This is a fairly unwieldy topic, but a lot of my conversations seem to be veering in this direction. I’d like to propose a session to discuss what a future digital humanities infrastructure might look like in New Zealand. We don’t need to ‘go large’ and try for a huge and unachievable project, but we do need to keep up with Europe, and countries like the UK, US and Australia and at least consider what an integrated approach might look like. Some countries have been working on these issues for a while, as expressed in projects like HUNI, Bamboo / DIRT, and groups like JISC. There’s also a wealth of ‘big picture’ reports like Our Cultural Commonwealth. Some of the questions I’d like some bright sparks to consider:
- What group / organisation would be most appropriate to lead the development of such a strategy?
- What existing infrastructure components (DigitalNZ, NeSI etc) could we cobble together?
- What services would we need from such an infrastructure (IAAS, SAAS, basic web hosting etc)?
- Should such an infrastructure be only for the academic community like the ones overseas seem to be, or would it be better to include central / local government agencies and perhaps the general public too?
- Is it worth considering next steps, or is the issue too big?
James I think this is a great session idea. One of the advantages of looking to New Zealand from across the ditch in Australia is being able to see what can be done with more agility and collaboration (which is a challenge in a larger country with state/federal jurisdictions). There’s been an enormous amount of learning had here from efforts in building infrastructure (eResearch) in Aussie and it’s still happening. Hopefully all that effort is useful to draw from and feedback on or add value to.
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