I. New Lines of Cross-Cultural History in Hypermedia

George Forster, the Enlightenment naturalist, predicted that Cook's voyaging would `strike deep roots and ...long have the most decisive influence on the activity of men.' Today these words seem remarkably prescient. Few events continue to grip the historical imagination of Australasian and Oceanic peoples with such power, while Cook's achievements and the consequences of his voyaging remain subjects of compelling interest to historians of late eighteenth-century European culture and society.

Over the past two decades however, researchers have come to see that earlier scholarship on Cook and contemporary European voyagers neglects the true complexity of the cross-cultural interactions which occurred during these expeditions, and the many subtle ways in which cross-cultural encounters changed patterns of life and thought in both the Indigenous societies of the Pacific and those of metropolitan European . Bernard Smith (1985, 1992) and more recently Anne Salmond (1991, 1997) and Nicholas Thomas (1994, 1997) have been instrumental in this re-assessment of Cook and his contemporaries. Drawing on Smith's pioneering study of how the wealth of visual imagery produced by late eighteenth-century European voyagers shaped European perceptions of Indigenous Australian and Oceanic societies, Salmond and Thomas have written compelling studies of the cross-cultural interactions that occurred during Cook's voyaging. They have shown in particular how the lives of Indigenous peoples and Europeans were changed through the play of complex, fluid and sometimes extremely localised cultural forces.

Research by Salmond and Thomas has further highlighted the conceptual limitations on relying solely on the printed word to explain the actions and likely intentions of Indigenous peoples as recorded by voyagers. The past decade has seen a growing number of books and articles by Indigenous knowledge custodians and historians, many of whom argue that print-based narration traditionally employed by European historians inadequately represents how they understand the past (Flick and Goodall 1998). Within their cultures the past derives much of its meaning and values through the use of oral, visual and kinaesthetic modes of communication. Historians have yet to engage seriously with the implications this has for how they explain histthe history of cross-cultural interaction (Thomas, 1997). Also, as Thomas and Bronwen Douglas have shown, the history of late eighteenth century voyaging has been reconstructed with little consideration of the contemporary meanings and values Europeans gave visual records of Indigenous responses to the presence of voyagers (Thomas 1999, Douglas 1999).

The Endeavour Project aims to resolve these methodological weakness in traditional, print-based modes of historical explanation through critical use of hypermedia. It will produce scholarly digital editions of the journals relating to Cook's first Pacific expedition, and those of the Dolphin voyage, led by Samuel Wallis two years previously, which largely defined Cook's objectives. Visual and audio softwares will be used in the editions to research the intricacies of cross-cultural interaction in ways that strengthen Indigenous interpretations of events, or elucidate the historical significance of visual sources. These hypermedia annotations, commentaries and critical essays will be produced by team members in collaboration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers associated with the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (CCR). This research will draw upon the unparalled holdings of relevant original manuscripts, contemporary printed works and images held by the industry partner, the National Library of Australia (NLA). Importantly, this dimension to the project builds upon substantial research already undertaken by the chief investigator and the industry partner demonstrating the capacity of hypermedia to generate new lines of research into the cross-cultural history of Cook's voyaging (see research plan below).

Reliance upon print-based narration also constrains research into another important though much neglected aspect of late eighteenth-century Pacific voyaging literature. This is the impact of the visual record of the Wallis and Cook expeditions within metropolitan European culture. Images of voyaging and encounter with the Indigenous peoples of Oceania and Australia were avidly collected, examined and admired by different but often overlapping metropolitan communities of curiosi, virtuosi and savants. A thriving popular market for South Sea scenes soon emerged, and images initially engraved for inclusion in published accounts of voyages were widely reproduced for what soon became a large and socially diverse audience Often the internal composition of images changed. This rich visual record also inspired a wealth of poetry, fantasy literature and what in their day were experiments in multimedia, such as the highly popular pantomime of 1785-9, Omai; or, a Trip round the World, which featured dazzling scene designs and costumes by the celebrated painter and stage illusionist, Jacques Phillipe de Loutherbourg. These images were equally influential in the evolution of late eighteenth-century anthropological thought and notions of racial difference during the first half of the nineteenth century (Turnbull, 1998, 1999).

