TextGrid Newsletter 06 [September 17, 2009]

Greetings

TextGrid has just begun a second project phase through May 2012 with new interdisciplinary communities. In this Newsletter we want to inform you about the TextGrid Summit and the release of our software TextGridLab Beta, as well as to give you a preview on the new project phase which has started on June 1 2009.

Second project phase of TextGrid funded

The project "TextGrid - virtual research environments in the e-Humanities" was recently funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the period June 1 2009 - May 31 2012. The expanded consortium with ten project partners, seven universities among them, began work at a Kick-Off-Meeting in Göttingen on July 6. The goals of TextGrid in the second project phase are to convert the virtual research ambit, including the Grid–infrastructure into an enduring operation and to achieve an expanded user base.

The TextGridLab will be expanded to a comfortable and intuitive operable entrance to the virtual research ambit based on the evaluation, which has already begun. The grid–infrastructure and the TextGrid repository will be scaled and linked with other initiatives.

New academic communities from art history, classical philology and musicology have joined the TextGrid consortium. The tools and services will be fitted to their requirements:

Art history: annotation of image data
Classical philology: edition of glosses
Musicology: integration of notes in XML editor

It is also planned that TextGrid will integrate another academic discipline and its tools into the running project.

In general, the focus is on assembling a community in which researchers as well as developers could participate actively in order to advance TextGrid and to link available tools and services with TextGrid. Therefore, many workshops and training sessions will be offered in the course of the project. Interoperatibility and the observance of standards are prominent goals of TextGrid, especially with regard to the many e-Humanities and e-Research initiatives with which TextGrid is and will be cooperating.

For further information see the official version of the project application (in German).

A Look Back at the TextGrid Summit

Review of the TextGrid Summit and Project Conclusion

Textgrid Summit in Göttingen on January 21 - 22, 2009

On the occasion of the project conclusion and the beta release of TextGridLab, the TextGrid consortium organized a conference and workshop on January 21-22 in Göttingen. About 130 academics from all over the world from different fields of research attended the event. Academic researchers from the humanities and computer scientists discussed the virtual research environment developed by the project partners.

Tobias Blanke (King’s College London) and Susan Schreibman (Digital Humanities Observatory, Dublin) reported on their experiences in building infrastructure in the e-Humanities in Great Britain and Ireland and pointed out possible connections with the TextGrid infrastructure.

The live demonstration of the TextGridLab, a comprehensive research ambit with different kinds of tools, (for further information see below) met with great interest from the audience. In the ensuing discussion, the integration of functionalities for specific research questions was a major issue for which TextGrid is well-prepared because of its use of open standards.

Furthermore, some application examples from musicology (Daniel Röwenstrunk, Edirom) and psycholinguistics (Peter Wittenburg, MPI for Psycholinguistics) were presented.

During the developer-workshop on January 22, twenty computer scientists took a closer look at the architecture and the concept of TextGrid. They developed a new plug-in in a hands-on session.

Downloads:

The presentations are online as PDF (linked in the agenda). Some presentations are, thanks to the D-Grid project SuGI, also available as video
There is also a new demonstration video from the TextGridLab, prepared for the Summit.

Annual report

The funding of the first project phase ended on May 31 2009; a new research project, which began in June 1 2009 was granted by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). A detailed annual report is currently being drawn up and will be published shortly.

TextGridLab Beta Release

On the occasion of the TextGrid Summit, the TextGrid client software TextGridLab was made available for download in a Beta version for the first time. Please download the TextGridLab to your computer. Installation is quite simple.

In this build, the following tools are available:

Edit XML files with an easy-to-use XML Editor. The files can reside on the local computer or in the grid. Users can switch easily between a more technical view with tags and attributes and a structural view that is oriented towards the WYSIWYG display in common text processing applications.
A Graphic Link Editor (text ↔ image) supports the XML Editor to align text sequences with image sections in order to create files that contain text elements and topographic descriptions.
The Workflow Editor allows the user to configure individual automated workflows.
The Search Tool serves to retrieve structural data and metadata. Semantic searches based on RDF are also possible.
A Dictionary Search Tool connects TextGridLab with the Trier Wörterbuchnetz.
A powerful User and Project Management (file and rights management module) – New projects can be created in the Project Management Module. Existing projects can be managed, i.e. project members can be deleted or added and provided with predefined roles; access rights for TextGrid objects can be set.
The Project Browser / Navigator is always present in TextGridLab. It gives the user easy access to all material related to the project he is working on. Thus, the Navigator can be a starting point in TextGridLab.
The Metadata Annotator is a generic tool used for adding structured metadata to TextGrid objects (texts, images etc.) by means of a configurable input form.
A Lemmatizer (morphological analysis) – The Lemmatizer analyzes word (German) forms (tokens) and returns (a) the respective lemma, i.e. the token reduced to its basic morphological form, (b) the part of speech, and (c) other morphological characteristics (number, gender etc.).

