The Digging Into Data Challenge and List of Online Data Repositories for Humanities and Social Sciences

I came across the Digging Into Data Challenge website today and thought it might be of interest to IMT readers.  Below is a description of the project, a few related links, and an abbreviated list of links to a wide range of data repositories on the web.  

 ABOUT 

"Welcome to the second round of the Digging into Data Challenge. During the first round, in 2009, nearly 90 international research teams competed in the challenge. Ultimately, eight remarkable projects were awarded grants."

"In 2011, the Digging into Data Challenge has returned for a second round, this time much larger, with sponsorship from eight international research funders, representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States."

"What is the "challenge" we speak of?  The idea behind the Digging into Data Challenge is to address how "big data" changes the research landscape for the humanities and social sciences. Now that we have massive databases of materials used by scholars in the humanities and social sciences -- ranging from digitized books, newspapers, and music to transactional data like web searches, sensor data or cell phone records -- what new, computationally-based research methods might we apply? As the world becomes increasingly digital, new techniques will be needed to search, analyze, and understand these everyday materials. Digging into Data challenges the research community to help create the new research infrastructure for 21st century scholarship." 

"Applicants will form international teams from at least two of the participating countries.  Winning teams will receive grants from two or more of the funding agencies and, two years later, will be invited to show off their work at a special conference sponsored by the eight funders."

"Let's get digging."

RELATED
Digging into Data Challenge Second Year Request for Proposals
Press Release    Round Two: Digging Into Data Challenge: Social and computational scientist asked to design methods and tools for analyzing large data sets (National Science Foundation)

Times Higher Education, April 28, 2011, "Research intelligence - Let's dig a little deeper"
The New York Times, November 16, 2010, "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches"
The Globe and Mail, June 18, 2010, "Supercomputers seek to ‘model humanity’"

Be sure to visit the Digging Into Data Challenge data repository page.  Each repository is annotated in detail and includes links and in some cases, APIs. The page is updated regularly, and at the time of this post, was updated on May 26, 2011. For your convenience, here's the abbreviated version of the Digging Into Data Challenge list of repositories: 

The Archaeology Data Services (ADS)
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/


ARTStor.org
http://www.artstor.org


Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://biodiversitylibrary.org


The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Canadian Art Database Project
http://ccca.ca


Chronicling America, Library of Congress, National Digital Newspaper Program
http://loc.gov/chroniclingamerica


Data-PASS
http://www.icpsr.umish.edu/DATAPASS/


Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)
http://www.dlese.org


Early Canadiana Online
http://canadiana.ca


English Broadside Ballad Archive
http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu


Great War Primary Documents Archive
http://www.gwpda.org


Harvard Time Series Center (TSC)
http://timemachine.iic.harvard.edu/search/


HathiTrusthttp://www.hathitrust.org


The History Data Service (HDS)
http://hds.essex.ac.uk


Infochimps.org
http://www.infochimps.com/


Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org


Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
http://icpsr.umich.edu


JISC MediaHub
http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk


JSTOR
http://jstor.org

Marriott LibraryUniversity of Utah
http://ww.lib.utah.edu/portal/site/marriottlibrary/

NASA ADS: Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/index.html

National Archives, London
http://nationalarchives.gov.uk

The National Library of Wales
http://www.llgc.org.uk


National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
http://www.nsdl.org

National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
http://www.ntis.gov/

Nebraska Digital Newspaper Project
http://cdrh.unl.edu/nebnewspapers/

New York Public Library
http://NYPL.org

The New York Times Article Search API
http://developer.nytimes.com/


Opening History
http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/history/

PhilPapers (philosophy)
http://philpapers.org

Project MUSE
http://muse.jhu.edu/

PSLC DataShop (Pittsburg Science of Learning Center)
http://pslcdatashop.web.cmu.edu/

Scholarly Database at the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, Indiana University
http://sdb.slis.indiana.edu

ScholarSpace at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/community-list

Statistical Accounts of Scotland
http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/

University of Florida Digital Library Center
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc

University of North Texas
http://digital.library.unt.edu/browse/?browseby=collection

Just a thought....
I'd be interested in learning if any of the researchers involved in the Digging Into Data Challenge plan to work on an interactive, multidimensional, multimedia timeline to support collaborative data sharing and analysis.  

