DS/CN invites contributions relating to work carried out in the digital humanities, broadly construed. In its open, thematic, and conference volumes DS/CN publishes academic articles, scholarly notes, working papers, field synopses, larger reviews, and well-documented opinion pieces. DS/CN privileges publications which explicitly demonstrate an awareness of interdisciplinary context(s) and a history of pertinent academic engagement.

Submissions via www.digitalstudies.org

The short description of the purpose is,

This three-day workshop will explore the theme of E-waste and environmental data. Working in small groups, participants will be given the task of hacking some typical consumer e-waste to create reflective technological assemblages that incorporate 'nature' in some form while calling one or more of our basic assumptions into question.

From ancient cave paintings to hand-printed books to Facebook, people have been reading in various forms for thousands of years. But what will the act of reading look like in the future and what can we learn from the past to ensure digital applications enhance and expand the reading experience?

That’s what an international team of researchers led by the University of Victoria’s Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing Ray Siemens, will be studying over the next seven years through their participation in the “Implementing New Knowledge Environments” (INKE) project. Funded with nearly $2.5 million through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) program with an additional $10.4 million funding in institutional and research partner support, Siemens and his team of 35 researchers and 21 partner agencies will develop a better understanding of literacy in the digital age.

The research team will focus their work in four areas. Textual studies, the evolution of reading and writing technologies from antiquity to present, will be led by Richard Cunningham at Acadia University and Alan Galey at the University of Toronto. User experience, or how and why people read and how the reading process can change the cognitive process, will be led by Teresa Dobson at the University of British Columbia and Claire Warwick at University College London. Interface design, how people visualize information on a computer, will be led by Stan Ruecker at the University of Alberta, and information management, or the building of new digital reading interfaces, will be led by Siemens and Susan Schreibman at the Royal Irish Academy. The research team will also involve 19 postdoctoral research fellows and 53 graduate research assistants from all participating institutions.

Daniel O'Donnell will open with a Keynote on "Mind the Gap: Editing the spaces between objects in a post print world"

Paul A. Youngman will close the day with a Keynote on "We are the Machine: The Case of Heinrich Hauser"

All are welcome. There will be a dinner following for those interested.

Graduate students are encouraged to submit paper or poster proposals.

The keynote speakers will be Daniel O'Donnell from the University of Lethbridge and Paul Youngman from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

TAPoR at Alberta is one of the supporting organizations.

The development will include:

• Setting up a version of the portal at Hamburg
• Customizing the interface and tutorial materials for German researchers
• Adapting and developing tools specifically for the analysis of German texts

Jan Christoph Meister and the CATMA project team have received funds from University of Hamburg for this development. They will be working closely with the University of Alberta and McMaster University in Canada to develop the German portal.

The TAPoR portal is structured so that different language skins can be added and, for example, a French skin was created at the Université de Montréal. We encourage interested parties to contact us about creating other language skins and tutorial materials.

TAPoR-D: Textanalyse-Portal für deutschsprachige Texte

Das Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) und das CATMA (Computer Assisted Text MarkUp and Analysis)-Projekt an der Arbeitsstelle für Computerphilologie der Universität Hamburg haben ein Partnerschaftsabkommen über die Entwicklung einer deutschen Version des kanadischen TAPoR-Portals abgeschlossen (siehe portal.tapor.ca). Zum Gegenstand des Entwicklungsvorhabens zählen:

• Implementierung einer Portalversion an der Universität Hamburg
• Anpassung von Interface und Tutorial-Materialien für deutschsprachige Nutzer
• Anpassung und Entwicklung von speziellen Tools für die Analyse deutschsprachiger Texte

Das TAPoR-D Entwicklungsvorhaben des CATMA-Projektteams wird finanziell gefördert von der Universität Hamburg. Das deutsche Portal wird in einger Kooperation mit der University of Alberta und der McMaster University realisiert werden. Hierzu wird u.a. im Juni 2009 ein Entwicklertreffen in Kanada stattfinden.

Das kanadische TAPoR portal erlaubt grundsätzlich die Erstellung sprachspezifischer Skins. So wurde etwa an der Université de Montréal bereits eine französische Portalversion entwickelt. Interessenten anderer Sprachräume sind herzlich eingeladen, sich mit uns in Verbindung zu setzen.

