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%\author{Andrea Zanni}
%\date{2010-04-12}

%\begin{document}

The global aim of the present study was to understand if a collaboratory digital library could be helpful for the Humanities community in the Italian context. 
Research questions were declared in a sequence to go deeper in details regarding functionalities and structure of such digital libraries. They were:
\newline

\textbf{H1}: Can a digital library for the Humanities community within the Italian context be \textit{collaborative}?

\hspace{8pt}\textbf{H2}: Can a digital library for the Humanities community within the Italian context be a \textit{collaboratory}?

\hspace{16pt}\textbf{H3}: Can a digital library for the Humanities community within the Italian context be built upon a \textit{wiki}?
\newline

and objectives were:
\begin{itemize}
\item to analyze perception of Humanities scholars (particularly of Digital Humanities) towards collaboration and digital collaborative projects
%\item to investigate collaboration in Humanities communities of practice
\item to investigate wikis to be a possible framework for a collaboratory digital library
\end{itemize}

The first two questions, as previously explained, are very similar: they did center the main topic of the study, that is collaboration in a scholar online community of practice.  
Both focus on exploring willingness of the community of scholars to join (or just imagine) a collaborative project aimed to research and study.
First question is more general, second directly refer to the e-science and cyberinfrastructure trend that is finally spreading in the academic world.
Answer to these two questions, as expected, is \textit{positive}. 

Interviewees did in fact support the core hypothesis of the study, that is the importance of collaborative projects in scholar communities, even in the Humanities (and Italian) context. 
Though, they did raise many issues and barriers unforeseen by the researcher. 

\subsection{Wiki as a digital library}
Another objective of the research was to discover if a collaboratory digital library could be built upon a \textit{wiki}. 
Wiki has been proposed as a well-known and widely used framework for collaboration, being utilized by online volunteer communities as well as business organizations. 
The researcher himself is an active user in a wiki digital library (Wikisource), and decided to test the willingness of scholars to utilize such an instrument. 

At the beginning of the study, the main idea was to propose the wiki to the scholar community as a collaborative framework.

It must be admitted that the perspective of the research was very technology-driven. 
The idea was that, if wiki systems had proven to be a valid framework for huge and complex 
collaborative projects, thus they should have been suitable also for Humanities community, particularly in the Italian context.  

Eventually, the perspective has been completely \textit{reversed}: during the research process, the researcher gradually changed his mind 
and understood that his approach was wrong. 

Applying research methods and following the procedures did teach the researcher that, instead of focusing on the technical aspects and the software interface, the right    
way to reach meaningful results was to \textit{directly ask the community}.
There has been quite discussions with the advisor on these topics, and it must be admitted that the initial approach of the researcher, focusing mainly on technical aspects 
and on the proposal of the wiki, would have forced analysis and results.  

Thus, contrarily to what expected at the beginning, data suggests that answer to this third research question is \textbf{negative}.
Or, at least, the outcome is negative intending \textit{wikis as softwares}: scholars and researchers demand more complex and modular systems able 
to support advanced Semantic Web technologies and with a strong attention to metadata and protocols as OAI-PMH or OAI-ORE. 
Nowadays this is not available for most wiki engines, that are more basic and that focus more on other features.

On the other hand, the answer can be evaluated as \textbf{positive} intending wiki as a synonym of \textit{collaborative editing}, a strong form of collaboration 
that could really enhance research in Humanities. 
In this sense, intending more broadly the term wiki, as an analog of \textquotedblleft wiki-like\textquotedblright), answer can be regarded as \textbf{positive}.
Moreover, the growth of Wikisource and the fact that a project like Liber Liber is moving on MediaWiki, suggest that, if not for scholars projects, 
wikis are suitable for amateur projects. Nevertheless, this outcome need to be validated by further and more focused research. 
 
The following paragraphs will illustrate conclusions and recommendations suggested by the researcher. 

\section{Different types of digital libraries}
Data gathered from interviews and literature suggested a distinction between two main types of digital libraries perceived by scholars. 
In fact participants shared a vision where digital libraries are intended either as \textit{repositories} or \textit{Virtual Research Environments}.

