ARIA handover to AHDS.

21st September 2006

There are an increasing number of activities and projects (funded by AHRC, JISC and others) producing digital services, information and resources of potential value to the research community. This diverse and growing range of data sources available to arts and humanities researchers imposes new needs in terms of skills or at least awareness of the possibilities created by ICT. While universal provision of services such as electronic mail in university campuses, as well as the widespread use of personal computers for tasks such as word-processing, ensures that some basic ICT skills are possessed by most arts and humanities researchers, the use of computer based tools and resources beyond these basic office functions is still quite patchy and limited. Very few institutions have the facilities to provide dedicated Arts and Humanities training in the use of ICT.

The Aria project (Arts and Humanities Research ICT Awareness and Training) was established by the JISC to address these issues. Aria's brief was to help postgraduate research students and research staff to develop research-relevant ICT skills beyond basics such as word processing, email and "googling", but less advanced than those falling within the remit of the AHRC ICT Methods Network (http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/). The intended outcome was a suite of nationally available on-line resources including training opportunities, ICT tools and illustrations of their use across the range of disciplines covered by the then AHRB.

The project has addressed questions such as:

• What kinds of online resources do Arts and Humanities researchers use?
• Where do they find resources?
• Are there significant differences between different domains?
• What sorts of ICT skills do Arts and Humanities researchers possess and what do they need?
• How do Arts and Humanities researchers acquire ICT skills?

The outcome of the project is a new web based service presented as part of the AHDS web site called ICTguides. ICTguides allows researchers to correlate information on ICT based arts and humanities research projects and related methods, organisations and individuals, with ICT skills training opportunities focused on specific skills and tools; it also showcases case studies that highlight their practical application. So, for example, a researcher interested in a particular method can quickly find examples of projects that have used that method and link to the organisations and people involved, tools employed and to related skill development opportunities. Alternatively someone browsing the projects can learn more about the methods used, skills employed, etc. Or someone interested in a particular tool can locate examples of its use and find out how to acquire the necessary skills to use it themselves.

This is a UK-wide information-gathering project, funded by the JISC and conducted in collaboration with Salford University and the Arts and Humanities Data Service.

ICTguides site launched.

21st March 2006

The new website ICTguides has now been launched at www.ahds.ac.uk/ictguides/. The service will continue to develop and more content added with the help of the arts and humanities community, who have the ability to comment and suggest resources at various stages throughout the site.

Aria and the AHDS Projects and Methods Database projects to merge.

12th December 2005

It has been agreed between the JISC, AHRC ICT Programme and AHDS that the outputs of the Aria project and the AHDS Projects and Methods Database project will be merged to create a new integrated site to support the use of ICT in arts and humanities research. The new website, which will be part of AHDS, is to be called ICTguides.

ICTguides will combine and cross-refer the ICT skills training opportunities compiled by Aria with the information on ICT based arts and humanities research projects, methods, organisations and individuals created by the Projects and Methods database. The resulting website will allow users to correlate specific methods and skills with projects, organisations and individuals that have employed them in their research and with learning opportunities related to specific ICT skills and tools. So for example a researcher interested in particular method will quickly be able to find examples of projects that have used that method and link to the organisations and people involved, tools employed and to related skill development opportunities. Alternatively someone browsing the projects will be able to learn more about the methods used, skills employed, etc. Or someone interested in a particular tool will be able to locate examples of its use in arts and humanities research and find out how to acquire the necessary skills to use it themselves.

Merging the two projects in this way adds significant value to their highly complementary data sets and reduces the number of locations that researchers will have to search for information about the use of ICT in arts and humanities research.

ARIA in top ten

8th September 2005

The UK has a unique range of public bodies and services providing cross-disciplinary support for the use of ICT in arts and humanities research. In collaboration with the other organizations concerned, the AHRC's ICT Programme has produced an 'ICT Map for Arts and Humanities Research' which provides a brief description of the main providers, with a diagram giving a simplified representation of their functions. The map is now available online at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/ictmap.

AHRC ICT Programme

Researching the Future

2nd May 2005

Read about the ARIA project in JISC Inform, Issue 8. The following are short extracts taken from the the piece by Pat Leon:

Many people mistakenly believe that technology sits uneasily with traditional arts and humanities subjects, such as history, languages and the performing arts, compared with the sciences. A growing number of arts and humanities scholars, however, are creatively using Internet and digital resources. Unfortunately they often work in isloation and others are not benefiting from their expertise.

David Robey, Director of the AHRC's ICT programme, says that ARIA has an important role to play as the board toughens up requirements on universities to improve generic research training.

ARIA will work closely not only with the AHRC, but also with the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) and the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), to which the project's assets are expected to eventually migrate.

Sheila Anderson, Director of the AHDS says 'ARIA is the next step up from basic skills. For example, if I want to digitise a set of documents, I need to know what formatting to use - TEI, XML or PDF. Most of the people who work in this area are self-taught. They speak to one another down university corridors and transmit bad practice as well as good. The idea of ARIA and the methods network is to give people a place to go to get good training and reliable advice.'

Call for completion of online questionnaire

8th April 2005

The JISC funded ARIA project is currently looking for information from researchers from all arts and humanities communities about good examples of how ICT resources and tools are being used in their subject area of research

We would also like to know what ICT skills and tools researchers need to acquire in future to supprt their research (e.g. word processing, databases, linguistic analysis, web search engines,  image enhancement  tools and so on).

ARIA have set up an online questionnaire and have asked individuals within the arts and humanities research community to spend 10 minutes completing it.

Their help with this survey could lead to significant contributions in addressing ICT needs in arts and humanities research.

When all the responses have been collated, the results will be posted on our website at http://aria.dmu.ac.uk

The University of Salford and De Montfort University announce ARIA

7th March 2005

A collaboration between De Montfort and Salford Universities aims to undertake a two year review of nationally available on-line Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training resources, and make the information available on a web site that will give researchers and postgraduates a broad overview of relevant ICT tools and resources, illustrating their use across the range of disciplines covered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The project is being guided by user surveys and a team of specialist advisers representing the spread of disciplines covered by the AHRC. Examples of the topics we are interested in are:

• New models of textual scholarship.
• New visualisation, presentation and archiving methods.
• New methods of resource discovery, evaluation and citation.
• New and emerging forms of scholarly communication and publication.
• Data analysis employing digital tools and resources.
• New methods of collaboration and co-operation.

ARIA will also help universities to respond to the AHRC's increasing emphasis on generic research training by providing access to a range of training resources in the use of ICT that most institutions cannot provide on their own. Although universities provide generic ICT training for students and staff, very few have the facilities to provide training dedicated to the Arts and Humanities. Such resources are needed to make the best use of the new technologies and understand their benefits.

The purpose of the ARIA initiative is:

• To build on and support existing ICT training and awareness activities within the UK education community; specifically the Resource Discovery Network Virtual Training Suite- and Netskills.
• To promote the use of JISC funded collections and development within the arts and humanities.
• To directly support and complement the work of the AHRC ICT Methods Network

We welcome wide involvement of the Arts and Humanities research community in the content review and development process and in testing and evaluation of the project outcomes.

Contacts:
Project director Stephen Brown (sbrown@dmu.ac.uk)
Research assistant, Vivian Liang (v.w.liang@salford.ac.uk)