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Digital Humanities (Imaging software/databases)

Projects & Collaborations

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Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives

Research Project  | 4 Project Members

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Swiss archives and collections have been steadily digitalizing their materials, for "anything that is not digitally accessible usually gets ignored" ("Netzwerk Schweizer Pressefotografie" exhibition). While analog archives are primarily concerned with the long-term preservation of the material, digital archives mostly serve communication with the public. But the promise of unlimited accessibility and participation is misleading. Online accessibility does not in itself guarantee broad public engagement, and it has not been taking advantage of the potential of the digital domain. Even if the concept of participation has been increasingly discussed in recent years, the public, especially in the German-speaking world, has hardly been involved in the process of indexing and valorization of images at all. The common goal of this project is to design a visual interface with machine learning-based tools to make it easy to annotate, contextualize, organize, and link both images and their meta-information, to deliberately encourage the participatory use of archives. In a series of workshops and interviews with both academic and non-academic users, along with archivists and database specialists, the project will analyze the new demands of digital (and process-oriented) knowledge production in order to achieve these goals. In their own rubric - Citizen Archive - academic and non-academic users of the existing Swiss Society for Folklore Studies SSFS's (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde SGV) networks and partners will receive a series of Calls for Images inviting them to upload and comment current photographs as comments on historical images; this will further foster the contextualization of the archival material. In turn, these digital additions will have to be supplied with metadata and contextual knowledge. Such analysis of the context of images and collections (crowdsourcing) will enrich the metadata of the material and thus also make image searching and information retrieval more effective. Along with the design of the participatory digital image archive, this four-year research project will describe the transformation of analog archives into digital archives from the perspective of technology, communication, and the anthropology of knowledge. The common goal is the analysis and systematic description of historical and contemporary archiving practices: the generation, organization, storage, and communication of knowledge. The complex interplay of participants, epistemological orders, and the genesis and graphical representation of information and knowledge in such practices will be studied in connection with three collections from the photo archive of the Swiss Society for Folklore Studies. In previous research, these areas were mostly considered separately rather than from an interdisciplinary, cross-domain and application-oriented perspective that can capture such interplay. In contrast, the proposed project's interdisciplinary collaboration between digital humanities, cultural anthropology, and design research will serve our goal of increasing, improving, and imparting knowledge of analog and especially digital image archives and of ways to use them. This photo archive is an important part of the cultural memory of Switzerland; it contains approachable images organized according to such themes as tradition, identity, lifestyles, and everyday life. A broad public interest in these materials can be expected. The research project would like to preserve-also with the help of machine learning-what is most endangered: the personal reports of those contemporary witnesses who lived through the historical periods represented by the SSFS/SGV photo archive. All the project's planned technological developments, including the machine learning component, will be based on the premise of scalability; that is, the methods and the technology must be transferable to the holdings of other collections of the Digital Humanities. As its common primary outputs, the project will produce not only the visual interface discussed above, a dynamic storage infrastructure, but also a handbook with guidelines for the future development of participatory archives as well as six dissertations and several scientific papers in the various disciplines.

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Develop a Simple User Interface to the Data and Service Center for the Humanities (DaSCH) database (SUID)

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

Researchers in the Humanities need an accessible and easy to use digital platform to manage, store, work with and share their research data. Interesting IT-tools already exist. However, for small projects, e.g., PhD projects, pilot projects, and proof of concepts, these technologies can be difficult to use due to researchers' limited IT-skills, small amounts of funding, limited project time, or need for specific assistance. Most small humanities projects rely on "homemade solutions" using desktop data management tools, such as FileMaker, MSAccess, etc., but the data modelling often does not follow standards. The data itself may be inconsistent. Often researchers only have access to poor tools for export, analyse, and re-use of the data. Powerful data tools already exist for humanities research. The Data and Service Center for the Humanities (DaSCH) is a national research infrastructure at the University of Basel that includes all disciplines of the humanities. This infrastructure is clearly focused on qualitative data such as interlinked databases, complex data involving different media with annotations (text, facsimile, photographic images, video, and film), rich linkages, and connections. The DaSCH team has developed a unique and powerful software platform, Knora, to provide services, like data maintenance, long-term access, and research and analysis tools for qualitative data. However, with no simple user interface, this platform is not easily used by researchers with small projects or limited resources. Over 30 Swiss projects are currently queuing to get access to Knora, waiting for developer staff support. This project proposes to develop a Simple User Interface for DaSCH (SUID). The design is an intuitive, easy to use web-based application placed on top of Knora to directly use its powerful data management functionalities. With SUID, the researchers will be able to add data models, search, browse, and work with their qualitative data as easily as they could with a desktop data management tool. In addition, data models and data will automatically follow accepted standards, be interoperable, findable, and re-usable. Researchers and scholars with small data sets will have access to long-term accessibility at minimal cost and time to keep their research data alive, guaranteeing longevity of the data.

