DASCH: Data and Service Center for the Humanities

Research data in the humanities needs to be sustainable, and access to digital resources must be possible over a long period. Only if these prerequisites are fulfilled can research data be used as a source for other projects. In addition, reliability is a fundamental requirement so that digital sources can be cited, reused, and quoted. To address this problem, we present our solution: the Data and Service Center for the Humanities located in Switzerland. The centralized infrastructure is based on flexible and extendable software that is in turn reliant on modern technologies. Such an approach allows for the straightforward migration of existing research project databases with limited life spans in the humanities. We will demonstrate the basic concepts behind this proposed solution and our first experiences in the application thereof

Implementing a Video Framework based on IIIF: A Customized Approach from Long-Term Preservation Video Formats to Conversion on Demand

This paper addresses the issue of elaborating a structure for digital video assets based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) concepts for the use in archival environments. With a view to tailoring a solution to fit the end user's needs, the dissemination copies of video material could be automatically converted on demand from their master files. Such a reduced data structure simplifies access to digital video sources but leads as well to simplified preservation due to reduced data volume and data complexity. Dissemination copies do not require specific dispositions for digital archiving anymore. Memory institutions would greatly benefit from a technology that can be integrated into a Web-based infrastructure. In such a way video content can for example be embedded into flexible Virtual Research Environments which allow scholars to work and cite more accurately video resources using IIIF

DASCH: Data and Service Center for the Humanities

Research data in the humanities needs to be sustainable, and access to digital resources must be possible over a long period. Only if these prerequisites are fulfilled can research data be used as a source for other projects. In addition, reliability is a fundamental requirement so that digital sources can be cited, reused, and quoted. To address this problem, we present our solution: the Data and Service Center for the Humanities located in Switzerland. The centralized infrastructure is based on flexible and extendable software that is in turn reliant on modern technologies. Such an approach allows for the straightforward migration of existing research project databases with limited life spans in the humanities. We will demonstrate the basic concepts behind this proposed solution and our first experiences in the application thereo

An Interactive 3D Visualization of RDF-based Digital Editions

This paper suggests an interactive web-based tool for 3D visualization of information graphs, particularly RDF graphs

e-Version of the Republic of Letters

This paper presents a novel approach to create an RDF based e-version of the correspondence network by connecting author-centric digital editions platforms without centeralizing data silos. Through one single platform that presents the network, researchers can perform advanced metadata and asynchronous full-text queries over the entire network to find resources for their research inventory and directly access the data. The advanced search tools of the platform, allow researchers to channel their expertise into the analysis of the resources and their relations rather than a quest for them. Based on this work, this paper introduces a new research method, The Network Method, to study the historical data as a graph. It also argues that visualization of the RDF based network of correspondence as web-based interactive 3D force-directed graphs empowers relational thinking by depicting the connections between resources and drawing the researcher's attention to the connection between the atoms of knowledge, data distribution, irregularities, etc. Furthermore, this paper presents a new feature that adds the time-dimension to the visualization of the correspondence data which enables researchers to study the change in the topic of correspondence over time

Building Digital Editions on the Basis of a Virtual Research Environment

The article introduces a web-based application to transcribe digital facsimiles resulting in a diplomatic transcription, and presents an appropriate serialisation of the created data. The application is being developed as a part of SALSAH – a VRE for the humanities – that offers a generic annotation and linkage functionality. Thus, a transcription can be conceived as a use case of SALSAH's functional range supporting the building of a digital edition