Lewis Lancaster: Measuring the Success of Digital Data Projects
Channel: Digital Humanities @ Western Sydney University
Date: 2014-11-17

Scholar communities have been creating extensive and important sets of digital data, including material from the Humanities and Social Sciences. It is now appropriate to begin the process of measuring the “success” of this pioneering epoch the era of technological advances. “Success” can come in many forms, and the very idea of it must be studied as carefully as the digital data itself. Introducing completely novel methods and strategies into research is disruptive and such results are seldom considered as positive aspects of innovation.  Unlike codex reports of research that have closure with a final chapter and summary, digital material remains in a state of physical change as hardware and software introduces significant changes with each new version.  Identification of users and the results of the efforts of the users need to be considered.  In some cases, the authors are the primary users of their digital productions.  One aspect that needs to be considered is the chronicle of how researchers other than the author/s can access the raw data and do analysis on their own, in addition to reading the results of the constructed procedures and conclusions presented by a project site. The complexity of analysis of so many different interrelated and interacting elements will require a team rather than being an activity of a single user.
 
Lewis Lancaster is Professor (Emeritus) of the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture at the University of California, Berkeley.  He holds Adjunct positions at the University of the West in Los Angeles and the University of Hong Kong.  His work in the field of computer-aided research has included the digitization of Buddhist canonical material in Pali, Chinese, and Sanskrit.  He founded and serves as the Director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) at the School of Information on the Berkeley campus. His current research is directed toward the creation of the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism, which is planned as an internet resource as well as a 3-D Immersive installation.  The Atlas is a partnership with the Centre for Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, the University of New South Wales, and the GIS Center of Academia Sinica in Taipei. Professor Lancaster is in Australia as a guest of the Nan Tien Institute.