in online political participation; her focus is on the City of Casey local government authority in Victoria, comprising a population of 256,000 citizens served by 11 councillors. How are online tools and platforms used in local government in this case?

Casey has its own council Website, of course, as well as a Twitter and Facebook presence (which is mainly used to disseminate media releases), the civic networking site Casey Connect (a council-provided platform for local clubs and associations to present themselves, at arms’ length …