Trip Report: Entwicklungspotentiale von e-Humanities

Event: Abschluss-Workshop des DFG-Projekts "Konzeptionelle Entwicklung einer Forschungsinfrastruktur für die e-Humanities in Deutschland" Göttingen, January 22, 2009 Participants MPDL: Heike, Kristina, Melanie For more detailed information see the | agenda and presentations of the conference. = Introduction = As the DFG project "Konzeptionelle Entwicklung einer Forschungsinfrastruktur für die e-Humanities in Deutschland" comes to an end a final workshop was held at the Paulinerkirche in Göttingen to present and discuss the results of the project. Additionally there was a session about the future development and capability of the e-Humanities and an opportunity for the participants of the conference to talk to representatives of different funding organisations during a panel discussion.

= Workshop = After an introductory speech of Norbert Lossau (SUB Göttingen) about the current status of the eHumanities in Germany, Heike Neuroth (MPDL, SUB Göttingen) presented the DFG project, its aims and work packages to the audience. The focus of the project was on a study about the current national and international eHumanities infrastructure which was afterwards presented by Katja Meffert (SUB Göttingen). An important aim of the project was to present a roadmap for the development of an infrastructure of eHumanities in Germany.

Fotis Jannidis (TU Darmstadt, Text Grid) presented as a first draft of the soon to come roadmap important devices on building a research infrastructure to the audience. Speaking of these components he mainly mentioned the responsibility of researchers to communicate new research methods and instruct future scholars. He also emphasizes the need of building infrastructures such as virtual research enviroments as well as to develop generic software and standards. Community building is necessary as well as a change of mentality in research (speaking for example of OA), libraries, publishing houses, funding organisations and politics.

After the panel discussion with four representatives of funding organisations and institutions (DFG, BMBF, Volkswagen Stiftung and MWK Niedersachsen), Gerhard Lauer (Universität Göttingen) gave a concluding speech concerning the next steps in developing the eHumanities.

Downloads and further information on the work packages of the project, the State-of-the-Art study and on the expert workshop held in June 2008 are available.