Interviewee \texttt{I4} declared:
\begin{quotation}
Historical projects (regarding DLs) has been of these two kinds:
\begin{itemize}
\item \textit{repositories} in which to store digitized texts, in various ambit: some academic, some other amateur (like the Gutenberg Project\footnote{\url{http://www.gutenberg.org}} 
or Liber Liber\footnote{\url{http://www.liberliber.it}}), some other institutional.
Often [the repositories were built] without thinking at the aims they could accomplish. 
\item the \textit{scientific-academic digital library}, which tries to provide users with tools for working on texts. Often [these tools consists] in linguistic analysis tools, 
which are quantitative, like concordances, frequencies, etc. Sometimes, user can search on lemmatized texts, for example in the Perseus project.  
\end{itemize}
\end{quotation}

Digital libraries are often intended as repositories where to store, preserve and provide access to entire collections of documents, either born-digital or digitized.
These projects do follow a traditional vision of digital libraries that is not far from paper libraries: they focus on entire collections, and treat texts as static objects.
On the other hand, VRE are much more innovative projects created for scholars and researchers, especially in the field of Digital Humanities.
These digital libraries provide many tools (often, Semantic Web technologies) for research and treat texts as dynamical objects to research and investigate. Interestingly enough, this vision of DLs
in much more close to the early pioneers (visionary) work og Bush, Licklider, Engelbart, Busa.

This perception was confirmed by other interviews, and \texttt{table 4.1} was completed collecting features from interviews. 

\section{Importance of collaboration}
Literature and interviews both confirmed the increasing importance of collaboration in digital libraries. 
As e-science and cyberinfrastructure are growing, Humanities are exploring the same approach to a strongly collaborative work in digital environments. 
All interviewees, while having different opinions, confirmed the fact that collaboration is evaluated as a positive factor for research and innovation, and so 
online collaboration in apposite frameworks.
Interviewee \texttt{I4} affirmed:
\begin{quotation}
The topic of collaboration is increasing every day; in electronic editions, it is the \textit{keyword}. 
\end{quotation}
while interviewee \texttt{I1} too was asked if collaborative frameworks could help the field of Humanities:
\begin{quotation}
Absolutely. I believe this is the only way for a science which needs to innovate itself.
\end{quotation}

%\subsection{Collaborative editing}
%Nonetheless, wiki is a broad term that can be intended more loosely as a synonym of \textit{collaborative editing}. 
For the scope of the study the concept of \textit{collaborative editing} has been chosen to represent the ideal and strongest form of collaboration 
involved in a collaborative project. In fact, in the context of digital libraries the highest form of collaboration and sharing seemed 
to be the possibility to edit collaboratively either a text, a page or even a single line. 

Thus, collaboration in collaborative project is in fact intended as collective editing. 

Interviewee \texttt{I3} upheld the importance of collaborative editing for digital libraries:
\begin{quotation}
Another aspect, more \textquotedblleft borderline\textquotedblright, regarding research, is the one which involves the \texttt{collaborative editing}.
One of the most complicated in the creation of quality archives is to guarantee the quality of both the text and possible mark up of the text itself.
\end{quotation}

More specifically, the creation of collaborative digital environments could have different advantages:
\begin{itemize}
 \item lower costs (i.e. critic and diplomatic editions)
 \item introduce the concept of \textquotedblleft no ultimate version\textquotedblright within Humanities
 \item foster the neutralization process within philology and literary critics 
 \item enhance collaboration at many levels (i.e between scholars, subdisciplines even scientific fields)
 \item innovate a traditional field as Humanities in the Italian context
\end{itemize}

%\subsubsection{Lowering costs}
Interviews confirmed that collaborative editing could lower costs of digitization and DLs, and also stimulate discussion and collaboration among 
various disciplines. Interviewee \texttt{I3} stated:
\begin{quotation}
I rather think that the opportunities given interoperability (which can be seen as collaboration among different softwares) and collaboration (among different people), 
are very important.
They can lower costs, especially in the Humanities, where critical editions can cost 20 years [of work] and lots of money and even doubts about
funding. Collaborative work among scholars, even from different disciplines, could solve these problems.
\end{quotation}