Jan Christoph Meister
Literary Theory, Text Analysis, Literary Computing
University of Hamburg

Geoffrey Rockwell
Philosophy and Humanities Computing
University of Alberta

Stéfan Sinclair
Communication Studies and Multimedia
McMaster University

A Joint Humanities Computing, Computer Science Conference at University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 16-18 October 2008

CaSTA 2008–“New Directions in Text Analysis”– will be held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 16-18 October 2008, featuring guest speakers:

• David Hoover, Professor of English at New York University (keynote)
• Hoyt Duggan, Professor Emeritus in English at University of Virginia
• Geoffrey Rockwell, Associate Professor in Humanities Computing and Multimedia at University of Alberta
• Cara Leitch, PhD candidate in English at University of Victoria

CaSTA 2008 will also feature a pre-conference seminar on “Digitizing Early Material Culture,” with guest speakers:

• Meg Twycross, Professor Emeritus of English, Lancaster University, and Executive Editor of Medieval English Theatre (new speaker, replacing Melissa Terras)
• Lisa Snyder, Associate Director of the Experiential Technologies Centre, University of California Los Angeles

For more information, please see http://ocs.usask.ca/casta08

A Joint Humanities Computing, Computer Science Conference at University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 16-18 October 2008

CaSTA 2008–“New Directions in Text Analysis”– will be held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 16-18 October 2008, featuring guest speakers:

• David Hoover, Professor of English at New York University (keynote)
• Hoyt Duggan, Professor Emeritus in English at University of Virginia
• Geoffrey Rockwell, Associate Professor in Humanities Computing and Multimedia at University of Alberta
• Cara Leitch, PhD candidate in English at University of Victoria

CaSTA 2008 will also feature a pre-conference seminar on “Digitizing Early Material Culture,” with guest speakers:

• Meg Twycross, Professor Emeritus of English, Lancaster University, and Executive Editor of Medieval English Theatre (new speaker, replacing Melissa Terras)
• Lisa Snyder, Associate Director of the Experiential Technologies Centre, University of California Los Angeles

For more information, please see http://ocs.usask.ca/casta08

Terry Butler was part of the original team that developed the case for the TAPoR infrastructure and he was a key player in the both the national management and the use of TAPoR at the University of Alberta. As Gurston Dacks, his colleague at Alberta put it,

Terry was a pioneer and a builder. He was deeply committed to encouraging faculty members to understand the potential of information technology and to commit themselves to it. He shared his wisdom and enthusiasm for scholarly use of information technology through his published research, and by organizing highly influential conferences on information technology and the scholarship of research and teaching.

Terry will be missed by the TAPoR community across Canada.

• workshops and training opportunities for faculty, staff, and students
• developing collaborative teams that are, in effect, pre-positioned to apply for predictable multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary, multi-national funding opportunities, beginning with an upcoming RFP that invites applications for supercomputing in the humanities
• exchanging information about tools development, best practices, organizational strategies, standards efforts, and new digital collections, through a digital humanities portal

The TAPoR portal was upgraded on April 20th to Version 1.0 after three major public testing releases.

Try the portal out at portal.tapor.ca or check out the new Training Videos for an overview.

The Illinois Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago are jointly sponsoring the second Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science to be held on October 21-22, 2007 at Northwestern University.

Further details will be available soon at the colloquium web site (http://dhcs.uchicago.edu/), where right now you can see the program of last year's very successful colloquium.

The theme for this colloquium will be "Exploring the scholarly query potential of high quality text and image archives in a collaborative environment." This is a call for papers and poster sessions. The deadline for submissions will be July 31, 2007, and notifications will be made by September 3, 2007. Proposal abstracts (2 page maximum) should be submitted in either PDF or MS Word format to dhcs-submissions@listhost.uchicago.edu.

For further information contact
Martin Mueller
Department of English
Northwestern University
Evanston IL 60208
martinmueller@northwestern.edu

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the Quality of Life Research Center at the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University
• James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin at Madison (sponsored by Owl Children's Trust and the Brock Research Institute for Youth Studies)
• Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the Computing Culture group at the MIT Media Lab
• Denis Dyack, Director/President, Silicon Knights

Interactive Arts and Science Program
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario
JUNE 4-5, 2007

Focusing on the growing cultural significance of interactive media, IWIW invites submissions for papers on all scholarship in digital interactive media (games, immersive environments, mixed realities, interactive fiction and art) and on interactive media users (adults and children).