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Zusatzfinanzierung DaSCH 2019/2020

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

The Data and Service Center for the Humanities DaSCH is a Swiss national research infrastructure which, as a competence center for digital methods and long-term use of digital data, supports the hermeneutically oriented Humanities in the use of state-of-the-art digital research methods. Focusing on qualitative data and associated digital objects (bitstreams such as images, sound, video, etc.) from all areas of the Humanities (including law and theology) it provides tools and long-term access to Humanities' research data for the research community in accordance with FAIR principles and international standards for interoperability. It's registered at re3data.org supports scholars in generating new and re-using existing digital research data for cutting-edge research. implements innovative solutions for scientific data processing in close co-operation with researchers and national and international initiatives in order to meet the rapidly changing requirements of internationally competitive research projects.

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WordWeb / IDEM: A new way of representing Intertextuality in Drama of the Early Modern Period

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

WordWeb/IDEM proposes an innovative flexible structure for representing intertextuality to display a comprehensive corpus of mutual quotations in the drama of Shakespeare's time. Within the relational paradigm of traditional databases, it has been extremely challenging to map complex intertextual references. Thanks to new information technologies, we can offer a generic digital framework for representing interrelated information which overcomes these limitations. The collaborative and competitive canon of the London theatre scene around 1600 will serve as a "real world" example of relations between multiple texts.WordWeb/IDEM's main objectives will significantly advance Digital Humanities and the study of early modern literature. (1) To develop and implement WordWeb, a software framework which can model complex intertextual relationships in any cultural domain. (2) To harness 200 years of research for an unprecedented overview of Intertextuality in Drama of the Early Modern Period (IDEM).(3) To clarify Shakespeare's contribution to the overall "web of words" of his time.The project builds on experience gained from the HyperHamlet database (SNF Project Passages We Live By 2006-2010), a hypertext of Shakespeare's tragedy in which each line gives access to texts in which that line is quoted. In contrast, WordWeb/IDEM will make cross-references between the works of dozens of dramatists visible as an extended verbal and social network. WordWeb can renew our vision of intertextuality through a ground-breaking new paradigm for representing what is conventionally called "quotation". Instead of complete texts, Word-Web/IDEM will store only intertextually active passages, i.e. phrases which have been identified in more than one text. These items are not seen as deriving from a famous masterpiece. Instead, they represent much-quoted phrases which just happen to occur also in Hamlet, for example. The name "WordWeb" indicates this new focus: short verbal items ("Word") are connected to each other by rich links that carry bibliographical information and other annotations ("Web"). By storing only shared passages, WordWeb/IDEM will have room for an open number of texts that quote and are quoted and so present an extensive overview of the verbal network of Renais-sance drama. Such a coherent view is urgently needed. Thousands of references between Elizabe-than and Jacobean plays are lost from view because they are reported in hard-to-access footnotes, indexes and detailed studies. WordWeb/IDEM will make this extremely valuable, extremely specific data accessible and set them in context. A digital "semantic web" with sophisticated options for visualization will relate older, philological research to recent digital investigations and set Shakespeare's works in the context of his contemporaries. As a result, connections and influences will emerge that have remained invisible because of fragmented research. IDEM's multidimensional map of the dense tissue of verbal "memes" in early modern drama will revolutionize our under-standing of one of the most significant bodies of English literature. As a new methodology, WordWeb can be applied to advance research and understanding of complex relationships in many cultural domains.