%\subsubsection{No ultimate version}
Moreover, collaborative editing somehow questions the concept of an \textquotedblleft ultimate version\textquotedblright of a text.
\texttt{I4} stated:
\begin{quotation}
What is more, without having the presumption to aim at the \textquotedblleft best edition\textquotedblright (actually, we can just dump this idea).
[There could be projects where] philologists of different nationalities cooperate and suggest interpretations. 
This would be a brand new opportunity to change scientific cooperation in the philology area.
\end{quotation}

This is due to the fact that every sentence (namely, every opinion and thought) can be doubted and questioned by other users.
Every text (i.e. an encyclopedic article, a didactic book as well as a translation) is the sum of several interpretations, versions, modifications and contributes of different users.

%\subsubsection{Neutralization process}
Interviewee \texttt{I1} noticed that collaborative editing in Wikipedia, struggling for reaching a consensus among users in the name of the NPOV, is incredibly similar to a similar process happening in philology: the process of establishing, 
assess and evaluate a text. 
\begin{quotation}
This is fundamental: this [\textit{the established consensus of a page, NdR}] is \textit{the outcome of a neutralization process}.
From the philological point of view, the possibility of tracking this process (through the \texttt{History} or other more sophisticated tools) is crucial.
Because the Neutral Point of View [one of the pillars of Wikipedia] is the result of a process of neutralization. 
In philology, to track and follow this process would be absolutely important. 
\end{quotation}
This process in wikis (and other collaborative projects) is tracked by the \texttt{History} of a page: this tool is thus a log, a stratification of the various version of a page, 
then it is very helpful from the philologist's point of view.  

\section{Community}
The present research intended the phrase \textit{community of practice} as defined by Wenger (2006): 
\begin{quotation}
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for 
something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
\end{quotation}

Although observation, literature and interviews suggest that collaboration is becoming more important, they also suggest that there is a distance between scholar 
communities of practices, and the general, undiscriminated audience that compose the crowd behind huge collaborative projects like Wikipedia. 
Scholar communities do in fact agree in considering very importance collaboration among peers, intending people who share the same competences, culture and expertise.
There is absolutely no consensus upon \textit{opening} the community or scholar collaborative projects to generic users, wiki-style. 

Professor Eco called these two different communities \textit{controlled} and \textit{uncontrollable}; he suggested that a closed community of peers 
could reach goals and collaborate in a much more helpful and efficient way. Especially, he insisted on the trustworthiness of the collaborative work of such a community, 
which has inside procedure, policies, cultural aspects that prevents errors and guarantee a control and a (peer) review of the information. 

According to him, generalized communities of people do not reach the same level of reliability, though he admits that the collective filter of a 
\textquotedblleft motivated crowd\textquotedblright does work on average. 
 
\subsection{Quality and reliability}
It is thus still very present that quality and authority of peer produced information is depending by the community who produced it. 
A lot of research has been done regarding the problem of authority and reliability in Wikipedia and other open projects, 
and more research has to be done to understand and comprehend the phenomenon in its broadness. 
It is the opinion of the researcher that only the surface of these issues has been scratched.
Wikipedia opened a window that we did not expect to exist: it shows us a world where expert are important, but not so much. 
Crowds of active and good-willing users can flock and creates coherent and complete enciclopedic articles, almost about everything. 

This is a complex issue that is very feared, for many reasons, by scholars and academy in general. 
Their comments and critics are often grounded and very agreeable, but it is still valid the opinion that this whole phenomenon of crowdsourcing, 
\textquotedblleft wisdom of the crowds\textquotedblright and value of expertise (as well as perverse mechanisms in academy and scientific communities) 
are yet to be understood. 

This is also a reason why the term wiki is so feared: aside technical limits, it reminds to Wikipedia and this new kind of open, undiscriminated communities of practice. 
Further and specific research is needed to assess these outcomes and investigate in details the conflict between 
scholar and amateur communities. Other research is then needed to really understand inner mechanisms of both the communities to comprehend differences and similarities, 
particularly in knowledge production aimed communities. It is the humble opinion of the researcher that these communities are more alike than different, and that amateur
communities still have something to offer (and teach) to scholar ones.

