Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

Descrizione del progetto

The goal of this project is to promote an engagement -- to establish a Community of Practice (CoP) that will bring together individuals, projects, and organisations interested in the adaptation of Open and FAIR infrastructure and principles to the needs of the Humanities and Cultural Heritage research community and encouraging their adoption where appropriate by individual researchers and projects. More specifically, we intend to - DISCOVER: Establish a Working Group that brings together HCH researchers and projects with Open and FAIR advocacy and support organisations in order to understand Open and FAIR HCH Research Data Management (RDM); - DEMONSTRATE: Develop leadership within the HCH community by supporting collaboration among data-centric HCH research projects on common FAIR RDM problems; and - MOBILISE: Promote knowledge of Open and FAIR RDM principles and infrastructure through annual workshops, conference sessions, and summer schools. BREADTH OF PARTNERSHIP The initial project team includes leaders in international HCH and data research, standards, and infrastructure representing a number of important national and international societies, research projects, standards, and infrastructure organisations including the Text Encoding Initiative, Research Data Alliance, DARIAH, OpenAire, Force11, and Portage/FRDR. From this initial core, we anticipate expanding relatively quickly to incorporate a number of other major initiatives in North and South America, Europe, and Japan.

THE CHALLENGE
The last decade has seen great advances in the development of infrastructure, tools, and principles for the collection, storage, discovery, and dissemination of research data. Governments, funders, libraries and consortia, and private corporations have made large investments in what is rapidly becoming a robust Open and FAIR (Finadable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) research data ecosystem.
This ecosystem, however, was built largely with the needs of "Big Data" Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in mind. While Humanities and Cultural Heritage (HCH) researchers and projects are encouraged to engage with it (including in the instructions to this grant), the fit is often poor. Where Big Data STEM typically involves large datasets produced through experiment,
observation, or analysis, "Small Data" HCH research often involves deep analysis and intensive curation
of very small data sets focussed primarily on representation. While such projects can benefit from the thoughtful adoption and adaptation of Open and FAIR architecture and principles -- particularly when it comes to ensuring long-term support, dissemination, and impact -- this adaptation requires community engagement and input: thoughtful and bidirectional communication among grass-roots researchers and the organisations responsible for creating and supporting the Open and FAIR ecosystem.

OVERALL GOAL AND SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
The goal of this project is to promote that engagement -- to establish a Community of Practice (CoP) that will bring together individuals, projects, and organisations interested in the adaptation of Open and FAIR infrastructure and principles to the needs of the HCH research community and encouraging their adoption where appropriate by individual researchers and projects. More specifically, we intend to

• DISCOVER: Establish a Working Group that brings together HCH researchers and projects with Open and FAIR advocacy and support organisations in order to understand Open and FAIR HCH Research Data Management (RDM);
• DEMONSTRATE: Develop leadership within the HCH community by supporting collaboration among data-centric HCH research projects on common FAIR RDM problems; and
• MOBILISE: Promote knowledge of Open and FAIR RDM principles and infrastructure through annual workshops, conference sessions, and summer schools.

BREADTH OF PARTNERSHIP
The initial project team includes leaders in international HCH and data research, standards, and infrastructure representing a number of important national and international societies, research projects, standards, and infrastructure organisations including the Text Encoding Initiative, Research Data Alliance, DARIAH, OpenAire, Force11, and Portage/FRDR. From this initial core, we anticipate expanding relatively quickly to incorporate a number of other major initiatives in North and South
America, Europe, and Japan.
The important thing about this project, however, is the opportunity it provides for these organisations to engage reciprocally with the HCH research community. The goal is to assist HCH researchers in learning about Open and FAIR principles and help our partners understand how this community can be better served by their infrastructure, policies, and tools. The individual team members have extensive experience in building such communities, including in several cases with previous SSHRC funding.

Risultati e pubblicazioni

Digital Medievalist (PI: O’Donnell, SSHRC ITST 2003-2004). Created an international Community of Practice (now over 2000 members) for the communal development of “consistent and predictable implementations of international technical standards” (1) for early web-era HCH research. Led by O’Donnell and Rosselli del Turco.

Visionary Cross (PI: O’Donnell, SSHRC SRG 2010-201; Insight 2015-2020; CFI 2015-2020).
Supported acquisition and analysis of 2D, 3D, and textual data to develop an edition of early medieval stone crosses and manuscripts. O’Donnell, Rosselli Del Turco, Callieri, and Singh participated in this grant, which will supply data to the project.

Leoni, Chiara, Marco Callieri, Matteo Dellepiane, Daniel Paul O'Donnell, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco, Roberto Scopigno. 2015. “The Dream and the Cross: a 3D scanning project to bring 3D content in a digital edition.” Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. February. Published version: DOI: 10.1145/2686873.

O’Donnell DP, Baker P, Cummings J, Foys M, McGillivray M, Rosselli Del Turco R, et al. The Digital Medievalist Project: A Community of Practice for Image, Text, Sound and Technology Research [Internet]. 2004. Available from:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dh1chtfn4rqlapk/DigitalMedievalistITST2004.pdf?dl=0

O’Donnell DP. The bird in hand: Humanities research in the age of open data. In: Figshare, editor. The state of open data: A selection of analyses and articles about open data, curated by Figshare. London: Digital Science; 2016. p. 34–5. (Digital Science Report).

O’Donnell DP, Walter KL, Fraistat N, Gil A. Only connect: The globalization of the Digital
Humanities. In: Schreibman S, Siemens RG, Unsworth J, editors. A new companion to digital humanities. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons Inc; 2016. p. 493–510.

O’Donnell, Daniel Paul, Matteo Callieri, Marco Dellepiane, Catherine Karkov, Dot Porter, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco. 2018. “Archaeology in the Study: Scanning Anglo-Saxon Artifacts in the Visionary Cross Project.” Wiðowinde 185 (Spring): 21-27. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1208167.