Selected papers will be considered in one of four broad conference streams:

• Theory of Immersive Worlds explores: i. the theory of interactivity, from perspectives such as narrative and gameplay (ludology); ii. analyses of the cultural and psychological effects of immersive worlds.
• Creative Practices in Immersion examines interactive new media art, and its exploration of new idioms and challenges in immersive worlds.
• Immersive Worlds in Education examines the application of immersive technologies to teaching and learning.
• Immersive Worlds in Entertainment examines entertainment applications of immersive technologies.

We welcome the submission of abstracts for a 20-minute presentation plus a 10-minute discussion. Send a 500-word abstract plus a brief biographical statement. Please include a separate cover page with the following:

• Author’s name and institutional affiliation
• Email
• Mailing address
• Title of presentation

Since all abstracts will be anonymously reviewed, include the title of the paper on the abstract, but not the author’s name, affiliation, email or mailing address.

Deadline extended! Deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 16, 2007. Please email your abstract to mitterer@brocku.ca Acceptance of your paper for presentation implies a commitment on your part to register and attend the conference. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by March 2, 2007.

The Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs has awarded the 2007 award for Outstanding Achievement for Computing in the Arts and Humanities to Jean-Guy Meunier. Congratulations to Jean-Guy and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Jean-guy has been invited to give a keynote address at the 2007 meeting of the Society at the 2007 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Saskatchewan in May. The full announcement of the award is below.

SEMI/SDH Prix 2007

Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs / Society for Digital Humanities

10 décembre 2006

La SEMI/SDH, principale association canadienne de chercheurs dans le domaine des arts et des lettres en mode numérique, vient de rendre public le récipiendaire de son prix pour réalisations exceptionnelles dans ce domaine. Le prix 2007 est attribué à Jean-Guy Meunier, professeur au Département de philosophie à l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Cette distinction est accordée annuellement depuis 2003. Les récipiendaires antérieurs sont Willard McCarty, Jean-Claude Guédon, Ian Lancashire, Paul Fortier, Elaine Nardocchio et, dernièrement, Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, et Isobel Grundy du Projet Orlando. Le prix honore ceux et celles qui ont fait une contribution significative en matière d’informatique appliquée aux arts et lettres, ou dans la mise en place de réseaux. Jean-Guy Meunier a été retenu à l’unanimité pour son exceptionnelle contribution au domaine.

Au cours d’une carrière remarquable, Meunier a travaillé avec succès sur les aspects contextuels de la lecture et de l’analyse de texte assistée par ordinateur (CARAT), en contribuant à en faire un domaine de recherche en soi. L’approche de Meunier se distingue notamment par le fait qu’elle prend en compte et intègre, non seulement les dimensions techniques essentielles d’un domaine en évolution rapide, ainsi que les aspects théoriques et méthodologiques qui évoluent tout aussi rapidement, mais aussi le contexte plus général fourni par une longue tradition de réflexion philosophique sur notre compréhension des rapports entre le langage et la pensée.

Geoffrey Rockwell (président), Ray Siemens, et Christian Vandendorpe du Comité du prix de la SDH/SEMI.

SDH/SEMI Award 2007

Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs

December 10th, 2006

SDH/SEMI, the leading academic society in Canada in the field of digital humanities, has awarded its 2007 Award for Outstanding Achievement for Computing in the Arts and Humanities to Jean-Guy Meunier of the Département de philosophie at Université du Québec à Montréal. This award has been presented annually since 2003. Previous recipients include Willard McCarty, Jean-Claude Guédon, Ian Lancashire, Paul Fortier, Elaine Nardocchio and, most recently Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy of the Orlando Project. The award acknowledges those who have made a significant contribution to computing in the arts and humanities whether theoretical, applied, or in the area of community building. Meunier was selected unanimously for his exceptional contributions to the field.