\section{The Italian context}
Interviews collected several meaningful data about issues in Humanities within the Italian context. 
Many of them are related to mentality and culture, as the elder age of the cultural and academic establishment, with consequential lack of interest to innovation.
This is a well known problem of Italian politics and institutions: the ruling class is aged, younger generations have extreme difficulties in gaining leading positions and 
therefore innovation and progress-related issues are not the primary agenda. 
Academia makes no difference: young professors are rarity and thus they have no power to decide and direct funds on innovative projects, as it could be a collaboratory 
digital library.

Moreover, regarding collaboration and collaborative projects, there are serious issues related to career and tenure, as the fact that digital publishing is not evaluated
in tenure competitions. 
Interviewee \texttt{I3} states:
\begin{quotation}
Now, there are issues related with tenure and \textit{career}, someway complicated. 
In tenure competitions, digital editions and digital publishing do not count. \textit{They are not evaluated}. 
\end{quotation}

This means that all publications needs to be on paper and thus there is little interest in publishing (and researching) in the digital environment.
Obviously, also people interested in these topics are discouraged by the lack of dedicated infrastructure and procedures. 
This situation also acts as an obstacle to collaborative projects, because there would be much more difficulties in giving right authorship of contributions to every user.
\begin{quotation}
Think about what could happen in a collaborative work, where it is not possible to redeem attribution of every edit. 
This is a serious problem, that will be maybe solved by younger generations of scholars, who are more aware of importance of sharing. 
\end{quotation}

The solution is then offered by the same researcher: a \textquotedblleft rejuvanization\textquotedblright of the ruling class would probably have the outcome of 
making it more sensitive to innovation and progress-related issues. A practical step could be the evaluation of digital publishing for tenure and scholarship competition. 
This would foster innovation in research and could help the birth of collaborative projects as a collaboratory digital library.

\subsection{Italian digital libraries}
Towards digital libraries, and the digital environment in general, Italy maintains a conservative approach and quite reluctanct to innovation. 
Few institutional digital libraries have been built in the last decades, and few investments are being made for digitization of cultural heritage. 
The limited amount of Italian material in projects like Europeana make Italy one of the nation with greater potential and less effort in preserving (and providing access)
digitally cultural heritage. 

Many interviewees confirmed the fact that amateur projects like Liber Liber and Wikisource are still very important because no other intitutional projects actually followed. 
In fact, Liber Liber was born in 1993 to fill a gap, as \texttt{I3} recalls:
\begin{quotation}
To be honest, we all thought that the work of Liber Liber was necessary in the first phase, hoping that the digitization would have been further made by large national projects, 
universities, institutions, in a professional manner, and not voluntary as we did. 

Unfortunately it was not so, at least not in Italy.
\end{quotation}

Obviously, some work has been done, as Biblioteca Digital Italiana, probalby the most famous digital library in Italy.
Yet, \texttt{I4} argued:
\begin{quotation}
Then, I also think that Italy lacks institutional digital libraries. Apart from the first experiments of \textit{Biblioteca Digitale Italiana}, 
(which was very professional, TEI marked-up, but actually really small).

Aside from that in Italy there is \textit{nothing} [\dots]. 

\textit{There's lack of an adequate culture}: when they started digitizing in Italy they started from historic bibliographic catalogs. 
There were beautiful bibliographic cards, of course, handwritten and from the XVII-XVIII century; but definitely not very attractive to the general audience.
Others nations are much smaller and culturally poorer [than Italy], such as Norway, are far ahead of us. It is a matter of approach, not just resources.
\end{quotation}

Recent news tell that the Italian Government has already subscribed a partnership with Google 
for the digitization of over a million books and documents in the well-known (and controversial) \texttt{Google Books} project. 
It is the opinion of the researcher that, although it is still too early to evaluate outcomes and results of the mentioned settlement, Italy has so far lost several
opportunities to innovate his approach to cultural preservation and access, and that much is to be done to reach the standards in these area of other European countries as 
France or Germany. Unfortunately, there is little hope that this will be done in the following months, given no sign at all of a change of mentality in both the academy and 
the government. 

