August 3, 2006

MATRIX cited for excellence in national report

Michigan State University’s MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online has been recognized as a leading national research center for cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences by the American Council of Learned Societies.

In its landmark report, “Our Cultural Commonwealth,” the Societies’ Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences notes that the digitization of the human record has created a need for new sets of tools and techniques for humanists and social scientists alike. MSU and MATRIX are cited as an “exemplary model” of a university research center which fosters interdisciplinary labs and research groups that includes both technical and subject expertise. Other institutions cited are CUNY, George Mason, and Virginia.

“The mission of MATRIX,” according to Director Mark Kornbluh, “is to serve as a catalyst for the emerging fields and disciplines resulting from the integration of the humanities with information technologies.”

MATRIX leads a variety of large federally-funded research projects that infuse computing and information technologies into the humanities and social sciences. For example, the National Gallery of the Spoken Word is creating a fully searchable online database of spoken word collections spanning the 20th century. (See: http://www.historicalvoices.org.) Similarly, the American Quilt Index is building a unified digital collection of quilts for over thirty leading museums and universities for free use by scholars, teachers, and the broader public. (See: http://www.quiltindex.org.)

For a complete list of projects, follow the Projects link from the MATRIX homepage.

The full report by ASLC is available at: http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure.