University College Cork has launched an initiative which will give academics and the public an opportunity, using the Internet, to explore valuable research work across various disciplines within the humanities. The idea, says Prof Keith Sidwell, who heads the classics department, was to bring together nine projects from various departments in the humanities area and provide a database that would become a powerful interdisciplinary tool.
The participating departments include ancient classics; archeology; Irish folklore: early and medieval Irish; geography and history, as well as the Irish Centre for Migration Studies. Funding of £313,300 has been received from the Higher Education Authority under the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions.
"The projects are in different fields with different goals. Our aim is to achieve a synergy between the departments so that researchers in one area will find cross-references leading them to another. For instance, if you want to check an Irish name, the database will give the concentrations of that name across the State but also every other reference to it contained in the information pool.
"This is the first initiative of its kind in an Irish college," Prof Sidwell adds.
The overall project is called Documents of Ireland and at the launch recently, Dr Don Thornhill, chairman of the Higher Education Authority, predicted that it would greatly enhance accessibility to primary materials, allowing for new methods of both postgraduate and post-doctorate research, helping to ensure the preservation of Ireland's cultural heritage in new media formats.
Prof Sidwell says the intention was to make access to all the documents as wide as possible. While the project would be of primary interest to academics, interested amateurs would be able to avail of the high-tech approach to the humanities, he adds. The project will take three years to complete. In the meantime, the home page address at which to view work to date is doi.ucc.ie/
The South West Regional Authority, based at Ballincollig, Co Cork, has also launched a database project called TITAN, which has basically the same aims. Up to now, if you wanted to process a planning application, the bureaucracy involved often meant visiting several different local authority departments to elicit the required information and prepare the necessary documents. The TITAN EU-funded scheme hopes to change that.
By visiting the database address at www.titan.ie planning applicants will be able to access all the relevant information needed to complete the application form, such as local authority guidelines, construction rules in the area, etc, thereby skirting around what can often be a tedious procedure.
While this is a huge step forward, making a full on-line planning application is not possible just yet, but will be soon, according to Mr John McAleer, director of the South West Regional Authority. Within six months, it is hoped TITAN will allow people to process items such as car insurance and service charges from their desk-top computers. It is, says Mr McAleer, a sea change in the way local authorities do business with the public. TITAN is one of 11 EU projects and the first of its kind in Ireland.