May 2007 issue of Cyberinfrastructure Technology Watch Quarterly

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an article about a new report from the American Council of Learned Societies about changes need in the digital infrastructure that supports the humanities and social sciences. In addition to talking about infrastructure and digitized resources, one thing that struck me was the change to a more collaborative model. One quote from the article: "The humanities are very much the culture of the solitary scholar," Mr. Wells said. "And yet it is very clear that the future is collaborative, and technology is not only an enabling factor in that collaboration, but it's also driving the users and consumers of information to a more collaborative understanding. I think teenagers understand that intuitively -- the social spaces of the Internet are places where young people are most drawn and most attracted," he added. "The idea that scholarship is about one person working in the isolation of an office or a library, producing some inspired new interpretation of information, seems very remote from what a lot of young people see as relevant today."