The SURF Foundation has granted a subsidy to IISH and the Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS) in support of their joint project 'Hublab 2', a project directing the field of virtual research environments by social and economic historians.
In view of the development of hubs - web based data collections -, the IISH facilitates 'collaboratories': on line research environments envisaging the creation and management of data collections and subsequent research into these. In the past year, IISH experimented with the Open Source program 'Liferay', a platform used by the international Working Group on Labour Relations 1500-2000 and others.
The SURF Foundation develops ICT services for the purposes of educational and research institutions and surveys the best ways to support collaboratories. To qualify for the grant, the joint project of IISH and VKS was submitted to the SURF Share Call for tender 2008, which is geared to collaboratories. The project will cover the year 2009.
The aim of the project is twofold. On the one hand, an analysis will be made (by VKS staff member Stefan Dormans) of the technical and communicational aspects of IISH collaboratories in practice. On the other hand, the Digital Projects department of the IISH will further enhance the Liferay environment by implementing email and integrating it with the IISH search platform. IISH and VKS staff member Jan Kok will lead the project.