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Data and Service Center for the Humanities V2.0 (DaSCH V2.0)

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

The Data and Service Center for the Humanities (DaSCH) is a national research infrastructure in Switzerland, specifically designed to support the long-term preservation, accessibility, and reusability of humanities research data. Serving as a pivotal hub, DaSCH facilitates the secure storage and sharing of a wide range of digital data, from textual documents to multimedia content. Its focus on adhering to FAIR principles ensures that data is not only safeguarded for future use but also remains easily accessible and interoperable within the academic community.


Recognized for its innovative approach, DaSCH provides essential services to researchers, including sophisticated tools for data management, analysis, and visualization. This infrastructure plays a crucial role in promoting collaborative research, enabling scholars to engage with and build upon existing data. Through its commitment to digital preservation and open access, DaSCH significantly contributes to the advancement of the humanities, ensuring that valuable research insights endure and remain accessible for generations to come.

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Data and Service Center for the Humanities

Research Project  | 5 Project Members

The Data and Service Center for the Humanities (DaSCH) is an institution of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAHSS) financed by the State Secretariat for Eduction, Research and Innovation (SERI). It's also part of the Digital Life Cycle Managment (DLCM) -project (funded by the swissuniversities P5 Programme "Scientific information" ). It's registered at re3data.org and is fully the FAIR compliant ( F indable, A ccessible, I nteroperable, and R e-usable). It implements persistent ARK (Archival Resource Key) Identifiers . The primary goals of the DaSCH are Preservation of research data in the humanities and their long-term data curation. Ensuring permanent access to research data in order to make it available for further research and thus facilitating the reuse of existing research data in future research. Providing services for researchers to assist them with the data life cycle management. Encouraging the digital networking of databases created in Switzerland or in other countries. Collaboration and networking with other institutions on digital literacy. The services of the DaSCH are available to all researchers and projects in Switzerland which work in the the domain of the Humanities and have to deal with digital information. They are provided by the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Basel (project leader) and by the University of Lausanne ( plateforme technique du Laboratoire de cultures et humanités digitales ) and include hosting and long-term curation of digital data relevant to the Humanities. Consultancy and support of researchers and research projects in the Humanities regarding the creation, the use, the re-use and the long-term curation of digital data. The DaSCH operates a flexible, versatile and secure hardware- and software-infrastructure to provide above services. It adheres to and promotes open standards such as the International Image Interoperability Framework ( IIIF ) or JSON-LD . In the context of the DLCM the DaSCH services are also available to other parties (Life science, Physics, Astronomy etc.) which have to deal with qualitative data. The generic front end to the repository can be accesses using SALSAH . There is also a RESTful API available to access the research data. Please inquire sending an email to info@dasch.swiss .

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Bernoulli-Euler Online (BEOL): Development of a platform for digital editing and a virtual research environment for historical scientific texts

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

The project Bernoulli-Euler Online (BEOL) integrates the two edition projects Basler Edition der Bernoulli-Briefwechsel (BEBB) and Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia (LEOO) into one digital platform available on the web. In addition, Jacob Bernoulli's scientific notebook Meditationes - a document of outstanding significance for the history of mathematics at its turning point around 1700 - will be published, offering a multilayer access to the user (facsimile, transcription, critical text, translations, indices, and commentaries). BEOL is implemented within Knora/SALSAH, a generic virtual research environment (VRE) for the humanities. Besides being an edition, BEOL will be a research platform for the study of early modern mathematics and science. It will also be interoperable with other digital platforms, which can interact with it via Knora's RDF-based data model and RESTful API. Knora relies on Semantic Web technologies such as OWL ontologies, and is well suited as a platform for the representation of complex structured qualitative knowledge. The goal of BEOL is thus twofold: It focuses on the mathematics influenced by the Bernoulli dynasty and Leonhard Euler and undertakes a methodological effort to present these materials to the public and researchers in a highly functional way. The methodology to be developed here can also be applied to other editions, enhancing the principle of Open Access publication (OA). OA on the basis of a VRE can be thought of as a truly digital form of publishing, which also presents information on (collaborative) authorship, versions, and underlying research data that cannot be implemented in print or print-like formats like PDF.