\section{Wikis is for amateurs, not scholars}
The third research question, asking if a wiki could be suitable as the framework for collaboratory digital libraries, had to unexpected outcomes. 
In fact, the question had to different answers by two defined communities. 
Data gathered from scholars clearly suggest that wikis are to basic systems for scholar projects, and even if flexibility and focus on collaboration are considered as 
important features, lack of other more technical features (i.e. metadata standard, protocols, etc.) make them unavailable for this advanced community of practice. 

On the other hand, although proper data collection could not be applied for amateurs, some data suggest that wikis are actually suitable for amateurs community of practice, 
especially regarding digital libraries. 
Wikipedia is a self-explaining example, when Wikisource is a dedicated digital library wiki which is increasing his community day by day, reaching an ever 
increasing visibility worldwide. In Italy, the Liber Liber project decided an important shift of infrastructure, moving on a wiki system.
Interviewee \texttt{I2}, was asked to explain such a decision:
\begin{quotation}
Firstly, to provide [the community] a more efficient instrument for collaborative work than before: [the previous system was in fact] based on a mailing list.
The editorial staff used to create the content and subsequently send it to an HTML expert, who had to transfer it on the Web.
Though, this created bottlenecks that were unsustainable, given the number of volunteers....
\end{quotation}

Thus, wiki do serve communities because their enhancing of collaboration and enthusiasm. They are very efficient in smoothing workflow and make it faster 
(\textquotedblleft wiki\textquotedblright in Hawaiian means \textit{quick}). Wikis do work very well in large communities because they eliminate bottlenecks and allow all users to work without hierarchy restrictions. 
Other data suggest that these amateurs communities do have less limits and expectations.
than scholar communities, and wiki perfectly fit their purposes. 

\section{Solving the Authorship problem}
Evidently, authorship and collaboration are two faces of the same issue. 
Solving authorship related problem would foster collaboration, and viceversa. 

\texttt{Chapter 4} extensively provided a picture of issues and sub-issues of collaboration related to authorship, at many different levels (cultural, institutional, 
political, technical). Thus, many improvements needs to be pursuited at the same levels. 
Issues were divided in sub-issues as follows:
\begin{itemize}
 \item \textit{myth of the lonely scholar}
 \item interpretation
 \item attribution
 \item intellectual property
\end{itemize}

In fact, the great value attributed to the interpretation often make collaboration problematic. 
Collaborative editing, intended as the strongest form of collaboration in online projects, demands convergence of opinions and consensus. 
Variations, opinions, different interpretations should be accepted as well.
Thus, further study and development is needed to make softwares and collaborative systems adequate for Humanities scholar needs. 
For example, new technical features are needed in wiki and wiki-like softwares to host different variations, or to allow less strict forms of collaboration. 
Collaboratories need frameworks which support different complexities and forms of online collaboration and communication.
 
Regarding institutional and political issues, some advice were given directly by interviewees.
\texttt{I3} suggested the creation of institutions for support and development of e-science and e-research projects.  
\begin{quotation}
The issue is providing a institutional framework which will support [these projects]: if there was a national institution for e-science or e-literature, for example, 
even with limited fundings, that would be the best location for experiments and test. 
\end{quotation}
These institution would act as landmark for comunities of practice, who are nowadays alone and disorganized. Coordination would certainly be helpful.

Moreover, political actions could be pursuited.
Politically, as previously mentioned, an important goal could be to make digital publishing evaluable in tenure and scholarship competitions. 
This could be a concrete help for scholars and researchers and a boost for those who want to exploit digital environment for research in Humanities. 
 
