During the Bamboo Planning Project, workshop participants expressed interest in developing a directory of tools, services, and collections that provides relevant metadata (cost, platform, etc.) as well as information about how other scholars have combined these resources to achieve their project or pedagogical goals. However, participants also noted that an information silo would be antithetical to the philosophical approach of Project Bamboo and would quickly encounter data curation challenges.
In response to this feedback from the planning workshops, Project Bamboo is developing a tool, service, and collection registry application that accommodates both the individual scholar looking for information and other platforms that could access and/or ingest the information. This application can serve as a resource discovery and tip-sharing tool for scholars, and a source of feedback for developers. For its user-facing side, this application builds upon the well-known Digital Research Tools (DiRT) wiki, a partnership reflected in its tentative name, Bamboo DiRT.
While the tools, services and collections developed by Project Bamboo are represented in Bamboo DiRT, this application also aims to capture the broader ecosystem of resources used by digital humanists and includes entries drawn from the DiRT wiki, Humanist listhost, DH Answers, and other discussion fora. Each entry includes as much information as possible about the resource, including a prose description, supported platform(s), cost, screenshots, and technical information. While Bamboo DiRT is not itself a documentation repository, it contains fields for links to end-user, API, and general technical documentation. Authenticated users can indicate that they use a particular resource (following the model of the “like” button) and add tips for other users of that resource.
The development goals for Bamboo DiRT include a robust API that will lay the groundwork for integrating Bamboo DiRT information with the Bamboo Work Spaces and affiliated digital humanities websites built on common platforms (Drupal and WordPress). For example, projects listed on DHCommons that use a particular tool could be automatically listed alongside the tool’s entry on Bamboo DiRT. CUNY Academic Commons users could search Bamboo DiRT within the Commons, and the tools they’ve indicated they use could be listed in their profile. By participating in a rich ecosystem of data exchange, Bamboo DiRT will help users build upon each others’ workflows, whether or not they involve Bamboo tools and services.