Over a notable career, Meunier has worked with significant success on the contexts and pragmatics relating to determining what underlies the computer-assisted reading and analysis of text (CARAT), playing an integral part himself in establishing CARAT as an area of inquiry unto itself. Most notable and highly commendable in Meunier's approach is that it is so widely informed -- not only by essential and quickly-evolving computational matters, as well as the immediately-associated and equally evolving theory and methodology, but, also, by the long tradition of philosophical thought associated with our understanding of language and mind.

Geoffrey Rockwell (chair), Ray Siemens, and Christian Vandendorpe of the Award Committee of SDH/SEMI

The abstract for his talk is:

In this seminar I will start out from a general discussion of the visual in the humanities and in the digital humanities, and a critique of traditional 'humanities computing' which tends to be predominantely textual. I will base my further investigation on several projects from different areas including art history, history, antrophology and linguistics. Key points of discussion include the materiality of interfaces, added values, innovation strategies, and the role of the visualization. Among relevant technologies are geographical information systems, multi-spectral analysis and virtual worlds. Digital culture also gives us highly visual study objects such as computer games, social software and electronic literature, and these will be considered. The final part of the talk deals with physical lab and studio spaces for the digital humanities. How is the visual articulated in such collaborative work spaces? It will be suggested that the humanities may benefit from working with many, individual screens in collaborative settings rather than immersive environments such as CAVEs. HUMlab at Umeå University will be used a case study and I will describe a planned (and funded!) expansion of the lab which will add thirteen new screens to the studio space.

• *myLinks* feature lets you "publish" a collection of texts to the web for others to interact with
• *Analyze Text* gives you a document-centric way of running tools on text. You see the text and a frame with tools we think can help.
• A *research log* to which you can save results along with notes as you go.
• *New tools* and ways to discover them.
• A cleaner interface with starting pages on tools and texts.

John Bradley
What You (Fore)see is What You Get:Thinking About Usage Paradigms for Computer Assisted Text Analysis

Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, Isobel Grundy, Jeffrey Antoniuk, Sharon Farnel, Jane Haslett, and Kathryn Carter
Facing the Deep: The Orlando Project Delivery System 1.0

Julia Flanders
Detailism, Digital Texts, and the Problem of Pedantry

David L. Hoover
Hot-Air Textuality: Literature after Jerome McGann

Jerome McGann
Information Technology and the Troubled Humanities

Jean Guy Meunier, Ismail Biskri, and Dominic Forest
A Model for Computer Analysis and Reading of Text (CARAT): The SATIM Approach

Marc R. Plamondon
Computer-Assisted Phonetic Analysis of English Poetry: A Preliminary Case Study of Browning and Tennyson

Stephen Ramsay
In Praise of Pattern

Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants should result in plans, prototypes, or proofs of concept for long-term digital humanities projects prior to implementation.

CaSTA 2006 is the 5th in a series of CaSTA conferences, focusing on text analysis. This year's conference will bring together Computer Scientists and Humanities Computing researchers to share their work on the central issues driving current scholarly research on the linguistic, visual, and aural manifestations of text.

CaSTA 2006 is taking place from October 11 to October 15, 2006 in the beautiful Riverfront Capital of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. There is an exciting program planned with five internationally known and highly regarded keynote speakers: William Y. Arms, Computer Science, Cornell University; Willard McCarty, Reader in Humanities Computing, King's College, London, UK; Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia; Ian Munro, Professor of Computer Science and Canada Research Chair in Algorithm Design, University of Waterloo; and Peter Shillingsburg, Professor of English, De Montfort University, UK.

A series of interesting pre and post-conference workshops, presentations based on peer reviewed papers and posters, and a provocative panel discussion "Humanities Computing Science?", focusing on research of common interest to humanists, computer and information scientists are all part of the program.

Announcing a special offering of

Issues in Project Planning and Management

Digital Humanities Computing Summer Institute

22-23 August 2005

University of Victoria

For more information on the Institute see web.uvic.ca/hrd/institute/

To register for this especial offering, please be in touch directly with Karin Armstrong, karindar@uvic.ca.

Questions or applications including a brief cover letter, CV, and the names and contact information for three referees, may be sent electronically to

Ray Siemens
Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing
UVic TAPoR Principle Investigator
siemens[at]uvic.ca

A new one year, fixed-term appointment will become available July 1st, 2005, for a suitably qualified Post-Doctoral Researcher to work with the University of Victoria’s Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) Project, based in the Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) at the University of Victoria.

