Hot Source! Targeted Digital Skills Development, from Artefact to Analytics

“热来源!“有针对性的数字技能发展，从人工到分析”将为西南地区的区域和国家数字技能培训中心奠定基础，该中心完全满足艺术与人文（A&H）研究人员和相关部门的职业要求。该试点项目是在AHRC于2021年设立的iDAH计划的背景下进行的，并致力于建立三到五个国家中心，以开发和嵌入整个艺术和人文用户社区的数字工具和方法的使用。虽然获得数字技能的正式和非正式机会已经存在多年，但很明显，结构性问题，包括英国教育中stem和HASS学科的持续渠道化，以及学术职业的许多竞争需求，大大降低了对数字技能的吸收。因此，该计划的成功将需要与A&H研究人员进行实质性的接触，以确定能够提供最大时间和财务投资回报的技能和交付模式。如果数字技能在A&H研究人员中变得足够普遍，从而被理解为21世纪素养的核心组成部分，而不是一个利基专业，这将是至关重要的。埃克塞特大学自2017年斥资120万英镑创建数字人文实验室以来，一直是将数字方法应用于人文科学研究的国际领导者。基于这一投资以及我们为A&H研究人员和学生开发和提供技能培训的丰富经验，该项目的目标是：1。澄清西南地区A&H研究人员的需求情况。特别是，我们将确定A&H研究人员认为哪些技能对他们的工作最重要，以及哪种交付形式最能与学术生涯的复杂需求相结合。2. 开发和提供四门新的培训课程，作为侧重于主要原始资料数字化和分析的更广泛计划的核心，同时也是一种试验和改进各种交付模式的机制。这些课程将涵盖一系列的专业水平，并与广泛的学科相关。其中两个将侧重于从模拟材料中生成数字文本的方法，包括捕获和呈现人类可读的物理资源的2D、2.5D和/或3D可视化，以及使用基于OCR和htr的方法从图像中提取文本。另外两个将允许研究人员增强对数字文本的使用，包括数据集创建、清理和管理问题，并向参与者介绍使用Python对文本进行编程分析。与课程参与者密切合作，建立更广泛的技能计划，并在西南地区建立具有数字能力的A&H研究从业者社区。这将包括那些对财经、文化部门和公众的A&H研究有专业或个人兴趣的人。试点的好处将扩展到多个利益相关者群体。最直接的是，它将为80名研究人员提供关键的数字技能，这将扩大他们在处理第一手资料时的能力。我们将与该网络合作，在大学和其他研究机构的实践中促进更广泛的变化。反过来，这些机构将受益于埃克塞特大学在专业知识和设施方面的重大预先投资，以提供否则可能负担不起的培训。这将使整个西南地区的艺术与人文学科部门受益于对方法的不断提高的认识和能力，这些方法使他们能够充分利用21世纪艺术与人文学科研究人员可用的不断扩展的数字资源和工具。

'Hot Source! Targeted Digital Skills Development, from Artefact to Analytics' will lay the groundwork for a regional and national centre for digital skills training in the Southwest that fully meets the occupational requirements of Arts & Humanities (A&H) researchers and associated sectors. This pilot project takes place in the context of the iDAH programme, set up by the AHRC in 2021, and committed to establishing three to five national centres to develop and embed the use of digital tools and methods across the arts and humanities user community. While formal and informal opportunities to acquire digital skills have been available for many years, it is clear that structural issues, including the persistent canalization of STEMM and HASS disciplines within UK education, and the many competing demands of academic careers, have significantly reduced uptake. The success of the programme will consequently require substantive engagement with A&H researchers to determine both the skills and delivery modes that will provide the maximum return on time and financial investment. This will be essential if digital skills are to become sufficiently common among A&H researchers for them to be understood as a core component of 21st century literacy, rather than a niche specialism. The University of Exeter has a been an international leader in applying digital methods to A&H research since the creation of its £1.2M Digital Humanities Lab in 2017. Building on this investment and our extensive experience of developing and delivering skills training to A&H researchers and students, the project's objectives are to: 1. Clarify the requirements landscape for A&H researchers in the Southwest. In particular we will establish which skills A&H researchers see as most essential for their work, and what kinds of delivery formats can best be integrated with the complex demands of an academic career. 2. Develop and deliver four new training courses as both the core of a wider programme focussed on the digitization and analysis of primary source materials, but also a mechanism for trialling and refining varying modes of delivery. These courses will span a range of levels of expertise and have relevance to a broad array of disciplines. Two of them will focus on methods for producing digital texts from analogue materials, including capturing and presenting human-readable 2D, 2.5D and/or 3D visualizations of physical resources and extracting text from images using OCR and HTR-based approaches. The other two will allow researchers to make enhanced use of digital texts, including issues of dataset creation, cleaning and management and introduce participants to programmatic analysis of texts using Python. 3. Engage closely with course participants in the establishment of a wider skills programme, and a community of digitally-capable A&H research practitioners in the Southwest. This will include those with a professional or personal interest in A&H research in FE, the cultural sector and the general public. The benefits of the pilot will extend to multiple stakeholder groups. Most directly, it will provide 80 researchers with key digital skills that will expand their capabilities when working with primary sources. We will work together with this network to catalyse broader changes in practice across universities and other research organisations. Those institutions in turn will benefit from Exeter's significant prior investment in expertise and facilities to provide training that may be unaffordable to provide otherwise. This will allow Arts & Humanities departments across the broader Southwest to benefit from increasing awareness of, and capability in, methods that allow them to make best use of the ever-expanding array of digital sources and tools available to the 21st century arts & humanities researcher.