Posts Tagged ‘research cycle’

The humanities research process – what could the future look like?

Friday, May 30th, 2008

Looking at the range of interests represented so far on the blog, I also wanted to share an idea that caught my imagination raised recently by Geoffrey Rockwell, digital humanist and TAPoR director, at last week’s New Horizons in Teaching and Research 2008 Conference at the University of Virginia.  The humanities research process has made quantum leaps in terms of widespread access through mass digitization efforts such as Google Books and the Internet Archive, and the development of citation tools like Zotero and text analysis tools.  These enabling tools have and are making significant impact on the discovery and selection stages in the humanities research process.  These however are discrete steps in the whole process.  Geoffrey envisioned the day when there would be a comprehensive tool or suite of tools that would carry research data from the very beginning stages of search & discovery, through selection, text analysis, and right through to publication.  He painted a future where humanities scholars can move and relate research material through the entire research cycle, not just portions of it.  What would a tool or suite of tools like that look like?