Technically, importance of logs, history and contributes' traceability was confirmed by several participants. 
\texttt{I1} highlighted that, even if these tools are present right now, they are too basic and need not only to be improved technically, but also a deeper
reflection is needed to give the right importance to these issues, truly crucial in Humanities:
\begin{quotation}
I wanted to emphasize the importance of this [authorship matter].
[\dots] This traceability demands to be also theoretically emphasized, because in crucial, in philology.  
\end{quotation}


\section{Collaboratory Digital Library model}
In \texttt{Chapter 4} a model for a Collaboratory Digital Library (CDLM) has been suggested. 
It acts as a sum of the outcomes of the present research, integrating them in a draft, yet constructive proposal. 
The idea came directly form interviewee \texttt{I4}:
\begin{quotation}
The first image I would suggest of a collaborative digital library is an interface with several tabs, with the text, the quotations, the critical literature, the references, 
the didactic uses \dots
%La prima immagine che io avrei di una biblioteca digitale collaborativa è una cosa con diverse linguette, con il testo, le citazioni, la critica, i riferimenti, gli usi scolastici... 
I guess these are the layers where it could be interesting working on. 
%Immagino siano questi gli usi su cui possa essere più interessante lavorare. 
\end{quotation}

The CDLM is structured in \textit{layers}, which are divided per tasks, which are also discriminated by their level of collaboration.
Task suggeested by idata gathered were organized as follows:
\begin{itemize}
 \item Image: the image of a text is intended to be the level 0 of our digital library. All the further philology, ecdotic and librarian work is conducted upon that.
 \item Transcription: Scholars collaboratively transcribe the image of the text, maybe aided by OCR softwares.
 \begin{itemize}
   \item Variations: in this layer collaborative editing must admit (methodologically and technologically) variations and different interpretations of the text.  
 \end{itemize}
 \item Mark up: several mark-up languages (i.e. TEI, XML) can be applied on a different layer, utilizing \textit{stand off} mark-up. 
 \item Hyperlink: another possible layer can be the hyperlink layer, in which exploit the other dimensions of the text within the digital environment. 
 It can be used to highlight \textit{intertestuality}.
 \item Annotation: annotation can be collaborative or not. This layer allows both collaborative editing of notes and private notes. 
\end{itemize}

The first tasks are more objective and focused on consensus: in which thus collaborative editing (with some exceptions) is more useful. 
They are in fact tasks operated \textit{on} texts, following \texttt{I4}:
\begin{quotation}
There is the collaboration \textit{in establishing a specific text}, which it does not exist yet: it is particular, there are some specific issues. [\dots]
On the other hand, [there is the collaboration] \textit{around} a text, which it does exist [\dots] 
Around that text, which collaborative tools could be provided? [We could] gather critic texts, different interpretations, quotations, different uses of that same text
in different contexts (maybe academic or didactic).
\end{quotation}

The next level of collaboration is \textit{around} texts, maybe providing a critic literature framework for researchers, or collecting shared annotations and comments. 
In the CDLM, these tasks has been represented as higher levels, being less objective and 
more influenced by personal interpretations and opinions. Which means that are tasks less suited for hard collaboration, or collaborative editing. 
In this case, the collaboration shift on communitcation, with the difference previously mentioned: from \textit{collaboration} to \textit{social}. 

%\subsection{Open source and laboratories}
Such a model should be implemented in open source, allowing people to use, modify, and customize the software and, what is more, to create and modify their own tools 
for research. This study wanted to emphasize the importance of freedom of reuse and remix of tools: data suggest that such a open and free approach foster collaboration, 
interoperability and innovation. To be real collaboratories the projects have to allow participants a certain degree of freedom, also in modifyng and adapting the environment 
to the needs of the community. 
Huge collaborative projects as Wikipedia showed that empowering users help projects adapt and evolute faster, making them highly flexible and scalable.
Much smaller projects, as a collaboratory digital library, would have no problem in applying the same principles within a much more controlled and homogeneus context. 

In the end, the present research gathered data from a restricted yet significative sample of Digital Humanities scholars, to investigate their towards collaboration
and collaborative e-research projects. 
The CDLM is here presented as a proposal, summerizing different outcomes of the study: it is hoped that it will be an helpful draft for further discussions and research. 

%\end{document}