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LIMC/SALSAH: Digitale Plattform für antike Mythologie

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

The wealth of ancient myths and legends which we call Classical Mythology is one of the major elements of our cultural heritage. The Foundation for the LIMC prepared and published 10 volumes of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) between 1981 and 2009. This work has been continued by the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (ThesCRA; 10 volumes), focused on the domain of cult and rite. The digital archives of the LIMC will make accessible what we know of the iconography of Greek, Etruscan and Roman mythology, as well as of the neighbouring Mediterranean cultures, to all people interested in classical antiquity. The existing databases are currently being migrated to a new platform called SALSAH (System for Annotation and Linkage of Sources in Arts and Humanities ). This modern and flexible platform will grant access to and public availability of the digitised LIMC data in the future. New information not yet included in the database will be added. The new technology will allow the tagging of photographs, the connection of our data with different kinds of web information (e.g. geo system information, photos) and the linking of our data to other databases. The Virtual Research environment of SALSAH makes it possible to work with digital information that can be linked and annotated openly or individually within a so-called Region of Interest (ROI). This means that it will be possible to share personal information within a group of selected users. The project is hosted both at the Department of Ancient Civilisations and the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Basel.

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Daten- und Dienstleistungszentrum für die Geisteswissenschaften (DDZ)

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

This research shall answer a chronic problem in Swiss Humanities research: There is no systematic way to preserve Swiss Humanities digital research for the future nor is it possible to interconnect scientific data from the humanities with other sources of the international Digital Humanities (DH) research community to find new results based upon the linkage of sources of various types. With the availability of large quantities of digitized sources in the Internet and the existence of mature technologies such as the semantic web, research in Humanities is at the beginning of a fundamental change of research methods. This has been clearly shown by the emergence of the new label "Digital Humanities" in the 2000's, that indicates the dissemination of the digital epistemology. However, the use of computer based methods and online sources in Humanities are still a challenge and plagued by several problems: The lack of sustainability, the nonexistence of common basic services, missing data standards, the deficiency of knowledge, unavailable international networks in DH and of DH education and good practices training. Therefore a pilot project for a "Swiss Digital Humanities Center" (SDHC) has been launched, will which guarantee the long term accessibility of research data in the Humanities and propagates the use of advanced digital methods and technologies in a way that the persistence of data and tools to work with scientific data from the humanities can be achieved. The center will offer the following functions: sustainable, reliable and trustable data repository for digital research data in the Humanities; long term accessibility and long term archival; state of the art data and access management to have a high degree of control of "who can do what"; extensible, open and flexible toolbox of methods for data management, analysis and visualization; toolbox/library of basic functions for the creation of new tools and research method; connectivity to external data sources and repositories, with external sources according to the "linked data" standard; information and training about digital research methods and data management targeted to qualitative data and digital sources. With the availability of large quantities of digitized sources in the Internet and the existence of mature technologies such as the semantic web, research in Humanities is at the beginning of a fundamental change of research methods. This has been clearly shown by the emergence of the new label "Digital Humanities" in the 2000's, that indicates the dissemination of the digital epistemology. However, the use of computer based methods and online sources in Humanities are still a challenge and plagued by several problems: The lack of sustainability, the nonexistence of common basic services, missing data standards, the deficiency of knowledge, unavailable international networks in DH and of DH education and good practices training. Therefore we propose to include the "Swiss Digital Humanities Center" (SDHC) into the "Swiss research infrastructure roadmap" 2017-2020 as a data/service center, which guarantees the long term accessibility of research data in the Humanities and propagates the use of advanced digital methods and technologies in a way that the persistence of data and tools to work with scientific data from the humanities can be achievedWith the availability of large quantities of digitized sources in the Internet and theexistence of mature technologies such as the semantic web, research in Humanities is at the