Digging into Data Challenge: Round 2

On March 16, 2011, eight international research funders, including Canada's SSHRC, jointly announced their participation in round two of the Digging into Data Challenge, a grant competition designed to spur cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences.

The Digging into Data Challenge poses the provocative question, "Now that the objects of study for researchers in the humanities and social sciences- including books, survey data, economic data, newspapers, music, and other scholarly and scientific resources- are being digitized on a huge scale, how might advanced computation and data analysis techniques help researchers use these materials to ask new questions and gain new insights into our world?"

The first round of Digging into Data, held in 2009, sparked enormous interest from the international research community and led to eight cutting-edge projects being funded. The 2009 project also led to an increased awareness of how so-called “big data” techniques can be used for humanities and social sciences research.

Canadiana.org is proud to be part of this innovative initiative by providing access to the collections of Early Canadiana Online (ECO) to participating researchers.  ECO collections, which contain digitized newspapers, periodicals and texts published from the time of the first European settlers to the first two decades of the 20th Century, will act as raw data for researchers to mine, analyze and develop new techniques for digital research in the humanities and social sciences.

For more information about the Digging into Data challenge, visit their website: www.diggingintodata.org