TAPoR at the University of Victoria’s HCMC has a multimedia laboratory and server infrastructure suitable for research into a variety of areas of Humanities Computing, including multimedia enrichment and acquisition, text representation and text analysis. UVic’s newly appointed CRC Chair in Humanities Computing, and our resident computing experts, provide guidance and expertise to the 8+ TAPoR-related research projects currently under development. To learn more about UVic people and projects, see web.uvic.ca/hrd/tapor/index.htm.

A full job announcement detailing submission requirements, deadlines, and salary guidelines, will be posted shortly on the Human Resources home page at the University of Victoria.

Series Rationale and Description:

The incorporation of computational methods into the humanities does more than speed task work. Computers change the nature of tasks that can be imagined and performed. New questions can be asked, and must be asked, new research methods and tools have appeared, new methods for teaching and publication have proliferated, expectations about skills have evolved, and library purchases have shifted dramatically. Humanities computing is undergoing a redefinition of basic principles by a continuous influx of new, vibrant, and diverse communities of practitioners within and well beyond the halls of academe. These practitioners recognize the value computers add to their work, that the computer itself remains an instrument subject to continual innovation, and that competition within many disciplines requires scholars to become and remain current with what computers can do. Topics in the Digital Humanities invites manuscripts that will advance and deepen knowledge and activity in this new and innovative field.

Prospectus Submission:

Topics in the Digital Humanities is accepting proposals for monographs and co-authored works that directly serve the community of those engaging with humanities computing tools and methodologies. Polemics and collections of essays are not encouraged. Preparation and submission guidelines are available here. Proposals may be submitted to the series editors.

The Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick is offering several courses this summer which will provide participants with a greater understanding of the latest techniques, tools and standards for text analysis. The courses are part of the Centre's ninth consecutive Summer Seminar Series, which will run Aug. 2-13. Introductory and advanced-level courses, providing hands-on learning in state-of-the art labs, are offered. The courses are: Introduction to Text Encoding, Advanced Topics in Building Electronic Texts, Building Metadata Applications Profiles, Advanced Web Publishing and Fundamentals of Digital Imaging.

For more information, visit Summer Seminar Series

The TAPoR group at the University of Alberta has a new bibliography to support its research work. The online work focuses on mobile, online reading. The bibliography was prepared by Natalie Hamilton.

The university recently held its tenth ICT (Information Communications and Technology) Forum, titled Computing in the Arts. Researchers spoke about critical research questions in their field and gave presentations on a variety of computing methodologies. More than 100 academics, graduate students and community members attended the event, organized by the Office of the Provost (IT). Abstracts and presentations can be viewed at ICT Forum.

If you were to build a Google-like text analysis tool, which just takes a text and returns something interesting with no further input, what would it do?

Geoffrey Rockwell presented the TAPoRware tools and the TAPoR portal model at a conference at Brown University on "Online Resources for the Humanities". (See http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/hcseminar-may04.html) This conference brought researchers from Italy together with relevant projects in North America for a two day conference.

Registration Reminder- 2004 SUMMER SEMINAR SERIES / University of New Brunswick / Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada / August 13-20

The registration deadline for the Summer Seminar Series is approaching and there are still spaces available.

The Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick is offering for the eighth consecutive year a summer workshop series around issues in scholarly communication that effectively balances technical components with theoretical in a "hands-on" learning environment in state-of-the-art labs.

Included are:

"Fundamentals of Digital Imaging Workshop"
Instructor: Marc Bragdon - Imaging Coordinator, Electronic Text Centre
University of New Brunswick
August 13-14
Registration limited to 15
Course fee: $275.00 (CDN)

"Essentials of Electronic Publishing Workshop"
Instructor: David L. Gants - Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing
University of New Brunswick
August 16-20
Registration limited to 20
Course Fee: $950.00 (CDN)

"Intensive Introduction to Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Workshop"
Instructor: Daniel Pitti - Interim Co-Director (IATH)
University of Virginia
August 16-20
Registration limited to 15
Course Fee: $950.00 (CDN)

Visit our Summer Series Web site at: http://www.lib.unb.ca/courses for registration, workshop, and accommodation information and also for participant comments from past summers. Or, contact Susan Oliver.

