HASTAC is a virtual university. It is a voluntary international network that spans disciplines, institutions, the boundary of higher education and K-12, libraries, museums and other civic and community institutions. It includes top research universities, underfunded community colleges, HBCU's and other minority-serving institutions, as well as supercomputing centers, grid computing centers and major scientific research labs in the U.S. and abroad. HASTAC is pronounced "haystack" and is an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. Since 2003, HASTAC has been developing tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums and other digital projects. HASTAC leaders have served as consultants to U.S. and international organizations and governments on grid computing and cyberinfrastructure.

In 2006-07, over eighty HASTAC centers worked together to produce courses, seminars, workshops and public events on the theme of "In|Formation." Topics in that theme were: InCommon, Interplay, InCommunity, Interaction, Injustice, Integration, Interface and Innovation. The project for 2007-08 is a series of ad hoc podcast Town Halls on any topic of social and political importance to new technologies. All podcasts will be advertised and archived on the HASTAC website. In addition, in 2007-08, HASTAC will host the Digital Media and Learning Competition, a $2 million competition sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of its initiative on Digital Media and Learning. To become part of HASTAC, simply register to the http://www.hastac.org/ website and contribute.

Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg are cofounders of HASTAC.

Ithaka promotes innovation in higher education by helping pioneering initiatives to thrive. Leaders of new not-for-profit projects, and their funders, must navigate a challenging path from early-stage funding to long-term viability. At the same time, long-established institutions are finding that they must fundamentally rethink the way they serve their constituents in a changing world. Ithaka supports entrepreneurial leaders in higher education with a range of services.

Research Services
Our research group works to understand how new technologies are changing higher education and how colleges and universities can best manage these changes. Its work is guided by an advisory committee of community leaders, and it is presently emphasizing three areas of interest:

The blog Friends:Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services recently described a new Facebook application called (Facebook) Librarian. One feature of the application is that users can go straight from Facebook to an array of research tools including Open WorldCat, Google Book Search, Wikipedia, etc.

The University of Michigan has created a graduate program in social computing, solidifying the topic as a topic of interest to a critical mass of researchers. This article in the Wall Street Journal points to many indicators that social computing and social software is becoming popular. It's a recognition, I think, that social networking, blogging, and the Wikipedia are part of the permanent infrastructure of our lives.  

The Digital Humanities Summer Institute provides an ideal environment in which to discuss, to learn about, and to advance skills in new computing technologies influencing the work of those in the Arts, Humanities and Library communities. The institute provides a week of intensive coursework, seminar participation, and lectures. It brings together faculty, staff and graduate student theorists, experimentalists, technologists, and administrators from different areas of the Arts, Humanities, Library and Archives communities and beyond to share ideas and methods, and to develop expertise in applying advanced technologies to activities that affect teaching, research, dissemination and preservation.

Now in its sixth year, the institute takes place on the University of Victoria campus, and is generously hosted by the University of Victoria's Faculty of Humanities, its Humanities Computing and Media Centre and its Electronic Textual Cultures Lab. It is sponsored by the University of Victoria and its Library, University of British Columbia Library, Simon Fraser University Library, Malaspina University-College, Acadia University, the Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs, the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Image, Text, Sound and Technology Program and others.