Digitally Curating Knowledge Creation: Understanding and Recording the Process of Interpreting Cultural and Historical Artefacts

对古籍文物的解释和重新解释，如罗马木碑(如文多兰达碑)和楔形泥碑是文献学者和历史学家的核心活动。正是对这些纪录片文物的解释行为赋予了它们作为文本和对象的意义，然后可以在学者和更广泛的公众中分享，揭示过去的历史和文化。因此，口译是一种知识创造的行为。创造这种知识是一项复杂且往往艰巨的任务，涉及到精心设计的理由，这些理由受到开发这些知识的背景的强烈影响。例如，将一块被认为可以追溯到公元29年的罗马雕刻碑上的某个字形解释为A，受到了当前对那个时期字母形状的古地理知识的强烈影响；或者，将碑上的一个词解读为牛，受到了这样一个事实的影响，即碑是在一个牛曾经是而且现在仍然以其大小而闻名的地区发现的，因为众所周知，该地区在被认为是写碑的日期前后反抗了牛皮中的税收制度，从而导致一位学者将碑解读为牛的销售记录；一个世纪后，这块石碑被重新解读为一种债务确认，没有提到一头牛。影响同一平板电脑的这些不同读数的变量是与语境相关的；它们包括感知、预期、意图或与文化视角有关，所有这些大多都是隐含的。在这个项目中，我们的目标是促进这些变量的识别和阐述，以便于解释和潜在的修改。当博物馆和图书馆集中精力数字化和管理文物时，也必须解决以数字方式记录与数据相关的知识的问题。通过不仅以数字方式记录知识，而且以数字方式记录知识的创造过程，我们将允许在数据管理之外，对赋予艺术品意义的知识进行管理。这种数字化也满足了追踪知识来源的需要。为此，我将在以前分析古代文献解释如何解体的工作的基础上，建立一个专门支持和记录解释发展的软件组件，特别是我们的目标是使诸如文化视角和意图等显性的隐含变量，从而促进诸如修订解释和制定替代解释的过程。为了实现知识创造的数字化管理，我们将采用一系列横跨以下领域的方法和技术：(1)信息与通信技术和计算机科学，以开发一个基于网络的软件组件，该组件将与其他软件(如人工制品数字化软件)配合使用；(2)论证理论和认识论，以建模解释思维过程；(3)认知科学、社会学和信息学，研究文献文物解释的专家实践；以及(4)经典和东方研究文献奖学金，以根据学术实践设计软件组件。该项目广泛的跨学科和多学科影响，除了它将直接产生的软件部分，还将有助于：(1)使传统上更具科学性的学科与人文学科所面临的问题和挑战类型相适应，(2)在人文学科中信息和传播技术的设计和使用与这些技术对学术实践的影响之间建立一个直接的反馈回路。

Interpretation and re-interpretation of textual artefacts such as Roman wooden tablets (e.g. the Vindolanda tablets) and cuneiform clay tablets are a core activity for documentary scholars and historians. It is the act of interpretation of these documentary artefacts that gives them a meaning both as a text and as an object, one that can then be shared amongst academics and with the wider public, shedding light on a past history and culture. Interpretation is thus an act of knowledge creation. Creating this knowledge is a complex and often arduous task that involves elaborate rationales that are strongly influenced by the context in which they are developed. For example, interpreting a certain glyph on a roman incised tablet thought to be dating from 29 AD as an 'A' is strongly influenced by the current palaeographical knowledge of letter shapes from that period; or reading a word on a tablet as 'ox' is influenced by the fact that the tablet was found in a region where cows were and still are renowned for their size, by the fact that that region is known to have rebelled against a taxation system in ox hides around the date the tablet is thought to have been written, thus leading one scholar to interpret the tablet as a record of a sale of an ox; a century later, the tablet is reinterpreted as a debt acknowledgment, where no mention of an ox is found. The variables that influenced these divergent readings of the same tablet are contextual; they comprise perception, expectations, intentions or have to do with a cultural perspective, all of which are mostly implicit. We aim in this project to facilitate the identification and exposition of such variables to facilitate interpretations and potential revisions.At times when museums and libraries are concentrating on digitizing and curating artefacts, it is crucial to also address the question of digitally recording the knowledge associated with the data. By digitally recording not only the knowledge but also the knowledge creation process, we will allow, beyond data curation, curation of the knowledge that confers a meaning on an artefacts. Such digitization also responds to a need to trace the provenance of knowledge. To that effect, and building on previous work that analyzed how interpretations of ancient documents unravel, I will build a software component dedicated to the support and recording of the development of interpretations, and in particular we aim to make explicit implicit variables such as cultural perspective and intention, thereby facilitating processes such as revision of an interpretation and development of alternate interpretations. In order to enable digital curation of knowledge creation, we will deploy a number of methodologies and techniques spanning: (1) ICT technology and Computer Science to develop a web-based software component that will work with other software such as artefact digitization software, (2) Argumentation Theory and Epistemology, to model the interpretation thought process, (3) Cognitive Sciences, Sociology and Information Studies to study the expert practice of interpretation of documentary artefacts, and naturally (4) documentary scholarship in Classics and Oriental Studies, to design the software component according to the scholarly practice. The vastly inter- and multi-disciplinary reach of this project, beyond the software component that will directly result of it, will also serve: (1) to engage disciplines that are more traditionally scientific with the type of questions and challenges that Humanities scholarship faces, and (2) to establish a direct feedback loop between the design and use of ICT technology in a Humanities discipline and the impact of these technologies on the scholarly practice.