What is a VRE?

A VRE [Virtual Research Environment] is a set of online tools, systems and processes interoperating to facilitate or enhance the research process within and without institutional boundaries. The purpose of a VRE is to provide researchers with the tools and services they need to do research of any type as efficiently and effectively as possible. This means VREs will help individual researchers manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in doing research. In addition [VREs] will facilitate collaboration among communities of researchers, often across disciplinary and national boundaries.

Definition offered by the OST e-Infrastructure Working Group.

In the humanities, VREs have the potential to facilitate better collaboration between geographically dispersed scholars. They also have the potential to add value to existing electronic resources. In some ways VREs simply bring together or make easier processes in which most researchers are already engaged. Researchers can use VREs to foster discussion and the interchange of ideas through a variety of electronic means; to bring people together from across the globe to pool expertise; enable access to on-line resources and link datasets together. VREs will provide the space in which such collaborative work can take place and the tools through which it may be conducted. At its best, a VRE might also qualitatively transform the collaborative research experience, not just in terms of the speed or frequency of enabling contact and facilitating discussion, but also by initiating and fostering partnerships that would otherwise not occur or that would be very difficult or costly to arrange.

What can a VRE do that conventional research methods don't do?

By combining a number of different IT developments the VRE can

1. Enable free video and audio access across the web. The means that it is now possible to have frequent conversations with students and faculty both in other institutions in the UK and across the world. This facilitates:
   1. regular meetings between a small or even a large network of academics to pursue a research agenda;
   2. putting postgraduate researchers in touch with one another (overcoming a sense of isolation and contributing to sense of a research community) and with expert faculty, thereby enhancing their research degree experience;
   3. virtual seminars, either for reading groups or for teaching (across institutions, for example);
2. Offer a web-based framework in which collaborative research might take place such as:
   1. Framework within which documents can be co-edited and shared;
   2. a space in which postgraduates might routinely work, either in private or to share their ideas;
   3. a tool which links the researcher to all the on-line resources and tools s/he needs to pursue a subject, even (and perhaps especially) when this is interdisciplinary or draws on a number of such resources;
   4. a forum for the publication and dissemination of collaborative work (including student research theses or work in progress);
   5. the sharing of visual and written data.
   6. a space in which commentaries and data useful to other researchers might be deposited, shared;
   7. electronic discussion pages to pursue written conversations;
   8. an archive of video-streams of meetings, interviews, moving or still images.
3. By combining A and B, the result can transform collaborative research.

The VRE for the History of Political Discourse, 1500-1800 is using two key technologies: Access Grid provides video-conferencing over the web along with a number of tools for document sharing. Sakai is a web-based portal framework providing a space for sharing documents and for using a number of communication tools. Both technologies are currently the focus of considerable development efforts to which the project is contributing.

What is the academic programme for the VRE for the History of Political Discourse, 1500-1800?

There are several types of activity undertaken by the VRE, which is designed not just for historians but anyone interested in early modern texts and contexts. The extent of partner participation can vary from full collaboration in all activities to the occasional discussion. The range of activities includes:

• A jointly taught MA in the History of Political Discourse, 1550-1800. There are two core units, and seminars on the historiography and methodology of political discourse.
• A VReading group. This will meet regularly via AG to discuss primary sources, secondary material and methodological issues. It will also host debates and interviews. Details of the current MA programme can also be found on our website.
• A framework for online discussion and liaison between scholars, from postgraduate to faculty, in the UK and elsewhere, together with access to on-line resources that will aid research.

In the near-future it is hoped that there will also be facilities as part of the VRE to create an archive/resource containing:

• videostreams of interviews and debates
• annotations, editions, comments and other material relating to EEBO and ECCO titles
• MA materials and dissertaions, work in progress, discussion documents
• lists of researchers and their interests.

What on-line resources does my institution need to provide?

The basic requirement will be access to Early English Books Online and Eighteenth Century Collections Online. It would be highly desirable to have access to the online Dictionary of National Biography and other relevant subscription sites. The VRE will not in itself give access to these subscription-based resources, but instead seek to add value to them.