Research into this aspect of the cultural legacy of voyaging requires careful reconstruction of the aims and assumptions prevailing amongst the socially varied audiences amongst whom images of encounter circulated. It requires exploration of how European technologies of visual reproduction, consumer expectations and the social uncertainties of life in the era of Enlightenment and Revolution altered perceptions of the Indigenous `other' in the image (Douglas, 1999). This means comparing and contrasting voyaging images with those in other influential contemporary genres, ranging from scientific illustration to political satire, to ascertain how and why they became inflected by contemporary aesthetics and wider social concerns.

Hypermedia will be critically employed to meet these challenges. Annotations, commentaries and critical essays linked to the project's editions of the Dolphin and Endeavour journals will reconstruct the cultural trajectories of images which had their origins in Wallis's and Cook's encounters with Oceanic and Australian Indigenous peoples. They will employ hypermedia critically, to map significant changes in the internal composition of images and their reception, with a view to disclosing how these images influenced metropolitan European culture and were in turned shaped by the cultural geography in which they circulated.

The significance of this first aim of the project, then, is that it will enages with and seek to resolve what are critical conceptual problems in researching the cross-cultural history of Australia and Oceania. Hypermedia will be used to analyse, compare and contrast Western and Indigenous perspectives on the interaction of Oceanic peoples and European voyagers. The partners in ways which are cross-culturally nuanced, and elucidate the complexities and multiple meanings that late eighteenth century European voyaging and its legacies acquired in both Pacific and European cultural contexts.

II. Developing Scholarly Editing Standards in History for the Digital Age

This project has a second and equally important goal, arising out of changes in patterns of scholarly communication world-wide. Few citizens of the industrialised world remain unaffected by the emergence of a global information economy characterised by commercial and public application of new communication technologies, notably those associated with the internet and the world-wide-web. Australia currently has one of the world's highest levels of growth in information technology per capita. Australian researchers have been quick to adapt technologies such as electronic mail and the web to resolve the problems posed by the steadily worsening economics of conventional scholarly publishing. Peer-reviewed electronic journals, monographs and digital editions of historical and literary works are becoming increasingly common across the spectrum of academic disciplines. Recent major initiatives by the federal government, peak higher education bodies and the Australian research library community have been undertaken on the assumption that within the next decade networked digital media will be a leading mode of disseminating research outcomes (Thompson, 1996). In the humanities and social sciences a growing number of scholars are exploring the potential of hypermedia to generate new lines of research, many of which aim to transcend the conceptual and practical limitations of print. New styles of collaborative research are emerging, involving partnerships between scholars and leading cultural institutions. This project, begun by the National Library of Australia and the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research in 1998, is one such venture.

In history, as in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the shift towards using the web as the medium for publishing historical editions and research outcomes presents many challenges. From the perspective of the historical profession, the most important is the need to develop and implement scholarly editing standards for documents in digital form, whether they are simply electronic transcriptions - or, as will become increasingly possible - incorporate a range of audio-visual media. With the notably exception of library based ventures such as the Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS) of the University of Sydney, much of what has been published to date by way of historical information has been done with little or no concern to encode documents so as to ensure permanent naming, version control, authentication and archiving.

So long as it remains unable to place the same measure of trust in digital historical edition it has traditionally invested in print-based scholarly resources, the Australian historical profession will remain severely limited in how far it can exploit the intellectual opportunities and economic advantages offered by the virtual environment. However, the creation of processes for preparing and delivering historical editions that conform to standards of scholarly editorial excellence poses major conconceptual and technical challenges, which this project will aim to resolve. Digital editions must be designed so as to allow scholars to implement traditional editorial elements, such as transcription policies, annotations and commentary, indices and other editorial devices. The digital medium moreover offers editors new opportunities to create documents with flexible architectures accommodating elements peculiar to the digital environment (for example, interactive visual representation of spatial and/or chronological data). They also offer great scope for periodic enhancements of editions, and the creation of editions that can be published in print, CD-ROM or by various means through the internet from a master copy.