Preparations are well under away and we look forward to seeing you in August.

L'infrastructure TAPoR produit déjà ses premiers fruits à Montréal en renforçant la coopération et les échanges entre deux laboratoires intéressés par le traitement des textes par ordinateur à l'Université de Montréal. Les éléments principaux de l'infrastructure apportent depuis quelques semaines au laboratoire LexUM de la Faculté de droit la capacité de traitement longtemps attendues afin d'explorer plus efficacement les possibilités d'automation dans le traitement des textes juridiques afin d'en faire des systèmes d'information utiles. Une partie de l'infrastructure a été mise à la disposition d'un second laboratoire de l'Université de Montréal, le Laboratoire de recherche appliquée en linguistique informatique (RALI) du département d'informatique. Le RALI s'est bâti une réputation avantageuse par ses travaux en matière d'outils d'aide à la traduction, de production et de traitement automatisés de textes ainsi qu'en matière de repérage d'information notamment dans le repérage translinguistique. Les chercheurs principaux des deux laboratoires se réjouissent des possibilités supplémentaires de collaboration que favoriseront les nouvelles ressources informatiques.

Au cours des mois qui viennent les chercheurs des deux laboratoires souhaitent poursuivre l'exploration de la production automatisée de courts résumés pour les jugements, les techniques de support au caviardage des documents judiciaires ainsi que la mise en oeuvre de stratégies de repérage spécialement adaptées aux particularités des documents juridiques.

Référence : LexUM - Daniel Poulin et RALI - Guy Lapalme

The Lexical Analysis Laboratory became fully operational for researchers in May-June 2004 in the Robarts Library. On the seventh floor, in Information Technology Services, TAPoR has two dedicated research offices with single workstations (English, occupied by the Lexicons of Early Modern English project [LEME], and dedicated to Ian Lancashire; and French, occupied by the Aalma project and dedicated to Brian Merrilees) and two public workstations, all linked to the Library network, as well as a local printer and scanner. On the fourteenth floor, at the Dictionary of Old English project offices, TAPoR has two workstations, one occupied by Antonette diPaolo Healey (DOE Director), and the other public, both linked to printer and scanner. TAPoR office furniture and room dividers house all six workstations.

TAPoR's main IBM server is now in the Library's machine room. Library staff are attending IBM workshops on managing both operating system and its Text Miner software. TAPoR liaison at ITS is Kent Weaver.

Both DOE and LEME are lexical databases. TAPoR Toronto plans to release the DOE Corpus, and the first version of the LEME database, to the TAPoR portal in the fall of 2004.

The Dictionary of Old English has published both its Web Corpus (the complete surviving texts of Old English) and the dictionary itself, A-F, on CD-ROM.

Antonette diPaolo Healey gave a plenary talk at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea on June 15, 2004, in which she discussed four of the major initiatives undertaken by scholars of English language and literature within the TAPoR network. The two literary projects treated are the Internet Shakespeare Editions and the Orlando Project; the two language projects are the Dictionary of Old English and the Lexicons of Early Modern English. Her paper was published in the conference proceedings: "Use of New Technologies in English Studies in Canada", Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference in Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea: "English Studies in an Era of Globalization" (Seoul: English Language and Literature Association of Korea 2004), pp. 2-21 , with screenshots on pp. 200-222.

The Lexi cons of Early Modern English has published a free prototype online database of sixteen Renaissance dictionaries, 1530-1657, named the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database. Dr. Marc Plamondon, working for TAPoR Toronto with Ian Lancashire and Sian Meikle, University of Toronto Digital Librarian and Director of the Web Development Group, is programming the LEME database using MySQL and ColdFusion.

Ian Lancashire demonstrated LEME at SHEL 3, Studies in the History of the English Language, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on May 6, 2004.

Brian Merrilees , Professor Emeritus and F.R.S.C., is preparing the Aalma corpus for TAPoR. So named for its first word, Aalma is a medieval Latin-French glossary (14th and 15th centuries) derived from the Latin dictionary, the Catholicon, completed in 1286 Johannes Balbus bishop of Genoa. Only one the fifteen versions of the Aalma extant has been edited, Paris Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 13032 (Mario Roques, Recueil général de lexiques français du moyen âge II. Paris: Champion, 1938). The REFLEX project (Research in Early French Lexicography) directed by Merrilees at the University of Toronto, has re-edited BnF lat.13032 and completed four other versions: Metz, Bibl. mun.1182, Metz, Bibl. mun. 510, Lille, Bibl. mun., 147, Salins, Bibl. mun. 44 and is in the process of adding transcriptions of Exeter, Dean and Chapter Library, ms 3517 and St Omer (Pas de Calais), Bibl. mun. 644.

