Collaborations with Collection Holding Institutions

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Collaborations with Collection Holding InstitutesESU Leipzig, 2016Dr Jennifer EdmondTrinity College Dublin

PARTHENOS-project.eu

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Working with Collections/Collections Holding Institutions

If Museums, Libraries and Archives already exist, why do we need Research Infrastructures doing things with source material (data)?

PARTHENOS-project.euhttp://www.esf.org/hosting-experts/scientific-review-groups/humanities-hum/strategic-activities/research-infrastructures-in-the-humanities.html

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Sources of Culture Clash within and between RIs and CHIs

Problem 1: Goals, mission, motivations

Problem 2: Data and Metadata

Problem 3: Wildly different levels of digital preparedness

Problem 4: Structures, Hierarchies and (Analogue) Knowledge Organisation Frameworks

Problem 5: Risks and Trust


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Problem 1: Researchers are from Mars, Librarians from Venus?Leopold von Ranke. History of the Latin and Teutonic nations, 1494-1535 (1824). Claim to fame: writing history as it actually was.

Antonio Panizzi, 91 Rules to be Observed in Preparing and Entering Titles (1841). Claim to fame: denying Thomas Carlyle access to uncatalogued materials

Sir Anthony Panizzi. Photograph by Elliott & Fry. Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

PARTHENOS-project.euhttp://www.esf.org/hosting-experts/scientific-review-groups/humanities-hum/strategic-activities/research-infrastructures-in-the-humanities.html4

Researchers are from Mars, Librarians from Venus?Historian: Emphasis on veracity, completeness, accessibility and comprehensibility, of sources, so as pull them together, verify them and create from them the required or desired record of the fleeting, transitory events of the past. Driven by a research question (academic freedom), incentivised to invoke a broad intellectual context.

Information specialist: Emphasis on provenance, completeness and material condition of sources so as to preserve them and make them maximally usable for the long term. Driven by existing or developing collections landscape, often limited by resources and institutional mission (eg. national or thematic focus)

PARTHENOS-project.euThis didnt use to be a problem

LIBRARYMUSEUMARCHIVE

PARTHENOS-project.euProblem 2: Data, Metadata, Licenses

Everyone in an RI project will want data. Everyone will want something different.

Well formed, internally coherent metadata?Clean, machine-readable structured or unstructured data?Meaningful transcribed full text of original sources?

Movie Time! Data and Metadata


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Problem 2: Data, Metadata, Licenses

Everyone in an RI project will want data. Everyone will want something different.

Well formed, internally coherent metadata?Clean, machine-readable structured or unstructured data?Meaningful transcribed full text of original sources?

Movie Time! Data and Metadata


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Problem 2: Data, Metadata, LicensesA few standardsDublin Core Library Holdings: Marc 21, METSCollections: ISAD-G/EADInstitutions: ISDIAH/EAGEuropeana: ESE, EDMText Elements: TEIBasics: ISO 3166-1-alpha-2, ISO 639-1Vocabularies: Getty ThesauriLOD: VIAF, DBPediaLicenses: CC0/CC BYAND MANY MANY OTHERS(which may be changed at will, over time)


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The Result??

From XKCD, Reused under CC-A-NC 2.5, Original at: http://xkcd.com/927/


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Trying for Common Ground


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HELP?CENDARI Approach (Documentation)http://www.cendari.eu/sites/default/files/CENDARI_D6.2%20Guidelines%20for%20applying%20the%20schema.pdf

PARTHENOS Standards Survival Kit (Information, in development)MINT (Orientation)https://github.com/mint-ntua/Mint-Athena

Open Refine (Implementation)http://openrefine.org/

But also, Education (DARIAH Open History and the inside out archive)


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Why be inside out? Talking to CHIs about the value of reusable standards

Because its the right thing to do?

Because you will gain impact and visibility?

Because its what your users want?

Because its good for you?

Because its inevitable?

Because you can use other peoples stuff?

DARIAH Open History:


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Problem 3: A tale of two archives

BNF (or other)

Hungarian State Archives (or other)Levels of cataloguing/conservationLevels of digitisationQuality of on-line presenceLevels of standardisationLevels of organisationsLevels of political orientation toward opennessLevels of tacit versus open knowledgeLevels of individual versus institutional control over access/discoverability

Does this mean one collection is less relevant/important than the other?


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Europeana/TEL (REST API; CC0)

Museo Storico della Guerra di Rovereto (Pencils, Interviews)

Rahvusarhiiv (EE)(Download; CC-0/CC-BY-SA)

American JDC Archives (WebDav, CC-BY-NC)

Archives UK (OAI/PMH/SRU; CC-BY)

Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi (LOD via SPARQL )CENDARI White Book of Archives:A tale of six more archives!


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Problem 4: Three People You May Need in Any CHI

(with apologies for the stereotypes!)

I know what is is

I know how it works

I can say yes


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Problem 5: Why trust an RI? Things a CHI may/should ask about

Resource implications

Sharing of transformations

Data licensing

Credit

Data longevity

Data reuse/abuse/profit model


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CENDARI Approach to Building Trust

Minimal effort from CHI

No barrier on our side to sharing

CC-BY, but flexible

CC-BY but also FAQs, Checklist, Workflow

DARIAH MOU

Clear Data Agreement and License

CENDARI White Book of Archives: http://www.cendari.eu/thematic-research-guides/white-book-archives


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You will have help

Policy environment for Opening Access to Cultural Data

Council Conclusions on the Transition towards an Open Science System http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8791-2016-INIT/en/pdf Recommendations for the Transition to Open Access in Austria https://zenodo.org/record/34079#.V4KeMzXGtjY German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII) http://www.rfii.de/?wpdmdl=2009


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Changing Paradigms?API availability and usage (By researchers? By research librarians? By intermediaries)?Scraper technology (Ethics? Right to Mine?)Historians want big data, but arent necessarily on a trajectory to get itdigitising and contextualising everything would be hugely resource intensive (maybe impossible, see E. Kwakkels work)need to feel they have completenessdata to narrative approach in tension with narrative to data approach (SESHAT)appropriate provenance means different things to different userscould we invent new, hybrid models of augmented IR?


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Question Timewww.parthenos-project.eu Jennifer EdmondTrinity College [email protected]

www.tcd.ie

PARTHENOS-project.eu

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