Claus Huitfeldt, director of The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, took Arne's place for a temporary period from February until August 1995. In his comparatively short term of office as leader of the Centre, Claus initiated a European cooperation between libraries and archives in Austria, Sweden and England, a cooperation which is still in the consolidation stage but which has got off to a good start. Under Claus' leadership, the Centre also became involved in a cooperative initiative called The Norwegian Infrastructure for Language Technology (NIFST). This cooperative effort, involving milieux in Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen, gives the Centre a key role in a national emphasis on language technology, adding a new dimension to the Centre's contact net and strengthening the Centre's competence in the area of electronic presentation of large bodies of text.
The international status the Centre has established for itself in the area of computing in the humanities was also reinforced in 1995 by the choice of The Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (NCCH) as local organiser for the annual conference of the Association for Linguistic and Literary Computing (ALLC) and the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH). By the end of 1995 contributions to the conference had been submitted from all over the world, thus placing NCCH on the world map even before the conference has taken place.
As already mentioned, the activities of the Centre consist of both old and new, and all its previous directors, Jostein Hauge, Arne Svindland and Claus Huitfeldt, have left their mark on one or more of the activities going on here. Those who carry out these activities and who have developed the Centre's competence to its current level are its reliable staff of consultants and administrative employees.
Together with researchers and research fellows from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bergen, who use the Centre's resources and competence, they provide a solid core for the Computing Centre's areas of specialisation and define the Centre as a research and development centre for the humanities.
Lars G. Johnsen
Director
Consultative Board
- Professor Helge Dyvik, Chairman
- Professor Ståle Dyrvik, Deputy Chairman
- Director Ingvild Øye
- Professor Harald Jørgensen
- Professor Inger Moen
- Director Arne S. Svindland, Secretary (meeting 1/95)
- Director Claus Huitfeldt, Secretary (meeting 2/95)
- Staff representative, Senior Computing Officer, Knut Hofland.
Personnel
- Director Arne S. Svindland (to 15.2.)
- Director Claus Huitfeldt (from 15.2.-20.8.)
- Director Lars G. Johnsen (from 21.8.)
Permanently employed:
- Secretary Edle Burgess
- Engineer Anders Frihagen (from 1.4. 50% position)
- Senior Computing Officer Knut Hofland
- Executive Officer Anne Lindebjerg
- Senior Computing Officer Espen S. Ore (temporary director WAB - 15.2.-20.8.)
- Senior Computing Officer Øystein Reigem (50% employment)
- Executive Officer Torill Revheim
- Senior Computing Officer Per Vestbøstad
Contract Personnel:
- Lecturer Ana Beatriz Chiquito, Dept. of Spanish, UoB
- Clerk Felix J. Edirmanasingham (from 16.3.)
- Executive Officer Anne Haavaldsen (2 months)
- Civil Worker Paul H. Jacobsen (from 20.12.94)
- Clerk Patricia Nordbø (until 31.8.)
- Senior Computing Officer Sjur N. Moshagen (from 17.7.)
- Professor Steven Lerman, MIT, Boston (Prof. II UoB)
- Lecturer Signe Marie Sanne, Dept. of Italian, UoB.
- Illustrator Jorge Salgado (until 15.10)
- Professor Koenraad de Smedt, UoB (Forsker II from 1.2.95)
- Senior Computing Officer Sigmund Tveit (until 31.8.)
Others
- Research scholar Martha Thunes, Dept. of Linguistics and Comparative Literature, UoB
- Ph.Dr. Emil Samol, University of Transport and Communications, Dept. of Foreign Languages Zilina, Slovakia
ACCOUNTS 1995
In 1995 NCCH received funding from three sources:
- NRC (Norwegian Research Council) basic grant and transitional contribution
- UoB: project grants
- External commissions (including project grants from NRC).
NRC, basic grant 2.110.000University of Bergen 1.206.525Commissions 1.156.746Total income 4.473.271Transferred from 1994 697.054Disposable funds 5.170.325
Salaries 3.218.783Operations 969.441Technical equipment 535.350Total expenses 4.723.574Transferred to 1996 446.751Disposable funds 5.170.325
EDP Operations 1995
NCCH's equipment pool consists of a Novell file server with 21 GB disc storage and a DAT backup unit, a Sun IPX Unix machine with 3.5 GB disc storage and an Exabyte Video-8 backup unit, PCs with 386, 486 and Pentium processors and Macintoshes with 680X0 and Power processors. In addition we have both paper and film scanners, various laser printers and units for digitising sound and video. We have equipment to produce CD-ROMs (incl. sound format), for both Mac and PC. NCCH has an LCD overhead screen for both colour and black-and-white. We are linked to UoB-net/Internet via a CISCO router and 10 Mbit Ethernet. NCCH also has equipment for contract personnel and visiting researchers. New equipment is distributed according to need.
During 1995 we have continued the replacement of older equipment with Pentium PCs and 2 PowerPC Macintoshes. Specific purchases in 1995 include a portable PC with colour screen. To achieve best possible results from our new LCD overhead screen we have purchased a strong overhead projector. Software expenses have primarily gone to the upgrading of existing software and the purchasing of more licences. We have bought Adobe Acrobat and Framemaker/SGML software.
Electronic Network Services
NCCH has regular operation on several World Wide Web (WWW) servers, one Unix, one Mac and one PC. Most information has been transferred to WWW, but it is still possible to retrieve information via electronic mail, FTP or Gopher. Our available material comprises approx. 600MB, of which about 85% consists of archived messages from important distribution lists in the field of computing in the humanities. Our servers are included in worldwide indices and overviews, and at least one file per minute is retrieved from our servers.
