Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Tuesday, February 16, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Wednesday, February 17, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, February 18, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Friday, February 19, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Principal Investigator
Joyce Rudinsky, UNC communication studies, RENCI domain scientist for the arts and humanities

Collaborators
Patrick Fitzgerald, Advanced Media Lab, North Carolina State University
Michael Shoffner, RENCI
Shelly Crisp, North Carolina Humanities Council
Luke Miller, Graduate Student, School of Library and Information Science
Michael Nutt, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina
Barbara Wildemuth, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina
Nick Graham, UNC, North Carolina Digital Heritage Center program coordinator

Project Description
Humanities in Touch (HIT) will bring a new level of accessibility and interactivity to the use of digital humanities collections through an innovative large-screen multi-touch surface called Scout. Scout will provide an attractive and easy-to-navigate doorway into multiple archives, while also allowing users to annotate, connect and otherwise mine humanities information.

Institutional libraries hold a wealth of humanities materials. The question now becomes how to make these digital collections easily accessible, allowing for interactive uses, for incorporation into school and public history programs, and in such a way that connections can be made across different digital archives. HIT accomplishes this by moving the exploration of humanities archives beyond a standard computer screen into a highly interactive community space where scholars, the general public and educators can work together to explore and share new understandings.

HIT is an inter-institutional effort between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and the North Carolina Humanities Council.

The unique feature of HIT is its use of technology and information to enhance engagement with humanities collections in public and academic spheres. The development of HIT has three components.

1. design the interface and interaction for the multi-touch surface
2. develop open source middleware for searching multiple archives
3. facilitate a pilot use and evaluation

HIT’s multi-touch interaction surface, called Scout, will be a large transportable (60") DLP touch screen. A multi-touch screen provides an experience that is not possible with desktops or Web interfaces. The large screen allows viewers to view and interact with many digital objects in contrast to the Web’s “page-turning” model. Multiple people can operate it at once with touch, no longer tethered to a mouse. This experience encourages discussion and collaboration as users gather to research, discover, and create with historical and cultural collections.

Scout will provide an intuitive method for associative navigation across multiple collections and the ability to create and share multimedia products. Initial interactive features allow a user to manipulate (reorganize, scale, etc.) and edit (identify an area of interest, sequence, annotate, tag) the information. The vision for Scout is that users will be able to create personal collections and add their own comments and tags. The user will be able to drill further into the archive and see other user annotation and tags. A user’s “session” could be recorded, either in real time or via navigation “breadcrumbs” that denote the session creation process, and saved for later use

Scout will include an open-source infrastructure for interacting with multiple archives simultaneously. Users of current interfaces can generally use only one archive at a time, but Scout will be able to pull data from several collections and allow users to weave them together seamlessly. Collections that include documents, music, oral histories, books, etc. will be integrated into the infrastructure and delivered through the platform.

In its initial release, HIT will draw from two digital publishing initiative of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library: the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and Documenting the American South, a . Once Scout is functional, a pilot use plan in North Carolina's public places will be implemented in order to bring new resources to communities and to facilitate the public's use of them. Public libraries, town halls or community centers will be identified in geographically diverse areas of the state, primarily where easy access to research college and university materials is not available. Project directors, librarians, or other professionals in these areas who have established a sound working relationship with public humanities programs will also be identified to lead the pilot projects. The North Carolina Humanities Council will identify a selection of public sites and contacts to facilitate a pilot use of Scout.

Because this project is in its early stages, it will be on display as a poster presentation.

Joyce Rudinsky, domain scientist for the arts and humanities at the Renaissance Computing Institute, has facilitated this project in collaboration with RENCI technologists and coordinated the display of the project in the UNC/RENCI Engagement Site Visualization rooms.