We have focused on developing the basic functionality so far. In the beta phase the user interface will be evaluated so as to make TextGridLab into an intuitively accessible entrance into the virtual work environment. For further information, have a look at the download site.

The current release (Revision 4128) of August 28, 2009 comprises an update to eclipse 3.5 as well as some smaller improvements. We are going to release regularly updated versions of the lab about every eight weeks. Thus you will be able to use new or improved tools immediately.

Please test the beta version and report any bugs via the feedback form.

For a first impression you can watch our video demonstration from January 21 2009. This short film demonstrates the features of TextGridLab in a real time presentation, which was produced on the occasion of the TextGrid Summit.

Cooperation

TextGrid and TUSTEP

TUSTEP (the TUebinger System of TExtprocessing Programs), a tool for processing textdata for academic purposes, has been made available in TextGrid since April 2009. It is markable for its versatile functionalities, such as operations for comparing, sorting and indexing. The system was developed in the Center for Dataprocessing (ZDV) at the University of Tübingen and has been used for over 30 years.

Asked by Prof. Dr. Dietmar Kaletta (ZDV), the TextGrid partner DAASI International programmed a Web-Service-Wrapper, with which certified TUSTEP macros called. This service is made available via a server of the ZVD. Thus, TextGRid users can integrate these macros in their workflows.

Thomas Kollatz of the Steinheim Institute in Duisburg contributed the first macro, which is able to generate different kinds of indices for a text. More macros will be included soon.

Workflow in TextGrid

The Workflow Engine GWES (Grid Workflow Execution Service) by Fraunhofer FIRST has been integrated in the TextGrid architecture in a test phase since the beginning of this year. Chief developer Andreas Hoheisel extended the engine in cooperation with TextGrid members, in order to make it compatible to TextGrid services.

The GWES is called via the TextGridLab: workflows can be defined, sent, monitored and evaluated in the specially designed TextGrid-WorkFlow-Format. The integration of GWES is in the Beta status at the moment; more workflows, especially for graphic input will follow. The GWES is also used in the D-Grid community projects MediGRID, Services@MediGRID, PneumoGRID and BauVOGrid for accelerating and simplifying distributed services.

Guidelines for Cooperation Partners

TextGrid will continously link up with other research projects and aims to build upon existing developments. Due to its employment of open standards there are many possibilities to use the research infrastructure developed by TextGrid or to participate in its further development. Possible scenarios of cooperation are outlined in the guidelines for cooperation partners.

Latest Events

Expert workshop

An expert workshop took place in Trier on January 16 2009. About 15 participants, foremost edition-philologists, informed themselves about the use of the TextGridLab and the tools which were available at the time. The event was hosted by the Competence Centre for electronic text processing and publication in the humanities at the University of Trier. The feedback of the participants forms part of an evaluation of the TextGridLab and thus helps to improve future development of the virtual research ambit.

The event met with lively interest and will be repeated in the end of the year. Further information will be linked on www.textgrid.de in time.
Report from the “eHumanities conclusion workshop” in Göttingen

The DFG project "eHumanities" was concluded with a workshop on January 22 2009. This project of the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB) focused on the conceptual development of a research infrastructure for the e-Humanities in Germany.

An international experts workshop (report as download available) preceded the conclusive workshop. It was based on a study (also available as download) about the status quo of the eHumanities infrastructure. The following concept for the assembling of a research infrastructure for the eHumanities was introduced on the event and was discussed with the about 90 participating researchers.

In a panel-discussion, representatives of different funding organisations (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, German Research Foundation, Ministry for Science and Culture Lower Saxony, Volkswagen foundation) answered questions about future requirements of computer-supported humanities and the securing of an effective infrastructure.

Presentations are available for download .

D-Grid All Hands Meeting 2009

The second D-Grid All Hands Meeting assembled all projects and associated initiatives of the D-Grid initiative, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the University of Göttingen from March 23 to 25. Besides the status quo of the D-Grid initiative and new projects, technical and organisational questions were discussed during an “Open Problems Session” with experts from the different departments present. Beyond that TextGrid contributed a poster presentation and software demonstrations.

The practical orientation of D-Grid became obvious by the invited guests: Dr. Rainer Jansen (BMBF) and Dr. Rainer Fechner (Alcatel Lucent) gave a lecture on communication technology and netcomputing. Hermann-Josef Lamberti (Deutsche Bank) talked about technology for the bank of the future and Dr. Behrend Freese (Zimory GmbH) introduced a business concept.

Part of the presentations are available as download on the D-Grid website. A new booklet about the projects is also available as pdf as well as a free print version at the D-Grid GmbH.
Bamboo-Workshop Nr. 4 in Providence, Rhode Island (USA)

The 4th workshop of the US-centered cyberinfrastructure initiative Bamboo took place on April, 16-18. The project Bamboo brings together arts and humanities scholars, IT experts and various other groups to tackle the question: "How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?". The project is currently in its planning phase and will submit an application for a two-year development phase to Mellon Foundation in October.

