Pathways to SEASR

The SEASR Team is engaging in several workshops. The first was held in Champaign-Urbana on January 15-16, 2009. The second was held in North Carolina on March 6-7, 2009. The third was held following the HASTAC meeting in Champaign-Urbana on April 22, 2009, where registration can be found on HASTAC website.

We have been invited to participate in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at University of Victoria on June 8-12 (see for more details).

We have scheduled the Follow-up SEASR Workshop for June 22 at the University of Maryland (see for more details).

Next Steps

SEASR is…

The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR) is a software engineering project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, that is leveraging the latest informatics research to innovate essential technology for the humanities. The SEASR team is developing software that:

• Enhances humanities researchers’ ability to use digital humanities applications for knowledge discovery
• Provides digital humanities developers with an improved environment for advancing and innovating applications

SEASR’s software research and development environment will enable existing applications (e.g., Wordhoard; Nora; MONK: Metadata Offer New Knowledge; IMIRSEL: International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory) to more actively, precisely and comprehensively analyze information extracted from large collections in a variety of formats (i.e., digital libraries, databases, archives, mixed media, and even custom data). SEASR offers a range of data synthesis improvements, from focused data retrieval and data integration, to intelligent human-computer interactions for knowledge access, to semantic data enrichment, to entity and relationship discovery, to knowledge discovery and hypothesis generation.

Why the workshop?

This extended workshop is being offered to initiate dissemination of SEASR software and to facilitate future development based on participant needs. The purpose of this workshop is to explain and demonstrate the utility of SEASR for digital humanities, and to bring you to a point where you could deploy and contribute to the SEASR environment. The workshop will include presentations by SEASR team and by selected attendees along with ample discussion intended to explore practical means of preparing and contributing applications and tools for running in or in conjunction with SEASR. Special attention will be paid to laying the foundation for a strong working relationship with the SEASR team, as part of which we hope to learn more about your needs, your strengths, and your objectives.

The goals of the workshop are:

• Provide a detailed understanding of the SEASR framework
• Provide detailed instructions on how to install, build components, integrate existing applications, and maintain the SEASR environment
• Provide a foundation for participant teams to use SEASR in a study or inquiry,
• Provide a base for future development and dissemination of SEASR
• Develop plans for resolution of issues in utilization of SEASR
• Begin to develop plans to use SEASR in specific projects

Who should attend?

The workshop is intended for institutional teams of scholars from the Humanities. Our intent is to bring together 10-15 teams from across the country that represent the various disciplines in the humanities. A team should ideally include a research group from a university that has a specific research focus. The teams can vary, but might include a senior scholar/team leader, an emerging scholar, and a graduate student/post doc. We also want at least one of the team members to have some technical expertise so they can facilitate use of the software by the team. SEASR is attempting to provide analytic software that can be applied to different types of collections. Collections might include one of the following, but we are open to others: Text, Audio, Images, etc.

What is the workshop?

The workshop is organized to provide expanded opportunities for learning, knowledge sharing, and support. The major activities of the workshop are in four phases.

• Phase 1. Pre-Workshop Web-based Briefing and Communication
• Phase 2. On-site Workshop Awareness Activities, Training, Knowledge Sharing, and Planning for Implementation
• Phase 3. Implementation of Use Plans by Participant Teams. Using SEASR in a study or inquiry activity with an NCSA contact/support person
• Phase 4. Follow-up Workshop to share study results, SEASR experiences, and updates on SEASR. Discussions regarding next steps for sharing and proposal writing.

The extended workshop is intended to provide sufficient introduction and support so that teams can implement a study using SEASR.

How does our team apply?

To make application to participate please complete participation forms for the given workshop.

Who are the sponsors?

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the primary sponsor of this SEASR Workshop.

Who do we contact with questions?

Please contact Loretta Auvil at: lauvil@illinois.edu