In 1995 a Windows Web-server to run TACTWeb was initiated, with links from Internet to ordinary TACT texts databases.
With this, a substantial amount of our Norwegian text material, such as the Ibsen texts and our newspaper material, is searchable via the Web. The COLT project with UoB/NCCH uses TACTWeb for searching in corpora (from both PC and Mac).
In 1995 a database with all rune inscriptions from the Bryggen excavations in Bergen was made available via WWW. More than 3000 entries to the database from machines outside UoB were registered in 1995.
Our homepage was re-edited in 1995 and references to humanities resources have been reorganised and extended.
Information regarding the ALLC/ACH Conference in 1996 was made accessible via Internet, with pictures of the University of Bergen, Bergen City, and further references to information about the university, Bergen and Norway.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
NCCH worked on 7 research projects in 1995.
ECUT Educational Computing UTdanningsinformatikk
In cooperation with the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI), MIT, the project has worked with the design and development of AthenaMuse 2 (AM2) and has had sole responsibility for AM2's Macintosh version.
AM2 is a platform-independent multimedia distributed system for the construction of teaching, research and communication programs on individual work stations or networks. The system is Unix, PC and Macintosh compatible. In cooperation with the Department of Spanish at the University of Bergen, the rights to the Argentinean film "Sur" have been acquired and the film is now being prepared for an interactive research and teaching application.
AM2.1 version was released in summer 1995.
University of Bergen.
Ana Beatriz Chiquito (project leader), Sigmund Tveit, Jorge Salgado, (HD) and Ana Maria Jaramillo, Nina Galvin (MIT).
15.3.1992 - 30.06.95
CONSULTANT SERVICES
NCCH's computer consultants are continuously requested to assist humanities institutions and individuals in the use of information technology. This assistance concerns choice and use of equipment and software, as well as information on network services and research milieux in Norway and abroad.
For many years NCCH has maintained a special service for members of the Association of Norwegian Museums of Art and Social History (jf. MUSVED). The database programs developed at NCCH for the registration of photographs and objects are now installed at nearly 150 museums and archives throughout Norway. In 1995 5-6 courses were given for new users. Users also receive extensive support and assistance.
INFORMATION
NCCH still has the practical and technical responsibility for the ICAME Journal, of which one issue was published in 1995 (No. 19, 174 pages). Editor is Prof. Stig Johansson, Institute for British and American Studies, University of Oslo.
In the years to come the Centre will concentrate its information services on the use of electronic networks. In 1995 we administered two distribution lists: the ICAME/Corpora List (1050 members) and the HUM-EDB List (140 members). The latter includes a conference list. The Centre is also responsible for the Nordic Linguistic Bulletin (NLB), which has a monthly edition in electronic form (80 members) and a quarterly edition in print (150 subscribers).
In the series of reports published by NCCH, a total of 68 publications have been issued so far.
The following reports were published in 1995:
COMPUTER ARCHIVES
ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern English) The ICAME material consists of five major and several minor corpora of machine-readable English texts. 68 orders and a total of 43 CD-ROMs were sold during 1995 to 20 different countries.
URL http://www.uib.no/whatis.html
NOTA (The Norwegian Computer Archive) The material consists of machine-readable novels and newspapers as well as word lists. Part of this material has been distributed to Norwegian institutions for use in research and teaching.
SEMINARS, CONFERENCES, AND OTHER ACTIVITIES
The NCCH seminar series is a permanent seminar series which takes up themes relevant to the ongoing research at the Centre. Speakers are members of staff and invited researchers from Norway and abroad. The seminar series includes "mini-seminars" lasting two days, with international seminar leaders taking up central themes.
The Centre organised a two-day seminar in text corpora in spring 1995 with speakers from UoB, Belgium and England. We also arranged a two-day World Wide Web seminar which provided an overview of resources (in particular in the humanities) available via WWW. In addition, a follow-up course in Athena-Muse2 (a network-oriented, multimedia author language for creating applications in Unix, Macintosh and Windows) was given by Prof. Steven Lerman from the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Professor II UiB) and Lecturer Ana Beatriz Chiquito. The Centre's staff contributed with a total of 6 seminars in the spring seminar series. In autumn 1995 six staff members held a range of courses in the use of Netscape, News FTP, HTML tools and text encoding, the database system FileMakerPro, WWW and Windows, mail systems Pegasus and Eudora, Scanning with OmniPage and PhotoShop for pictures, slides and video.
The Centre had a guest researcher from Slovakia at the Centre 1994/95. In the future we will continue to receive guest researchers - from Norway and abroad - who will be based at the Centre for shorter or longer periods.
Members of staff at the Centre have taken part in 18 conferences and seminars, in Norway and abroad, giving in all 7 papers and several demonstrations.
Knut Hofland: "A program for aligning English and Norwegian Sentences" Foredrag på ALLC/ACH konferansen 1995 i Santa Barbara.
Knut Hofland: "Elektroniske tekster HD/NOTA". Foredrag ved Norsk Språkråds konferanse Elektroniske hjelpemidler i språknemdenes arbeid, Oslo.
Espen S. Ore & Anne Haavaldsen: "Computerizing the Runic Inscriptions at Bergen Museum" Foredrag på Runesymposium i Göttingen.
Espen S. Ore: "Tekst og tegnkoding." Foredrag på Nettverksmøte for norrøn filologi, Bergen.
Øystein Reigem: "WinRegimus - en statusrapport fra Humanistisk datasenter". Foredrag og demo på Landskonferansen '95, Konferanse for fylkes-/regionsansvarlige fotobevaringsinstitusjoner, Gran.
Per Vestbøstad: "One common Database System for 150 small Social History Museums". Foredrag og demo på ICOM '95, Museum Computer Networks Conference, San Diego.