This presentation was given as part of the 'Séminaire Européen de l’Ecole doctorale' on 'Les Infrastructures de la recherché, quels enjeux pour les humanités numériques ?' held at the University of Lille on 3 March 2016, see: http://geriico.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/index.php?page=annee-2015---2016

1. Facilitating digital research in the
humanities:
from local services to European
infrastructures
(and back again…)
Image: www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578
Sally Chambers, DARIAH-BE
Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities

2. Who am I?
• (Digital) Librarian (Humanist)
• BA Literature with Psychology, MA Cultural Studies, Postgraduate
Certificate: Information Services Management
• 2005 – 2011: Worked for The European Library, at the National
Library of the Netherlands
• 2011 – 2015: Worked for DARIAH-EU at the Göttingen Centre for
Digital Humanities, Germany
• February 2015 - : Digital Humanities Research Coordinator at the
Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and Coordinator for DARIAH-
VL/BE

3. www.ghentcdh.ugent.behttp://www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578
PicturebyGeertRoels
Ghent Centre for Digital
Humanities (GhentCDH):
an interdisciplinary centre
facilitating digitally-enabled
research in the arts,
humanities and social sciences
at Ghent University and
beyond …
Areas of focus:
•Research support and coordination
•Digital Research Infrastructure
•Training and education

4. Image: www.flickr.com/photos/gentverkend/3993029562
Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and
Philosophy
9 departments:
•Languages & cultures
•Linguistics
•Literary Studies
•Philosophy & moral sciences
•Translation, Interpreting &
Communication
•Archaeology
•Art, music & theatre studies
•Comparative science of cultures
•History

5. www.ghentcdh.ugent.behttp://www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578
PicturebyGeertRoels
Research Support
and Coordination
•Central contact point for digital humanities at Ghent University,
e.g. advice and guidance, community engagement
•Advice and guidance: project proposals with a digital humanities
focus, digital project management

6. www.ghentcdh.ugent.be
DH Advice and guidance
Which tools to use for analysis?
•Analysis of different emotional terms related to military decorations
during First World War (PhD Student, History)
•Basic text analysis on a corpus of around a 1000 popular songs, e.g.
identify songs that are similar (Researcher, History)
Who to contact?
•Is there someone with Drupal expertise? (Literary Studies, Post Doc)
Is there a supercomputer I can use?
•I am working on some rather large data and having processing problems
on my laptop. (Social Science, Post Doc)

7. Digital Research
Infrastructure
•Toward Virtual Research Environment Service Infrastructure (VRE-SI)
•Based on the needs of existing research projects with a digital focus
•Re-defining existing research infrastructures (e.g. library, IT service) for digital
scholarship
•Funded within the framework of DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure
for the Arts and Humanities
Ruby on Rails apps / gems
(e.g. Blacklight)
Islandora / Mediamosa / Drupal ...:
Scholarly asset management platform, framework for modules and applications
FEDORA REPOSITORY
Query / content
browsing and discovery
Viewer
(TEI XSLT Viewer, GeoBlacklight, etc.)
Im- / export
Digitisation modules
(scan, OCR, coll. QA)
Analytical modules
(CollateX, Xtas, etc.)
REPOSITORY
INFRASTRUCTURE
Collaborative editing / annotation
(CWRC Writer, etc)
Metadata, descr. standards:
Dublin Core, CIDOC CRM / EDM
Content formats:
XML, TEI, RDF, PDF, plain text,
graph, media, MODS, OGC ...
FRAMEWORK&
COMPONENTS
MODULES&
APPLICATIONS
Omeka, Mediawiki,
other PhP applications
Solr Apache index
www.ghentcdh.ugent.be/content/dariah-vl_vre.si

8. www.ghentcdh.ugent.be
•Identify existing research projects within the Faculty of Arts
and Philosophy with a ‘digital focus’
•What infrastructural needs do these projects have?
•Selection of ‘pilot projects’ for ‘integration’ into the Virtual
Research Environment Service Infrastructure
•How can such infrastructural needs be sustainably
supported?
Developing the Virtual Research Environment
Service Infrastructure (VRE-SI)

9. Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams
www.dbbe.ugent.be

10. Agents of Change: Women Editors and Socio-Cultural
Transformation in Europe (1710-1920)
www.wechanged.ugent.be

11. Transnational Intellectual Collaboration
TIC-Collaborative
www.tic.ugent.be
A Virtual Research
Environment for the study
of 19th and early 20th
century international
organisations and
congresses