Since late 1998 the partners have undertaken research aimed at identifying feasible models for the production of digital historical editions in flexible digital form. The Chief Investigator has been a leader within the Australian historical profession in establishing models for delivery of research outcomes by the World-Wide Web. NLA regards participating in the development of a scholarly framework for digital editing of historical materials as part of it core mission to maintain and develop comprehensive collections of materials relating to Australia and the Australian people. Consequently, as part of NLA's Digital Service Project - a major initiative designed to exploit digital technologies to enhance preservation and access to its documentary resources - NLA staff have worked with the Chief Investigator and a Research Associate on the development of an SGML Document Type Description for the hypermedia editions of the voyaging journals which form the core of the Endeavour Project.

Should the project gain additional funding, this research program would be upgraded, with a view to developing by 2003 a model software environment providing networked content management and production facilities for digital historical editions, using the hypermedia editions which form the intellectual core of the Endeavour Project as test materials. The environment would use open-source application software and programming languages which are free to educational users. It would be designed to be interoperable with the digital initiatives being undertaken by the NLA and other research libraries. The ultimate goal would be to provide an environment in which researchers located in any part of Australia could easily encode the structure of their documents at the time of composition, and have the ability to check those structurea automatically against specified encoding conventions maintained at a central networked location, such as NLA. This would ensure the integrity, archival stability and hyperlink performance of the editions. The environment would also be designed to facilitate the publication of editions in multiple forms from a single master document.

The value of using the Dolphin and Endeavour journals as test materials in the creation of this environment is that the cross-cultural focus of their annotations and commentaries involve the production of diverse kinds of information in complex hypermedia forms. Through resolving the problems these heterodox kinds of data present for the development of an SGML based document type description and associated data management structures, the project will be able to develop a publication framework that meets the needs of scholarly editors in other fields of historical research, as well as those of scholars preparing editions of Australian literary manuscripts and texts.

 

Research Plan and Methodology

Project Phase one:

As mentioned above, the project builds upon substantial research already undertaken by the chief investigator and the industry partner demonstrating the potential of web-based hypermedia to generate new lines of cross-cultural research into Cook's voyaging, and to enhance NLA's strategic goal of using digital technologies to enhance preservation and acess to its historical collections (NLA, 1999; see also section headed `Skills and Experience' below). In April 1999, after twelve month's collaborative work preparing accurate digital transcripts of Cook's manuscript journal and Hawkesworth's account of the Dolphin and Endeavour voyages, the partners placed on the web a prototype comparative edition of the Endeavour journals of James Cook and Joseph Banks, and the account of the voyage written and published by John Hawkesworth, London man of letters, in 1773. Hawkesworth's account, incidentally, was the major source of European knowledge of the voyage until the end of the nineteenth century, yet incredibly this is the first modern scholarly edition of the work.

The web architecture and intellectual objectives of the prototype were evaluated over six weeks by researchers at CCR and the public as part of a broad bandwidth network trial undertaken by the Australian Capital Territory government and the Optus communications company in the Canberra suburb of Aranda.

This prototype remains on-line for evaluation purposes and in the future may be accessed through the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research's web-site at http://www.anu.edu.au/culture/

While offering only Cook's, Bank's and Hawkeworth's accounts of the Endeavour voyagers' time on Tahiti (April - July 1769), the prototype presented these sources in ways that reveal many subtle and hithero unpercieved differences between the three accounts, together with specimen hypermedia notes and commentaries, illustrating their potential to generate new cross-cultural perspectives on this crucial episode in the history of the Pacific.

On the strength of the trial, the partners aim to complete the edition during the first two years of the project, together with an equally innovative edition of Samuel Wallis's journal of the Dolphin expedition (1766-68). Research and development of historical content will be undertaken by project members. The editions are substantially completed they will be made publically available via NLA's web-server.