Other projects using the TAPoR research infrastructure at this early stage include Ian Lancashire's Representative Poetry Online, and Anne Lancashire's database of Mayors and Sheriffs of London (MASL), revised from its appearance as Appendix 1: Mayors and Sheriffs of London 1190-1558 in Caroline Barron's London in the Later Middle Ages -- Government and People 1200-1500 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004). Anne Lancashire is Vice-Dean, Academic, Arts and Science, and the editor of the London Civic Records volume for REED (Records of Early English Drama) at Toronto.

The TAPoR Usability Laboratory at the Faculty of Information Studies is being developed by Dean Brian Cantwell Smith, Vice-Dean Joan Cherry, and Wendy Duff, whose report on "Design Principles" (April 30, 2004) was presented at the TAPoR meeting in Winnipeg in May. They have taken over from Elaine Toms, who has become Canada Research Chair at Dalhousie University. Prior to joining FIS, Brian Cantwell Smith was at Duke University as the Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of Philosophy and New Technologies, director of the Centre for Reflection on Science and Technology and professor of philosophy and computer science. Joan Cherry and Wendy Duff conducted a usage analysis for Early Canadiana Online (http://www.canadiana.org/), a web site which provides access to a full-text collection of more than 3,000 books and pamphlets documenting Canadian history.

The new Advanced Computational Research Laboratory (ACRL) is the result of a collaboration between TAPoR at UNB and High Performance Computing for Industrial Applications initiatives. For more see, here.

The TAPoR server system components have started arriving at McMaster. Here is what they look like fresh out of the box.

• The University of Victoria is hosting a Summer Institute on Digital Humanities from June 25th to the 30th. For more information see http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/institute/.
• UVic's long-awaited CRC Chair in Humanities Computing has now been made public. Congratulations to Ray Siemens, who will be joining the Dept of English on July 1st. Ray's main areas of research interest as mentioned in the official citation are: creating new computing tools for data-harvesting, textual content analysis, document encoding application and conversion, and communication processes. Ray will teach a course on Shakespeare and a course that traces the evolution of books from 2,000 years ago to the present.
  UVic now has 20 Canada Research Chairs, three of them in Humanities. "This investment builds a dditional research leadership in priority areas at UVic and further enhances the university's position as a major research centre in the province and the country," says UVic Vice-President Research Dr. Martin Taylor. more...

TAPoR at the University of Alberta had a successful Open House February 26th. The workshop were filled to capacity. For more see http://tapor.ualberta.ca/Openhouse/

The Beta version of TAPoRware tools is now available.
These are tools that can process XML, HTML, and plain texts that are uploaded or on the web. They can be used off our server or can be downloaded and installed by others. These tools will be some of the tools incorporated into the portal. Visit http://cheiron.mcmaster.ca/~taporware/.

• TAPoR@UA's web site (v.1) went live in November 2003. The site contains basic information about TAPoR@UA and TAPoR National. Future updates will include dynamic pages, a "MyTAPoR" component, and links to other nodes. Special thanks to research asssistants Elizabeth Gusnowski, who created the site design and graphics, and Lori-Ann Claerhout, who supplied the text. Both are first-year MA humanities computing and English students.
  
• Research director Stéfan Sinclair (Stefan.Sinclair@ualberta.ca) presented "Text Analysis Markup Language (TAML)" at the recent Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis (CaSTA). His poster presented a preliminary attempt to create a standardized syntax for communication relating to text analysis and an initial schema for TAML as well as several examples.
  
• Executive manager Terry Butler (Terry.Butler@ualberta.ca) joined thousands of higher-ed educators in sunny California at the annual EDUCAUSE conference. Butler and Royal Roads instructional designer Tracy Chao presented a poster session on "Integrating Information Technology Competency in Liberal Arts Courses"
  
• The TAPoR Workshop opened its doors to text analysis researchers in October 2003. It is located in Room 4-34 of the Old Arts Building.
  