12. Database of Southern Dutch Dialects
www.wvd.ugent.be

13. What is DARIAH?

14. What is DARIAH?
DARIAH Mission: DARIAH aims to enhance and
support digitally-enabled research and teaching
across the humanities and arts…
…DARIAH would like to offer a portfolio of
services that directly benefit researchers in their
everyday work…

15. A quick history of DARIAH
In-kind
Cash
• 2006: DARIAH included in the ESFRI
Roadmap
• 2008 – 2011: Preparatory Phase
project, Preparing DARIAH
• 2011 – 2013: ‘Transition Phase’,
establishing the DARIAH-ERIC,
integrating national activities
• 2014+: DARIAH-ERIC

16. DARIAH-EU High-level launch
In-kind
Cash Paris, 17 November 2014

17. 15 Founding Members + …
In-kind
Cash
Founding Members
Austria
Belgium
Croatia
Cyprus
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Founding Members
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Serbia
Slovenia
Candidate countries
Lithuania
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Switzerland

18. … plus Poland and Portugal
In-kind
Cash

19. Switzerland in DARIAH…..
In-kind
Cash

20. DARIAH in France
In-kind
Cash
www.huma-num.fr/international

21. DARIAH in the European Landscape

22. In-kind
Cashhttp://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=esfri
European Research Infrastructures:
ESFRI
Updated ESFRI
Roadmap 2016

23. In-kind
Cashhttp://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=esfri
ESFRI Humanities and Social
Science Research Infrastructures
•CLARIN: Common Language Resources
and Technology Infrastructure
•DARIAH: Digital Research Infrastructure
for Arts & Humanities
•SHARE: Survey of Health, Aging and
Retirement in Europe
•ESS: European Social Survey
•CESSDA: Consortium of European Social
Science Data Archives

24. In-kind
Cashhttp://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=mapri_european
Map of Pan-European
Research Infrastructures

25. In-kind
Cash
European Science Foundation
http://www.esf.org/hosting-experts/scientific-review-groups/humanities-hum/strategic-
activities/research-infrastructures-in-the-humanities.html

26. Who is DARIAH for?

27. Who is DARIAH for?
Image source: http://www.utsa.edu/today/images/graphics/diversity2.jpg
A wide variety of research communities across the
arts and humanities

28. For researchers, by researchers…
Digital Literary
Studies
Digital Medieval Studies

29. Network of research communities
Holocaust Researchers
Medieval and
Modern Historians
Archaeologists Digital Textual
Scholarship
Digital Methods

30. Services for researchers

31. • Research projects within the
humanities with a ‘digital focus’
• Fixed-term funded projects, e.g.
national or European funding
• Project outcomes as building
blocks for sustainable digital
services
Image source:
www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/workplace/education/pics/stack_of_blocks.jpg
Towards sustainable
digital services

32. Network of Contributions

33. Towards sustainable
digital services
+ Project ResultsDARIAH Members

34. Network of Services
Scholarly events
Open access repository
Academic blogging

35. Network of Services
Multilingual
training materials
Scholarly Methods Ontology
Summer Schools

36. Network of Services
Persistent Identification
AAI Infrastructure
Collaboration Tools

37. DARIAH in France
In-kind
Cash
www.cfeetk.cnrs.fr/archives/

38. DARIAH in France
In-kind
Cash
www.huma-num.fr/services-et-outils

39. DARIAH in France
In-kind
Cash
www.openedition.org

40. Towards DARIAH in Belgium

41. DARIAH in Belgium
• Belgium is a DARIAH-ERIC Founding Member:
BELSPO: National Representative: Chris De Loof
• 3 Consortia
-DARIAH–Vlaanderen (DARIAH-VL)
-DARIAH–Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (DARIAH-FWB)
-DARIAH– Federal Scientific Institutions (DARIAH-FED)
• National Coordinating Institution 2016: Ghent University, Ghent,
Centre for Digital Humanities led by Christophe Verbruggen
• Day-to-day coordination: Sally Chambers

42. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU

43. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU
Trismegistos, Ancient History
www.trismegistos.org

44. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU
Samuel Beckett:
Digital Manuscripts
www.beckettarchive.org

45. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU
DIGITHEMIS: Digital Justice
Historical Information System
www.digithemis.be

46. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU
Ramses – an annotated corpus of Late
Eqyption texts
www.egypto.ulg.ac.be/Ramses.htm

47. Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU
Perelman Digital Archive
http://gral.ulb.ac.be/archives-chaim-perelman

