e-Research at King's College London and beyond;
The changing face of the Arts and Humanities
This case study looks at the impact ICT has had on arts and humanities researchers and students and also on those who provide them with access to digital tools and data. At King's College London, both the Centre for Computing in the Humanities and the Centre for e-Research host a variety of digital projects and engage with partners within other departments of King's as well as with an international audience for which they provide advice, tools and materials.
Over the last decades, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have slowly made their way into research and teaching in the arts and humanities. Word processing and email are now standard tools of academic staff in all disciplines. New working practices include the use of online library catalogues, databases, document delivery services and access to digitised sources. Researchers and students also use various communication and collaboration tools such as instant messaging, wikis, blogs and e-learning platforms.
While this may be seen as a fairly advanced use of technology by some, others go even further and incorporate digital methods in their daily research practice: creating digital editions of early modern documents, using geo-spatial information for 3d-visualisation of ancient sites or making high speed networks accessible for performing arts. The buzzword e-Science is used to propagate the use of high performance computing and shared access to digital resources; also, new disciplines such as Digital Humanities or e-Research have emerged. This has led to a situation in which some see ICT merely as a convenient tool for access to information while others have completely changed their work practices.