Parchment, Print and PHP: ASNC Leading the Way

Dr Denis Casey writes:

A recent report on how university research in the arts and humanities is serving society (and how its impact may be effectively measured), undertaken by the not-for-profit policy research organisation RAND Europe, has singled out ASNC's Early Irish Glossaries Project for praise.

Under the heading Research Can Have Planned and Unplanned Impacts, the report highlights the impact that the purpose-built database of that three-year project (undertaken by Dr Paul Russell, Dr Pádraic Moran and Dr Sharon Arbuthnot) has had.

There are often unexpected impacts from a research project. For example, in the Faculty of English, an AHRC-funded project on medieval Irish glossaries developed a sophisticated database which had the unanticipated impact of becoming a model for other such databases in other fields.

The report was commissioned jointly by the University of Cambridge and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.