Digital Media & Learning Competition Awards

2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition Winners (pdf)


"The Digital Media and Learning Competition, now in its third year, is an annual effort designed to find — and to inspire — the most novel uses of new media in support of learning. In May 2010, the Competition recognized 10 projects that employ games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, and social networks to create learning labs for the 21st Century — environments that help young people learn through exploration, interaction and sharing."
-MacArthur Foundation/HASTAC 


2010 Winners, 21st Century Learning Lab
CLICK! The Online Spy School: Engaging Girls in STEM Activities, Peer Networking, and Gaming- Emily Sturman, Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, PA.
ECOBUGS- Stephen Sayers, Futurelab Education, Bristol, UK.
FAB@SCHOOL: A Digital Laboratory for the Classroom- Glen Bull, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Hole-in-the-Wall: Activity Based e-Learning for Improving Elementary Education in India - Hole-in-the Wall Education Limited, New Delhi, India
Metrovoice: About/In/By Los Angeles - Ann Bray, LA Freewaves, Los Angeles, CA
Mobile Action Lab: Programming Apps for Collaborative Community Change- Elisabeth Soep, Youth Radio-Youth Media International, Oalkand, CA
NOX No More: Connecting Travel Logs with Simulation, Gaming, and Environmental Education- Rosanna Garcia, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Conservation Connection: From the West Side to the West Pacific-Joshua Drew, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL
Scratch & Share: Collaborating with Youth to Develop the Next Generation of Creative Software- Mitchel Resnick, MIT Media LAb, Cambridge, MA
Youth Applab- Leshell Hately, Uplift, Inc. Washington, DC


About the Competition


RELATED
Press Release Via Serious Games Market and the MacArthur Foundation

Global Competition Selects 10 Innovative Digital Media & Learning Projects to Share $1.7 Million (Digital Media & Learning, Press Releases- May 12, 2010)
Washington, DC) — Ten winners of the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition were announced today at a celebration of National Lab Day in Washington, DC, to promote science, technology, engineering and math across the country. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and administered by the virtual network of learning institutions HASTAC, the competition winners will share $1.7 million in funding to use games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, and social networks to create the learning labs of the 21st century. Winners include a project to show youth-produced videos on 2,200 Los Angeles city buses; the next generation of a graphical programming language that allows young people to create their own interactive stories, games, and animations; and an online game that teaches kids the environmental impact of their personal choices. 

“Digital technologies are helping us to re-imagine learning,” said Connie Yowell, MacArthur’s Director of Education. “In the digital age, the learning environment is turned on its head — it’s no longer just the dynamic of the student, the teacher and the curriculum. Today, kids learn and interact with others — even from around the world — every time they go online, or play a video game, or engage through a social networking site. This Competition is helping us to identify and nurture the creation of learning environments that are relevant for kids today and will prepare them for a 21st century workforce.”

Now in its third year, the Competition is an annual effort to find — and to inspire — the most novel uses of new media in support of learning. This year it was launched in collaboration with President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative, challenging designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and researchers to create learning labs for the 21st century, digital environments that promote building and tinkering in new and innovative ways. 

Other winners of the global Digital Media and Learning Competition include:

•Conservation Connection: Using webcasting, video blogging and social networking sites, this project connects kids from Chicago’s West Side with kids in Fiji to work together to protect Fijian coral reefs; 

•Mobile Action Lab: Combining the expertise of social entrepreneurs and technologists and the knowledge and ideas of Oakland, CA-based teens, this project helps develop mobile phone applications that serve Oakland communities. 

•Click! The Online Spy School: Designed to encourage girls engagement in the sciences, Click!Online is a web-based, augmented reality game for teen girls to solve mysteries in biomedical science, environmental protection, and expressive technology. 

•Download a complete list of the competition winners (PDF, 12 pages) »

This year’s application process included an opportunity for public comment, which allowed applicants to collaborate with others and improve their submissions prior to final review. Of the more than 800 applications from 32 countries, 67 finalists were asked to submit videos of their projects for a final round of judging. Winners were selected from this pool by a panel of expert judges that included scholars, educators, entrepreneurs, journalists, and other digital media specialists.

The Competition is funded by a MacArthur grant to the University of California, Irvine, and to Duke University and is administered by the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC). The Competition is part of MacArthur’s digital media and learning initiative designed to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to education and other social institutions that must meet the needs of this and future generations.

"The winning projects exhibit a wonderful creativity in developing learning platforms and environments that promote participatory and collaborative engagements for kids to learn with and from each other in their everyday engagements,” said Cathy N. Davidson, of Duke University, Co-founder of HASTAC along with David Theo Goldberg, of the University of California Humanities Research Institute. “We are witnessing the profound transformation in how young people will be learning in the future, and these projects are helping to lead the way," noted Goldberg.

Winners of the Competition were drawn from two categories: 21st Century Learning Lab Designers ($30,000 to $200,000) and Game Changers ($5,000 to $50,000). Learning Lab Designer award winners, which were announced today, will share $1.7 million for learning environments and digital media-based experiences that allow young people to grapple with social challenges through activities based on the social nature, contexts, and ideas of science, technology, engineering and math. Game Changers awards, which are to be announced on May 25th at the 2010 Games for Change festival, will share $250,000 for creative levels designed with either LittleBigPlanet™ or Spore™ Galactic Adventures. The games offer young people learning opportunities as well as engaging play. Each category includes several Best in Class awards selected by expert judges, as well as a People’s Choice Award to be selected by the general public in late May. 

Detailed information about the winning projects and the Competition is available at http://www.dmlcompetition.net.

Visual Culture

What is Visual Culture? It is a fairly new discipline of study that supports the point of view that understanding our world goes beyond words and text.

