Analysis

When asked to describe scholarly practice in the humanities, Project Bamboo Workshop 1 participants frequently mentioned contextualization as one of the cornerstone of their scholarship. Scholars described contextualization broadly as "[p]ositioning [research] within [the context of extant] secondary sources, defining valuable research space" (W1, Ex 2 flipcharts, 1a-A) and "discover[ing] relationships between research artifacts, sources, elements, images... causal relationships" (W1, Ex 2, 1a-A).

During discussions of scholarly practice in Workshop 1, many participants noted that annotation was a core component of their scholarly practice¹ both as part of individual² and collaborative³ research, and as part of pedagogy.

Workshop 1 revealed a cultural divide of undervaluing the development of digital tools and resources¹ to the same extent as traditional printed publications.

The organizing question for the Bamboo Planning Project -- How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services-- explicitly calls out research without discussing the role of teaching. Nonetheless, pedagogy and its overlap with both research and technology was a recurring theme throughout the workshops. Some participants even questioned whether the distinction made between research and teaching was legitimate¹.

The Bamboo Planning Project, begun in March 2008, brought together researchers in the arts and humanities, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists from over 100 institutions worldwide to address the question: How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?

The conversations that took place at the Bamboo workshops, captured in discussion and presentation notes, went far beyond this initial question. Participants addressed a wide variety of opportunities and challenges facing arts and humanities scholars, ranging from those that can be solved through software to those that require fundamental changes from within the Academy. While no single project can tackle all of these issues, we hope that the concerns and need statements gathered during the Bamboo workshops can serve to reinforce the value propositions of many other projects seeking to address some of these issues. The conversations provide information about scholarship, and the support of scholarship, that we hope will be of interest to those who study scholarly practice.