The Anthropology of Knowledge:
From basic to complex virtual communities in the Arts and Humanities
Stuart Dunn & Tobias Blanke
Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre
King’s College London
DH2007
Urbana-Champaign, 5th June 2007
Discovery
AttributionReference and cross-reference
Interpretation
Publication
The Archaeological research cycle
Web 2.0
Visual/cartographic/ Browse and click
1
Keyword/natural language/controlled vocabulary searching
2
3
Mixture of 1 and 2; georeferencing
4
Wiki/blog structures
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Running average of change in 12 mo over the last 24 mo (%)
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
Oct-00Jan-01Apr-01Jul-01Oct-01Jan-02Apr-02Jul-02Oct-02Jan-03Apr-03Jul-03Oct-03Jan-04Apr-04Jul-04Oct-04Jan-05Apr-05Jul-05Oct-05Jan-06Apr-06Jul-06Oct-06Jan-07Apr-07Jul-07Oct-07Jan-08Apr-08Jul-08Oct-08Jan-09Apr-09Jul-09Oct-09Jan-10Apr-10Jul-10Oct-10Jan-11
Number of collections available by month scaled to raw access stats.
Archaeology Data Service
SILCHESTER ROMAN TOWN: A VIRTUAL RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT FOR ARCHAEOLOGY
Integrated Archeological Database (IADB)
LEAP project (Linking E-Archives and Publications)http://www.intarch.ac.uk/
Collaborative working environments
• Open Source Critical Editions
Collaborative working environments
• Open Source Critical Editions
Collaborative working environments
• Open Source Critical Editions
Collaborative working environments
• Open Source Critical Editions
• Open Source Critical Editions
Collaborative working environments
E-SCIENCE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES: AN EARLY ADOPTERS’ FORUM
NCSA, 1&2 June 2007
VOs for the Arts and Humanities: A shopping list
Web 2.0 and the Grid
- ‘mashups’ - infrastructural diversity
- Interactive infrastructure
Formal methods for defining, storing and accessing (i.e. reusing) workflows
Project management
-Training
-Legal
-Reporting and documenting failure
Development and enrichment of the relationship between A&H and Computer Science
International coordination and collaboration
Dealing with computational, semantic and human heterogeneity
Supporting collective research –
virtual organizations
Foster/Kesselman: Virtual Organisation scenarios
• Highly multidisciplinary simulation with several proprietary software components
• Thousands of researchers at hundreds of laboratories work together on the same design and pool their resources
• A large scale computer game with multiple interacting virtual worlds
Different number and types of participants, types of activities, scale of interaction and sharing of resources
Common: Mutually independent participants would like to work together and share what they have
VO: A set of institutions and/or individuals defined by resource sharing policies
• Sharing relationships can vary over time– Access rights– Resources involved– Participants
• Peer-to-peer• Different usage of the same resource, no a
priori definition• Implementation must be flexible and user
controlled in terms of varying policies, identities etc.
• Delegation of authority
Some initial challenges
VOs in Grids
Ability to negotiate resource-sharing arrangements and then to use the resulting resource pool for some purpose. (Ian Foster)
Grid: VO management
Before VOMS• Remember the way to
Athens • User is authorized as a
member of a single VO• All VO members have
same rights
VOMS• User can be in multiple
VOs– Aggregate rights
• VO can have groups– Different rights for
each– Nested groups
• VO has roles– Assigned to specific
purposes
Virtual Organisation
Examples
Platform for A&H Computing Community
• Existing technologies:– Wiki– Blog– Content Management System (CMS)– Forum
• Existing problems:– Lack of resources– Security
Solution: Self-governing community using web2.0/Internet2 technologies
Federation – Shibboleth
• Internet2 solution for attribute transport across organizations
• Distributed Identity Providers• Uses OpenSAML
myVOCSmy Virtual Organization
Collaboration Suite
Jill Gemmill
John-Paul Robinson
Jason L. W. Lynn
What tools do VOs need?• Mailing List• Other open source tools :
– Wiki/Blog– File sharing (controlled R/W)– Role assignments
• Sharing identity across applications• Easy command line• Self-created applications• And maybe some integration with Grid
computational resources
The larger picture
The environment
A Look Inside myVocs
VO Attribute Authority
AppMailList
YourAppCMSWiki
VO IdP
VO SPVO SP VO SPVO SP
VO Space
Shibboleth SP
myVocs Visual Experience
User Selects
VO Resource
myVocs Visual Experience
User Selects
Identity Provider
myVocs Visual Experience
User Accesses
VO Resource
Bridges + ArchaeoGrid
Biomedical Research Informatics Delivered by Grid Enabled Services
Glasgow Edinburgh
Leicester Oxford
London
Netherlands
Publically Curated Data
Private data
Private data
Private data
Private data
Private data
Private data
CFG Virtual Organisation Ensembl
MGI
HUGO
OMIM
SWISS-PROT
… DATA HUB
RGD
SyntenyGrid
Service
blast
+
VO Authorisation
Information Integrator
http://www.brc.dcs.gla.ac.uk/projects/bridges/
VO’s – Not only HEI
• Final users will be members of a Virtual Organization– education– entertainment– cultural heritage management– cultural tourism
• ArchaeoGRID will offer resources otherwise difficult to access