I'll be posting a bit on this topic, since I'm interested in figuring out how the concept of visual culture fits into my own theories about multimedia literacy and technology.

As I dig deeper into this field of study, I hope to gather and share what I find. One of my tasks will be to find a "short list" of visual culture scholars and see if there are is any cross-pollination between this group and people in the field of information/data visualization.

In searching for definitions of Visual Culture, I came across this description from the Visual Culture website from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What is Visual Culture?

"(It) is concerned with everything we see, have seen, or may visualize-paintings, sculptures, movies, television, photographs, furniture, utensils, gardens, dance, buildings, artifacts, landscape, toys, advertising, jewelry, apparel, light, graphs, maps, websites, dreams-in short, all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means...."

Visuality and Textuality

"Visual Culture Studies presents a challenge to the textual model of the world that dominates so much thinking about culture. While analyzing cultural experiences, artistic practices, and even social interactions and history itself as so many texts to be read is an undeniably powerful approach, this textual bias ignores a vast realm of perception, experience and meaning in reducing culture to "reading." Visual Cultural Studies counters this bias by emphasizing the importance of the visual-even in textual objects, as when scholars consider the impact of design on the meaning of literature. In countering this earlier thinking, Visual Culture Studies does not set aside textuality, but draws it into dialogue with visuality, performativity, aurality, tactility, and so on. At the same time, Visual Culture scholars are beginning to question the broader dominance of visuality itself (what some have termed "ocularcentrism") and to look for ways to consider vision in the broadest cultural context without introducing new hierarchies of social practice."

What is Visual Culture? (University of Aberdeen)

"Visual culture has emerged as a constellation of various interests and numerous critical intersections in the visual and performing arts here at the University of Aberdeen. Because of its dynamic nature it constitutes less of discipline than a platform for exploring theoretical and creative collaborations between Film, Art History, Modern Thought, Museum Studies, Visual Anthropology, Scientific Imaging practices, new media, and computer engineering. The taught M.Litt reflects the diverse interests of faculty and students participating in visual studies. The M.Litt in Visual Culture is divided into two tracks: one designed to engage with critical thinking (the history of art and film criticism, theories of the visual, philosophies of perception and new media); and the other concentrating on creativity and media production (the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Raul Ruiz advises on avant-garde filmmaking, and courses are taught in film production)."

RELATED
(This list is not inclusive and will be updated.)

Visual Culture Website (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Visual Culture Website (University of Aberdeen)

Georgtown University's Visual Culture Page (Martin Irvine)
Warning- it is ALL TEXT!

Aesthetics and Visual Culture (Bruce B. Janz, Director, Center for Humanities and Digital Research, University of Central Florida)
This site has an extensive number of links that cross numerous disciplines, last updated in 2006.

Journal of Visual Culture

Visual Culture at Middlesex University People Page

Visual Culture Blog (Oberholtzer-Creative)

The Visual Culture Awards - Info about awarded individuals

Infosthetics

Capella Web Capella Garcia Arquitectura- see picture below:




Via Visual Culture:

Pathway to a Sustainable Environment
"Heaven by Capella Garcia Arquitectura is an ephemeral space whose purpose is to show off the virtues of a constructional system using a plastic material, developed by the Resyrok Company, at the latest Casa Decor Fair in Barcelona, Spain, whose theme was “Pathway to a sustainable environment"

I came across the following video, created by Eirik Solheim, on the Visual Culture blog:

2008 in 40 Seconds

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Stanford University's Humanities Lab; Metaverse U,

On-line interactive virtual worlds such as Second Life, as well as online 3D games have become increasingly popular among adults and teens. It isn't too surprising that virtual worlds and videogames are now topics of formal study at the graduate level!

Researchers from the Stanford Humanities Lab have been involved in some interesting work. For several years, they have been studying virtual worlds, participating in Second Life, documenting the of the history of video games, working towards archiving digital virtual worlds, and participating in variety of other trans-disciplinary projects.

The Stanford Humanities Lab will be hosting a two-day conference in February 2008 that focuses on the topic of virtual worlds:

"The proliferation of virtual worlds has garnered tremendous interest, both in the media and in academia. To explore the cultural, technological, legal, and economic issues surrounding virtual worlds, the Stanford Humanities Lab is excited to announce Metaverse U, a conference to be held on Saturday, February 16th and Sunday, February 17th, 2008. We invite you to participate in this unique event. Metaverse U aims to challenge traditional conference models with more collaborative and inclusive opportunities for participants, both virtual and physical. To ensure that its impact extends well beyond the actual conference, video from Metaverse U will be streamed live to the web, free of charge. After the conference, these videos will be archived and become part of a global conversation on virtual worlds."

If you are interested in learning more about interactive multimedia, 3D virtual worlds, on-line communication and collaboration, and the broader issues surrounding this area, don't miss the opportunity to attend - in person or on the web.

FYI

Metaverse U People

Stanford Humanities Lab's History of Computer Games Collection