DANS is an institute of KNAW and NWO

From “me and my database” to linked data resources in the humanities

Peter Doorn - Director, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS); coordinator, “Preparing DARIAH” (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities)

 Presentation for European Science Foundation (ESF) Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) Strategic Workshop on research communities and research infrastructures in the Humanities Strasbourg – France, 29-30 October 2010, Theme 5: Integrating extant resources

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Contents

− Data silos− Preserving silos− 1980s & 1990s: me & my database− Last decade: linking resources in collaboratories,

portals, etc.− Infrastructures needed to support this− The next phase: linked open data?

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Thousands of data silos in the humanities

Historical databases Archaeological GIS

Linguistic corpora

Arts image collectionsLiterary text bases

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Thousands of data silos in the humanities

Historical databases Archaeological GIS

Linguistic corpora

Arts image collectionsLiterary text bases

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Digital preservation is necessary!

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Digital preservation is no luxury!

Storing the tapes of the population census 1973 of SudanCourtesy: Robert McCaa, IPUMS

Data Archiving and Networked Services

1980s and 1990s: Me & my data

Me & my database in History and Computing:− This is the source I use− This is the software I used− This is how I put my source in the database

Me & my GIS in Archaeological Computing:− These are my finds− This is how I entered them in a GIS− Look at the nice maps I can make!

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Since the last decade: let’s open up and connect the silos!

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Collaboratories

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Services:

ADS Archive – W/SADS ArchSearch – W/SCIMEC NMR (TB z39.50)DANS, EASY – OAI PMHRCAHMS – W/SKUAS NMR – W/S

ADS ARENA II Technical Demonstrator

ARENA portal

Data Archiving and Networked Services

14Jan Luiten van Zanden

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Gapminder to visualize world inequality

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Digital Collaboratory for Cultural Dendrochronology

Esther Jansma

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Dendrochronology: the science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks

Applications in the humanities:

• Dating of objects (when was the tree lumbered?)

• Origin of objects (where did the wood come from?)

• Studies of wood technology

• Studies about the ways ancient landscapes were exploited

Spin-offs: knowledge about economy, technology and landscape/environmental change in the past

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Data Archiving and Networked Services

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Data collection RING

Data collections of ‘old wood’ for The Netherlands

− Private sector in The Netherlands (6000 BC-present): • > 2000 research projects• > 20.000 measurement series at 13.000 trees (60%

dated)

− Private sector and universities in Germany:• Archaeology: e.g. Dorestad• Cultural heritage: many objects from The Netherlands

and Flanders• Architectural history: North and East NL, Amsterdam

Data Archiving and Networked Services

DCCD architecture

Data layer

Controlled vocabulary

User layer

Depositors control access to their data

Persistent storage in DANS Electronic Archiving System

Data Archiving and Networked Services

5 Criteria16 guidelines

The research data:− can be found on the Internet− are accessible (clear rights

and licenses)− are in a usable format− are reliable− can be referred to (persistent

identifier)

www.datasealofapproval.org

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Infrastructures are required to support and maintain the collaborative efforts

− Services need to be sustainable− Therefore they need to be generic and re-usable

DARIAH, the emerging Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities aims to “link and provide access to distributed digital source materials of many kinds”

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Starting infrastructure project of Holocaust archives and researchers in collaboration with DARIAH

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Infrastructure proposals in preparation

Calls − INFRA-2011-1.1.3. Integrating Digital Archives and

Resources for Research on Medieval and Modern European History

− INFRA-2011-1.1.4. Integrating Archives for research on Contemporary European Social History

Data Archiving and Networked Services

The next phase

− Linking different kinds of information

− Linked open data: semantic web technologies

Data Archiving and Networked Services

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Four principles of linked data (T.B.L.)

1. Use URIs to identify things2. Use HTTP URIs so that these things can be referred to

and looked up ("dereferenced") by people and user agents

3. Provide useful information about the thing when its URI is dereferenced, using standard formats such as RDF/XML

4. Include links to other, related URIs in the exposed data to improve discovery of other related information on the Web

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Linked Library Cloud mid-2010

Ross Singer, Code4Lib2010 - http://code4lib.org/conference/2010/singer

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Examples of Linked Data projects

−UK: http://data.gov.uk/−US: http://www.data.gov/−NL: http://politicalmashup.nl/

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Linked data and Open Annotations in Alfalab project

TextLab, SpaceLab, LifeLab

Data Archiving and Networked Services

Finally, an integrated data infrastructure!

Yeah. Now if I can just remember where I put that file...