ABSTRACT

Many humanities scholars have ventured into digital methods with interesting questions and objectives but the digital results of their projects are often limited and short lived particularly when working with structured data. Very few data tools become part of everyday research or support ongoing knowledge processes as part of an integrated and interdisciplinary knowledge base. Instead they have produced a lack of flexibility, conforming to static forms at odds with the dynamic and changing nature of research and reality, and as a result are limited to mainly reference and indexing roles. In traditional databases, and technologies such as Linked Data, the boundaries and categories of knowledge are biased towards a narrow technological and dualistic worldview. To change this situation, humanities scholars need to address modelling and representation in data, and engage with the design of information systems. The ResearchSpace system, designed at the British Museum, was developed to create new structures and forms, providing a platform that better reflects the thinking, historical context and diversity of knowledge that computer data systems routinely remove. By addressing the issue of traditional data structures ResearchSpace provides a dynamic platform to evolve knowledge and processes without project boundaries, based on embedding logic and meaning in data, rather than imprisoning it within software code.