I had the privilege of serving on an planning committee for and attending a September 15, 2008 joint Council on Library and Information Resources/National Endowment for the Humanities Symposium on opportunities for information technology to enhance scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. In preparation for the Symposium, a number of really superb background papers were commissioned; the authors later had the opportunity to revise them based on discussion at the Symposium. These papers are now available, and I strongly recommend them to CNI-announce readers as broad and thoughtful surveys of key developments and opportunities.

The general page for the symposium is here, and includes links to the individual papers:

Contents and front matter • CLIR

Preservation and Access Technology The Relationship Between Digital and Other Media Conversion Processes: A Structured Glossary of Technical Terms by M. Stuart Lynn and The Technology Assessment Advisory Committee to the Commission on Preservation and Access August 1990 Committee Preface In 1989, the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee (TAAC) of the Commission on Preservation and Access Read More

Here is the list of papers:

Tools for thinking: ePhilology and Cyberinfrastructure by Gregory Crane, Alison Babeu, David Bamman, Lisa Cerrato, and Rashmi Singhal

Social Attention in the Age of the Web by Bernardo A. Huberman

The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era by Caroline Levander

Art History and the New Media; Representation and the Production of Humanistic Knowledge by Stephen Murray

A Whirlwind Tour of Automated Language Processing for the Humanities and Social Sciences by Douglas W. Oard

Information Visualization: Challenge for the Humanities by Maureen Stone

In addition to these papers, Andreas Paepcke of Stanford University also contributed an insightful reflection on the difficulties of collaborations between compter scientists and humanists (or indeed, disciplinary specialists in general) which can be found here:

There will be a final summary report of the Symposium available, probably early 2009, and I will share the pointer to this report here when it's available.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI