School of Information Sciences

Downie discusses digital humanities research at CODH seminar in Japan

Stephen Downie
J. Stephen Downie, Professor, Executive Associate Dean, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the HathiTrust Research Center

J. Stephen Downie, professor and associate dean for research, participated in the Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH) seminar, "Big Data and Digital Humanities," on January 23 at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan.

Started in April 2016, the CODH will be formally established as a center in April 2017. It involves faculty from the National Institute of Informatics and The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, both in Japan, who collaborate with computer scientists and humanities scholars around the globe. CODH promotes research and development to improve access to humanities data, using the concept of open science along with the latest technology in informatics and statistics.

Downie gave the presentation, "Digital humanities using both closed and open data: Use cases from the HathiTrust Research Center":

The HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) contains 14.7 million volumes (over 5 billion pages). Unfortunately, roughly 9 million HTDL volumes are under copyright restrictions and cannot be shared with users. To overcome this problem, the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) is creating a set of "non-consumptive research" services to make these closed materials more open and thus useful to scholars. This talk introduces such non-consumptives services as "Data Capsules," "Extracted Features" and the "Bookworm + HathiTrust" tool. Each HTRC service is designed to open new points of access to otherwise closed data while still respecting all copyright limitations.

Downie is codirector of HTRC, a partnership between Indiana University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the HathiTrust. Established in 2011, HTRC develops cutting-edge software tools and cyberinfrastructure to enable advanced computational access to the growing digital record of human knowledge. 

"We are very excited about the official establishment of the Center for Open Data in the Humanities in Tokyo and the impact it will have on research in the digital humanities. I look forward to future collaborations between the CODH, HTRC, and the iSchool,” Downie said.

Tags:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers present at CSCW 2025

Several faculty, students, and recent grads will present their research at the 28th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2025), which will be held October 18–22 in Bergen, Norway. The online portion of the conference will be held on October 10. 

Downie appointed executive associate dean

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Professor J. Stephen Downie has been appointed executive associate dean. In this role, he will work closely with Interim Dean Emily Knox to realize the iSchool's strategic goals and objectives. He also will provide leadership for the internal administration of the School, coordinate the work of associate deans and assigned staff, and facilitate faculty affairs.

Stephen Downie

Join the iSchool at the 2025 ALISE annual conference

Join iSchool faculty, staff, and students for the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), which will take place from October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri. The theme of the 2025 conference is "Decolonising Pedagogies: Agency, Identity, Practices."

AISLE awards to be presented to alumni, adjunct lecturer

Carolyn Kinsella (MSLIS '03), Beverly Frett (MSLIS '04), and Adjunct Lecturer Karen Egan have been selected to receive awards from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE). They will be honored at an awards banquet during the AISLE Annual Conference, which will be held from October 5–7 in Champaign, Illinois.

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Fax: (217) 244-3302

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top