48. European Holocaust Research
Infrastructure (EHRI)
www.ehri-project.eu
Integrated Platform for the European Research
Infrastructure on Cultural Heritage
www.iperionch.eu
Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU

49. Transnational Intellectual Collaboration
TIC-Belgium www.tic.ugent.be
Modernising digital access to collections
www.maddlain.iminds.be
Belgian contributions
to DARIAH-EU

50. Services for researchers

51. Virtual Research Environment Service
Infrastructure (VRE-SI)
Ruby on Rails apps / gems
(e.g. Blacklight)
Islandora / Mediamosa / Drupal ...:
Scholarly asset management platform, framework for modules and applications
FEDORA REPOSITORY
Query / content
browsing and discovery
Viewer
(TEI XSLT Viewer, GeoBlacklight, etc.)
Im- / export
Digitisation modules
(scan, OCR, coll. QA)
Analytical modules
(CollateX, Xtas, etc.)
REPOSITORY
INFRASTRUCTURE
Collaborative editing / annotation
(CWRC Writer, etc)
Metadata, descr. standards:
Dublin Core, CIDOC CRM / EDM
Content formats:
XML, TEI, RDF, PDF, plain text,
graph, media, MODS, OGC ...
FRAMEWORK&
COMPONENTS
MODULES&
APPLICATIONS
Omeka, Mediawiki,
other PhP applications
Solr Apache index
www.ghentcdh.ugent.be/content/dariah-vl_vre.si
VRE-SI offering a sustainable portfolio of
services enabling digital scholarship in the
arts and humanities in Flanders, Belgium and
beyond

52. Virtual Research Environment Service
Infrastructure (VRE-SI) – Current status

53. VRE-SI Services
Web-based collaborative data
management environment:
NodeGoat
•Set-up NodeGoat campus licence
•Expert and outreach workshops, training
materials -> increase use of NodeGoat in
Ghent
•NodeGoat user group -> Ghent -> DARIAH-
BE and beyond…
•Evaluation and development
•Sustainable service delivery
•Improved user-friendliness
•Streamline the software developments ->
towards feature requests in via Github
•Towards an (open source) NodeGoat
community http://nodegoat.net

54. VRE-SI Services
….
….

55. VRE-SI Services
Digital Text Analysis Platform
•Based on the Islandora platform:
collaborative management and discovery
of digital assets
•Expertise built up in TIC-Collaborative -_
move towards a generic text analysis
platform for use with a wide-range of
projects
•Developments: improve / automate
ingestion functionality, improve clustered
display of books, development of an
annotation management system
•Involvement in Islandora community
http://islandora.ca

56. VRE-SI Services
Manuscript Desk
•Built on Transcribe Bentham toolkit
(MediaWiki)
•Upload digitised manuscripts for
transcription (TEI-compatiable)
•First version released November 2015
•Evaluation with bachelor students, will
be used for masters’ dissertation in 2016
•Evaluation in Ghent for Paleography
courses
•New features: XML export, additional
editor functionality, integration of PyStyl
(stylometric analysis)
•Infrastructure: improve manageability
of software, documentation and code in
GitHub, link to single sign-on

57. VRE-SI Services
Manuscript Desk
https://manuscriptdesk.uantwerpen.be

58. www.ghentcdh.ugent.behttp://www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578
PicturebyGeertRoels
Ghent Centre for Digital
Humanities (GhentCDH):
an interdisciplinary centre
facilitating digitally-enabled
research in the arts,
humanities and social sciences
at Ghent University and
beyond …
Areas of focus:
•Research support and coordination
•Digital Research Infrastructure
•Training and education

59. www.flw.ugent.be/bibliotheek/librarylab
•Parallel training programme in the use of the digital research
tools and methods offered by the Virtual Research Environment
Service Infrastructure
•Additional need for support for the development of research data
management plans
•Led by the LibraryLab @ the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Library
Digital humanities research training

60. www.ghentcdh.ugent.be/content/topic-modelling-workshop
GhentCDH & LibraryLab
Digital Humanities Training

61. www.ghentcdh.ugent.be
Digital Humanities @ Ghent University
A digital humanities team of
experts (researchers, developers,
data specialists, project
managers / coordinators)
•Offering a sustainable portfolio
of services by re-defining and
extending existing services (library,
IT, DH centre) for the needs of
digital scholarship
Images: www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578
and www.cillium.com/images/expertise/expertise.jpg

62. sally.chambers@ugent.be
be.dariah.eu | @DARIAHbe
Merci!
image: www.flickr.com/photos/boekentoren/8868717578