Project Update - September 2007

Since April we have been working hard on developing the existing workspace ensuring high quality image viewing and annotation capabilities, developing and extending existing open source software. Currently we are setting up a new server and integrating the workspace into a more robust framework. The project is working on an iterative development cycle, which started with user testing and requirements gathering and is now in a phase of intensive development. We hope to have an early version of the VRE available for demonstration at the end of October and would be delighted to hear from anyone who would be interested in seeing the system, or who has ideas as to how the workspace might be extended to suit their research needs.

During August and September the project team went to a number of conferences and seminars to promote our work and to gather further requirements. The XXV International Congress of Papyrology in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the XIII International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in Oxford were particularly interesting and useful in providing us with further requirements for the current iteration of the workspace. As part of the remit of the project is to establish ways in which researchers can cross-search a range of relevant databases and datasets within the workspace, these meetings allowed us to further our discussions with the Heildelberg Papyrological Resource and the Duke Databank. This will help us in our long term aim of developing an environment which would eventually incorporate databases from across the humanities disciplines. The project also attended the UK eScience All Hands Meeting in Nottingham and were delighted to see various humanities projects represented. The project took part in an interesting VRE panel session; demonstrated the current image viewing and annotation capability of the workspace and presented a project poster.