• Three registered projects are currently under way at the U of A's TAPoR Workshop: Stephen Reimer (English) is working on a hypertext edition of John Lydgate's "Edmund and Fremund;" Stéfan Sinclair continues work on Hyperpo; and Anthony Harding (Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Saskatchewan) along with David Miall (English) and Terry Butler (Faculty of Arts), is preparing an electronic index to the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Further TAPoR Workshop goals include preparing computers and workspace for visiting researchers and mastering new software programs and computing languages.
  
• Completed projects: The Atlas of Alberta Railways by Mary Mahoney-Robson, U of A Press; and Spanish as a Foreign Language by Yvonne Lam, modern languages and cultural studies.
  
• TAPoR@UA's spring unveiling is only a few short months away! Check our site for updates on an open house party planning.
  
• TAPoR@UA is now accepting proposals for workshop use. See Projects page at http://tapor.ualberta.ca/Projects/ for more information on applying.

Our external board for the project is now in place. Joining us are:

Michael Barlow, Assoc. Prof.,
Dept of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics
University of Auckland, New Zealand
and
Rice University, Texas, USA
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~barlow/

Dr Michael Fraser
Head of Humbul Humanities Hub/Co-ordinator, Research Technologies Service
Oxford University Computing Services
Oxford, UK

Jean-Guy Meunier
Départment de Philosophie
Université du Québec à Montréal
Montréal, Québec
Canada

Clifford A. Lynch
Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information
Washington, DC, USA
http://www.cni.org/staff/clifford_index.html

Murray McGillivray
Department of English
The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~mmcgilli/

Ronald Tetreault
Department of English
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Canada

John Unsworth
The Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
USA
http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~unsworth/

Greg Lessard
Études françaises
Queen's University
Kingston, Canada
http://www.cs.queensu.ca/~lessard/

John Bradley
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London, UK
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/John.html

Stephen Ramsay
Department of English
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia, USA

Our thanks to each of you for taking on these duties and we look forward to a prosperous and productive working relationship.

The second CaSTA symposiym meets in Victoria:

• The second Canadian Symposium for Text Analysis (CaSTA) at the University of Victoria was well attended and papers were presented both by projects at Victoria and by others. This November 2003 conference was organized by Peter Liddell, Michael Best and staff at the Humanities Computing and Media Centre. We hope to gather papers from this and the previous CaSTA conference (held at the Université de Montréal) into a volume for publication.
• Project members have identified the need to develop a mission statement and research agenda. If anyone is interested in helping to develop this, please contact me (grockwel@mcmaster.ca).
  
• Elaine Toms, University of Toronto, has developed an online survey on text analysis and practices in humanities computing. This survey is perhaps the first thorough survey of its sort and, based on the preliminary report by Dr. Toms, will yield useful evidence of humanities computing practice and needs.
  
• Alan Burke and colleagues at the University of New Brunswick have
  developed a prototype for a collections-level metadata database for finding electronic texts. This will be incorporated into the
  portal so that users can find projects and collections of e-texts for analysis.
  
• Ray Siemens, Malaspina University College, has edited a collection of papers based on last year's Mind Technologies conference for review by the University of Calgary Press.
  
• The TAPoR web site is being redesigned to better keep people informed. The current draft can be viewed at http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~tapor/version2/ . We welcome your comments and suggestions.

TAPoR takes flight
Following lengthy negotiations with the Canada Foundation for Innovation, our member institutions are creating the accounts and infrastructure for this ambitious project. Most of the nodes are currently negotiating and buying the servers and workstations for the small text analysis labs. In some cases renovations are required so equipment will be acquired later. Most of the labs and servers will be operational by August 2004.

One of the project's largest purchases is the contract for the development of the portal. Two companies were shortlisted for the contract and we are about to decide who will be awarded it.

Sue Fisher (UNB) has completed a Needs Assessment Report based on her interview questions to various researchers [files in PDF].

Call for papers for CaSTA - The Inaugural Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis Research: November 23, 2002 at l'Université de Montréal.

CFI approves TAPoR grant with at total budget of $6,784,740 and a CFI contribution of $2,629,223.