CHArt TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Digital Archive Fever
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Neil Grindley, JISC, London, UK; Torsten Reimer, AHRC ICT Methods Network, London, UK
Transforming the Methods Network: Where’s My Community Dude?
For almost three years, the AHRC ICT Methods Network has engaged with research communities in UK Higher Education and supported the use of advanced ICT methods through a programme of funded events such as workshops, seminars and conferences. In the last year of our programme we have changed the focus to some extent and are now working on ways of exploiting the knowledge that has been generated and the connections that have been made between individuals and groups who have participated in these events.
The Digital Arts & Humanities community website (www.arts-humanities.net) has been developed to provide a virtual space for any groups or individuals who are interested in using ICT techniques for arts and humanities scholarship. The platform includes tools for interaction such as blogs and fora, and also allows users to disseminate their activities more widely, not only to colleagues in similar fields but also, potentially, to practitioners working in other disciplines. In this paper, we propose to explain the rationale behind this idea, the means used to set it in motion, and to draw conclusions about how to transform the legacy of the Methods Network into a resource that can be used by a broad range of virtual communities. This will be done with a particular focus on the arts community, which the Methods Network has supported from its inception.
Projects and programmes - no matter how substantial the initial funding - have finite terms of existence and are therefore, by definition, not as sustainable as initiatives that provide resources and functionality that communities themselves define as important, useful and worth preserving. The relationship between Digital Arts & Humanities and the ‘official’ Methods Network website will be reflected upon and conclusions will be drawn in relation to the institutional and community paradigms implicit in the conference theme.