Project Bamboo is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary effort that brings together humanities scholars, librarians, and information technologists to tackle the question: “How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?”
In September 2010, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided a $1.3 million grant to an international partnership of 10 universities to support the collaborative development of humanities research technologies. For this first 18-month phase of a planned multi-phase Bamboo Technology Project (BTP), the partner institutions have in turn pledged $1.7 million of institutional resources. BTP Phase 1 will run from October 2010-March 2012.
Background: Bamboo Planning Project
2008-2010
The BTP builds upon the Bamboo Planning Project – a process that engaged approximately 600 faculty, librarians, and technologists from 115 institutions between Spring 2008 and Autumn 2010, also funded with the generous assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Information and activities from the planning project can be found on the Planning Project wiki. Of particular interest, please refer to:
- The Final Report
- Scholarly Practices Report, which provides a distillation of scholarly practices
- The Themes Database, housing quotes about scholarly needs and interests
- Scholarly Narratives, describing how scholars perceive technology for their work
- The Demonstrator Report, which summarizes results from 10 prototype projects
Bamboo Technology Project
Phase 1: 2010-2012
During our first 18-month phase of work, we will be building the Bamboo Technology Project and a Bamboo Consortium to ensure that the project’s work is expanded and sustained over time. The BTP will deliver three things. First, we will roll out easy-to-use, highly scalable environments for digital scholarship. These will include core tools for content management, collaboration, and the connection to distributed collections and web services. These environments are meant for use by arts and humanities scholars across disciplines, including those who may be looking for a first opportunity to use technology, as well as those who are already involved with digital tools. Second, we will develop shared web services, platforms, and frameworks – underlying infrastructure – that higher education institutions can use collectively to sustain and connect research applications and collections. This work is meant to help librarians, enterprise technologists, and software developers to better integrate and support data and tools. Third, we will define how e-research environments can evolve to support increasingly complex and large-scale forms of corpora scholarship across disciplines. This design process will inform our proposed, second 18-month phase of development work.
Our work in BTP is organized into four major areas, each drawing its leadership and participation from different partner institutions.
For further information, please read the original proposal to the Mellon Foundation or visit the project wiki.