Last week I had the opportunity of attending the Arts & Humanities Research Fair at King’s College as a representative of the JAINpedia project. The aim of this Research Fair was to display and talk about the different arts and humanities projects based at King’s. It was an open event that allowed visitors (mainly researchers and students) to explore, talk and learn about the different research projects that are being carried out by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH).
It was a fascinating event that encouraged an exchange of ideas between different projects and allowed many people to hear for the first time about the JAINpedia project and Jainism. The JAINpedia stand, with its bright colours and poster, attracted numerous people who showed great curiosity and interest in the project.
Many students and researchers from King’s found JAINpedia a very positive learning initiative for gaining knowledge about Jainism and making the collections accessible to a wider audience.
We also took the opportunity to show them some of the beautiful digital images of manuscripts that will appear on the JAINpedia website. Everybody looked stunned and we had incredibly positive feedback.
Some students were keen to know more about the different phases of the project and how it has been developed. They looked at images of wireframes, mock-ups, as well as the blog, and we encouraged them to contribute to the blog with comments.
There’s no doubt this Research Fair has brought some valuable exposure of JAINpedia to a wider audience. I really enjoyed the experience, and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped make this year’s Arts and Humanities Research Fair possible.