During the first phase, the project team work work on the production of an SGML based document type description and related management structures. They will research national and international developments in scholarly text encoding and library issues associated with the preservation and delivert of digital information. This research will be pursued while maintaining links with Australian librarians undertaking relevant related projects, such as SETIS, the Australian Co-Operative Digitisation Project (ACDP), and new digital library initiatives planned by the Committee of Australian University Libraries (CAUL). Project members will also liaise with key international centres of research and development of digital editions of scholarly texts, including MATRIX: Centre for New Technologies in the Humanities at Michigan State University (where they will be supervised by Professor Mark Kornbluh and Professor Michael Siedel), the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities, and the University of South Carolina's Model Editions Partnership Project.

Project Phase Two:

In the second and third years of the project, the core outcomes of digital editions of the Cook Journal and Hawkesworth will be linked to a wealth of annotations, commentaries and hypermedia essays incorporating new research by researchers associated including Nicholas Thomas, Greg Dening, Iain MacCalman and Bronwen Douglas. They will also incorporate extensive new research on Samuel Wallis's voyaging, and how Cook's voyaging influenced the evolution of ethnography and related sciences in British and metropolitan colonial cultures during the age of the Enlightenment. Particular attention will be given to re-assessing the cultural impact of the narratives and visual records of the Dolphin and Endeavour expeditions within metropolitan Europe prior to 1848. In preparing the editions, the project will draw extensively on the expertise of Nicholas Thomas in the preparation of scholarly editions of eighteenth century voyaging journals, thereby ensuring that the editions meet current standards of scholarly editorial excellence.

During this second phase, the project team will work using the hypermedia editions of the project to construct and test a prototype networked environment for encoding, structural verification and archiving of scholarly digital editions. This aspect of the project will require the research assistant to work closely with NLA staff to ensure that the resulting environment is fully interoperable with core elements of the Library's Digital Services Project (see under `Skills and Experience' below).

Project Management

This will be undertaken by a project committee, initially comprised of the Chief, Partner and Associate Investigators, together with one other nominee from each of their respective institutions. This committee will be expanded to include co-supervisors of the APA(I) holder, and researchers at CCR, and specialist staff of NLA when appropriate. The committee will communicate regularly by electronic mail, and meet face to face once every six weeks over the three year life of the project. The project committee will be supervised by a steering committee, chaired by the Director of NLA, and comprised of members drawn from the CCR and senior officers from NLA's Reader Services and Cultural and Education program areas. The steering committee will meet no less than three times a year. Periodic evaluations of scholarly and technical progress will be sought from leading international experts in scholarly use of web-based media, including Professor Vernon Burton, Head, NSCA initiative for Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Mark Kornbluh, Director, MATRIX Centre for Humanities in New Media, and Professors Edward Ayres and Jerome McGann, of the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technologies in Humanities.

Intellectual Property

The Partners have considered the issues relating to intellectual property. Given that both institutions are publicly funded, and have as institutional goals the maximisation of the national benefit of their various programs, the partners consider that the outcomes of the Endeavour Project should be made publicly available. In relation to the outcomes of student research, the partners consider that all materials used by them in the course of their PhD will not impede the examination of their thesis, nor circumscribe their rights to publish during the course of the project and beyond.

Skills and Experience

 Paul Turnbull is an active researcher in the fields of cross-cultural history and the scholarly use of digital media. He has an international reputation for pioneering the use of digital media in historical research through ventures including the Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History and Pictures of Health: an Australian History WWW Project. Since 1996 has been an executive committee member of H-Net, the International On-Line Network for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has been extensively involved in the organisation's various projects to promote scholarly of digital media.

NLA is a leading documentary resource for research into the history and cultures of the Pacific. It is active in bibliographical research to make its unparalleled collections of manuscripts, books and original artwork relating to Pacific exploration available to scholars. Through its Harold White Fellowship scheme, sponsorship of the triennial David Nichol Smith Conferences, and its exhibitions program, the Library has played a crucial role in the evolution of new scholarly perspectives on the history of cross-cultural interaction in Australia and Oceania.