This workshop was influenced by the financial constraints due to the economic crisis. Bamboo started with visionary objectives in a big community process and is now confronted with the duty to deliver short term proof of concepts to get subsequent funding. David Greenbaum (Berkeley) said that Mellon will pay not more than $ 1 Mio. per year and expect 1-year development plans. Chad Kainz (Chicago) admitted "that we are constrained to a smaller project than we were originally thinking". That was kind of frustrating for some participants. As Neil Freistat put it: "Lots of people jumped in because Bamboo was the big ship leaving with the Mellon funding."

Currently, a draft version of the implementation proposal is discussed. Some critical questions still remain unanswered: Requirements and commitments for participating institutions are not defined yet, there are still lots of diverse interests and it is unclear by now how the cooperation with non-American institutions and initiatives may be organized. TextGrid will further contribute to Bamboo from a European perspective.
IEEE DEST2009, May 31 - June 3 2009, Istanbul, Turkey.
'Cyber Engineering and Creating Value by Making Connections'

Sponsored by IEEE, the conference on digital ecosystems has its roots in technology. This year, however, the conference brought together people from a wide range of different backgrounds (e.g. game theorists, sociologists, philosophers). All through the conference there were intense discussions on the interaction between technologies and the organisational/social contexts of their application environments.

As in previous years, Marc W. Küster of the TextGrid team organized the humanities track of the conference. The track found many interested participants who were impressed by both the technology as well as the community-related activities. TextGrid also gave one in a series of tutorials.

IEEE DEST2009 Website
TextGrid Tutorial
Repository Tutorial: Data Ecosystems
Special Session eHumanities, TextGrid and Grid Ecosystems
International Workshop of the Music Encoding Initiative MEI, Charlottesville

A workshop to evaluate and improve the specifications for the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) schema took place in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA) in July. The event was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The MEI format aims to convey TEI concepts to music notation. It is the basis for an integration of music research data in TextGrid. Moreover the Musicology Seminar Detmold/ Paderborn as TextGrid partner is significantly engaged in its further development.
The performance of the data model was tested by samples of different periods of music history and the outcome gave an opportunity to discuss complex problems of different edition projects (Hildegard von Bingen, Beethoven, Gluck, Weber, Debussy etc.).
During the next meeting in spring 2010 in Detmold, a special interest group will draft a first version of the user documentation for MEI, and convert the data format to ODD (One Document does it all) in order to provide a better compatibility to TEI as well as to achieve a greater flexibility of the format.

Recent Publications

TextGrid documents:

Developers’ Tutorial (developed on the occasion of the TextGrid Summit on January 23 2009; status quo: April 2 2009)

Baseline Encoding for documents in TEI P5

Report R3.6: installation of a data grid node

Bachelor Thesis:

Ubbo Veentjer: Determination of Relevant Words within a Text and Representation in the User Interface TextGrid-Workbench, Zentrum für Informatik, 29.9.2009

Roman Hausner: Semantic Text Mining - linguistische Tools im Preprocessing von Text Mining Methoden, Zentrum für Informatik, 29.9.2009

TextGrid Publications:

Heike Neuroth, Fotis Jannidis, Andrea Rapp, Felix Lohmeier: Virtuelle Forschungsumgebungen für e-Humanities. Maßnahmen zur optimalen Unterstützung von Forschungsprozessen in den Geisteswissenschaften. In: Bibliothek. Forschung und Praxis, 2/2009.

Andrea Rapp: Perspektiven des Digitalen Publizierens. Interview im Deutschlandfunk am 6.7.2009

Marc Wilhelm Küster, Christoph Ludwig and Andreas Aschenbrenner: TextGrid: eScholarship und vernetzte Angebote. In: it - Information Technology, vol. 4 (August) 2009, Themenheft Informatik in den Philologien (Guest editor: Moulin, Claudine / Burch, Thomas / Rapp, Andrea). (in publication)

Heike Neuroth: TextGrid - Ein Community-Grid für die Geisteswissenschaften. In: Lajos Herpay, Sonja Neweling, Uwe Schwiegelshohn (Ed.): D-Grid. Die Deutsche Grid-Initiative. Vorstellung der Projekte. Publication on the occation of the D-Grid All Hands Meeting, March 2009. p. 36-37.

Andreas Aschenbrenner, Tobias Blanke, Neil P Chue Hong, Nicholas Ferguson, Mark Hedges: A Workshop Series for Grid/Repository Integration. In: D-Lib Magazine, January/February 2009, vol 15 number 1/2.

Uwe Schwiegelshohn: D-GRID: The communities of Germany's D-Grid. In: eStrategies Projects 7, British Publishers, August 2008. p. 14-18.

Andreas Aschenbrenner, Katja Meffert: Wissenschaftliche Infrastruktur in den Geisteswissenschaften? – Eine Wegbeschreibung. In: Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie - online, 9.8.2008 (Georg Braungart, Peter Gendolla and Fotis Jannidis, eds.).

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