TextGrid Advisory Board Meeting
July 2nd, 2010, Göttingen State and University Library

At the first meeting of the TextGrid Advisory Board, the objective was to evaluate progress and the current status as well as re-examine the immediate and long-term goals for the TextGrid project.

The primary focus was the presentation of the roadmap for a productive and stable TextGrid version 1.0. A live presentation of the latest beta version of the TextGridLab as well as three specific use cases (the MEISE editor for encoding music, the Digital Library, and the SAWS project analyzing Greek and Arabic sayings from the 9th-12th centuries) provided concrete scenarios and generated discussion.

Key themes were the roadmap version 1.0, sustainability, outreach to users and stakeholders and collaboration with other projects and groups.

Roadmap Version 1.0: The proposed roadmap contains detailed development plans for tools and services and the TextGrid repository, with the concentration on providing key features now and incorporating additional functionalities at a later stage. Research projects are now expressing interest in using TextGrid and the goal is to meet their immediate needs while laying the groundwork for future expansion. TextGrid will deliver a productive and stable version in February 2011. Feedback to the roadmap was positive in general, and the Advisory Board underlined its support for the project's next stages.

Sustainability: Establishing TextGrid as a legal entity was reaffirmed as one of the goals, and questions involving digital rights and long-term preservation are also essential to long-term success. Addressability of the TextGridRep and interoperability with other repositories is a priority.

• Suggestion: Potential future collaboration on interdisciplinary and international levels should be incorporated into TextGrid's business model.
• Suggestion: TextGridRep should explore future development possibilities with other archives and institutions active in this area.
• Suggestion: TextGridRep should also engage in interconnecting with other repositories, and thus be part of a network or ecosystem of digital repositories.

Outreach: As more research groups and researchers become interested in TextGrid, there is a definite need for more information, such as the expanded tutorials and the video demo now available on the TextGrid website. There needs to be outreach not only for projects and research groups but also for individual researchers, since they might not yet realize that they are potential users.

• Suggestion: The creation of packages for specific scholarly interests in addition to programs tailored to individual needs would aid prospective research groups.
• Suggestion: Collaborative teamwork with research groups such as Archaeo18 and Blumenbach-Online is the next step to meeting researchers' needs.

Collaboration: TextGrid has a sustainable future only when it continues to develop, which needs to be reflected in its business model. There is need for discussion on international levels across disciplines. TextGrid is working with WissGrid in the creation of a preservation infrastructure and WisNetGrid in the creation of tools for ontology management and mapping tools for interconnection. TEXTvre will integrate the TextGrid Virtual Research Environment in the UK infrastructure. The SAWS project presented at the meeting will probably be a first instance of embedding TextGrid in institutional research and teaching practices in the UK.

• Suggestion: A "boot camp" or programming sprint session together with Interedition and TEXTvre, with the mid-term goal of creating a web browser-based GUI.

• Agenda as PDF
• Advisory Board minutes as PDF

• Introduction to TextGrid: eHumanities Infrastructure [Lohmeier/Blümm]
• TextGrid v1.0 Roadmap [Neuroth/Pempe/Vitt]
• Digital Library [Jannidis]
• Connecting and Analysing Texts: The Example of SAWS [Roueché]
• MEISE - An Editor for Encoded / Encoding Music. A Musicological Use-Case: Variants [Veit/Dabbert]

• TextGrid Virtual Research Environment: Introduction to the TextGridLab Tools and Services and the TextGrid Repository
• Overview about the State of Development and Prioritization of the TextGridLab Tools
• Transformation of the Data of the Online Library from zeno.org (digital library) for research: status 2 July 2010

The TextGridLab was presented in real time at the advisory board meeting. For a first brief overview you can have a look at the recently created TextGridLab Demo-Video 2 - beta release, Juni 2010.

1. Tobias Blanke - King’s College London
2. Mirjam Blümm - Goettingen State and University Library
3. Gabriele Buschmeier - Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, Mainz
4. Julian Dabbert - Musicology Seminar Detmold/Paderborn
5. Peter Gietz - DAASI International GmbH, Tübingen
6. Martin Hellmann - University of Munich
7. Fotis Jannidis - University of Würzburg
8. Roland Kamzelak - German Literature Archive Marbach
9. Felix Lohmeier - Goettingen State and University Library
10. Norbert Lossau - Goettingen State and University Library
11. Heike Neuroth - Goettingen State and University Library
12. Wolfgang Pempe - Goettingen State and University Library
13. Andrea Rapp - University of Trier
14. Simon Rettelbach - University of Trier
15. Laurent Romary - CNRS/INRIA, University of Berlin
    
16. Oliver Schmid - University of Trier
17. Klaus Ullmann - Germany`s National Research and Education Network DFN, Gauss‐Alliance
18. Joachim Veit - Musicology Seminar Detmold/Paderborn
19. Thorsten Vitt - University of Würzburg
20. Andreas Witt - Institute for the German Language, Mannheim
21. Joris van Zundert - Huygens Instituut

    Guests:

22. Helge Kahler - Federal Ministry of Education and Research
23. Hans Nerlich - German Aerospace Center, Project Management Agency
24. Charlotte Roueché - King’s College London
25. Hans Rutimann - Mellon Foundation
26. Don Waters - Mellon Foundation
    
    

    Unable to Attend:

• Simonetta Bassi - Signum, Pisa
• Andrea Bozzi - Interedition
• Reiner Diedrichs - Common Library Network, GBV
• Wilfried Hinsch- RWTH Aachen, German Council of Science and Humanities
• Marc Küster- University of Applied Sciences Worms
• Hans-Jörg Lieder - State Library Berlin
• Bodo Plachta - University of Amsterdam
• John Unsworth - Illinois Informatics Institute
• Gerhard Weikum - MPII Saarbrücken