NLA's expertise in the provision of electronic research resources began in 1981, when it established the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN). The ABN has since shaped the development of resource sharing amongst Australian Libraries, and given researchers in the humanities and social sciences what remains an indispensable research tool. Since the early 1990s the Library has addressed the challenges posed by the globalisation of information and communication. The Library is recognised world-wide for its work in the evolution of electronic means of disseminating research outcomes. Through its PANDORA Project (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources), the library has researched technical issues of preservation and access to Australian electronic publications, and the development of internet data standards. Other important innovations have included the development of powerful World-Wide-Web access to the 2.3 million records in the Library's catalogue, and digitised images of the Library's extensive pictorial collections (Images 1). The Library is currently active the evolution of metadata repository / search engine developments as a participant in the Australian Government Locator Service (AGES) and the AVCC-funded MetaWeb Project.

Most importantly, in early 1999, NLA commenced a major new initiative, the Digital Service Project, which aims to refine and integrate the above ventures so as to implement a permanent digital archive for Australian electronic publications, integrated collection management, and digital services delivery capability. Currently, the Endeavour Project forms part of this initiative, as one of several digital projects the Library is working on, with a view to using digital technologies to enhance preservation and access of historical materials in its collections (NLA, 1999).

Future Developments:

This project will lay the intellectual and technical foundations for digital library of scholarly editions of historical documents and associated research publications. Theoretically, it has no fixed life-span, nor rigid intellectual boundaries beyond being centrally concerned with the history of European voyaging and cross-cultural encounter. Given the historical salience of Cook's voyaging, this digital library could become a leading international resources for for scholars, and cultural specialists in museums and art galleries world-wide. Already interests in strategic collaboration have been expressed by leading International institutions. Since the project was conceived in late 1997 the Chief Investigator and senior NLA officers have held preliminary discussions with several institutions, including National Maritime Museum (UK)..

Authorities Cited 

Beaglehole, James Cawte 1955-74. (ed.) The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery. Cambridge.

-----, 1974. The Life of Captain James Cook. Stanford.

Douglas, Browen 1999. `Art as Ethno-Historical text: Science, Representation and Indigenous Presence in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Oceanic Voyage Literature', in Nicholas Thomas and Diane Losche (eds), Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific. Cambridge.

Flick, Karen, Goodall, Heather 1998, `History and interactive Multimedia: HiTech Gimmick or a New Form of Community History', UTS Review vol. 3.

Hackney, Sheldon 1997. NEH in the Digital Age. Washington DC.

Murray, Judith 1996. Research Agenda for Networked Cultural Heritage. New York.

Pierce, Judith 1994 'Facilitating Access to Documents via the Future NDIS', paper to VALA Conference. Melbourne.

-----, 1995 'NDIS and the Vernacular, paper to Asia-Pacific Library Conference. Brisbane.

Salmond, Anne 1991. Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans, 1642-1772. Auckland.

-----, 1997. Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between Maori and Europeans, 1773-1815.Honolulu.

Smith, Bernard 1960. European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850. Oxford.

-----, 1985. European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850. 2nd ed. New Haven

-----, 1992. Imagining the Pacific; in the Wake of the Cook Voyages. New Haven.

Thomas, Nicholas 1994. Colonialism's Culture. Princeton.

-----, 1997. In Oceania: Visions, Artefacts, Histories. Durham NC.

-----, 1999. Introduction to Nicholas Thomas and Diane Losche (eds), Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific. Cambridge.

Thompson, John 1996. Electronic Alchemy: The Australian Co-Operative Digitisation Project, 1840-1845', http://www.nla.gov.au/ferg/jthomp.html

Turnbull, Paul 1998. `"Outlawed Subjects": The Procurement and Scientific Uses of Australian Aboriginal Heads, ca. 1803-1835', Studies in the Eighteenth-Century 10.

----, `Indigenous Bodies and Enlightenment Anthropology', in Alex Calder, Jonathan Lamb, and Bridget Orr (eds), Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840 Honolulu.