Cultural Heritage Creative Tools And Archives Gunter Vasold Center for Information Modelling in the Humanities, University of Graz National Museum of Denmark, Kopenhagen, 26-27 June, 2013
Preliminaries Motivation History Center for Information Modelling in the Humanities founded in 2008 Our legacy > 20 servers, various operating systems > 10 programming languages, various frameworks Proprietary formats Missing metadata Undocumented or missing source codes Lack of documentation Consolidation Start a new central platform Streamlined software stack A content strategy, not (only) a technical solution 2 / 14
Overview GAMS: A Central Infrastructur for Digital Research Projects About the name Geisteswissenschaftliches Asset Management System (Digitale Asset Management System for the Humanities) Not only a technical infrastructur, but a strategy General requirements How to store data? How to manage data? How to present data? How to keep data available? Technical components A Fedora based repository A bunch of web services A set of documented interfaces A data creation and management client: Cirilo Strategy Support for scholars from the planning phase to the project s end and beyond Consulting Training Workflows Tools 3 / 14
General Requirements General requirements OAIS conform architecture Adaptable and therefore flexible content models Strict separation of metadata, data and presentation: single source publishing Standard based formats, preferable XML-based Service oriented architecture: reusable but customizable services Flexible context definitions Well definied and documented interfaces, e.g. to harvesting projects 4 / 14
General Requirements Adaptable Content Models Not files but complex digital objects following the Fedora Digital Object Model 5 / 14
General Requirements Contexts 6 / 14
General Requirements Self-awareness Any object is aware of all changes made to it its version history its data streams its contexts all of its representation forms 7 / 14
Technical Components Technical Components 8 / 14
Over-all Strategy Over-all Strategy: Content Make all representation forms available: e.g. raw data Open licencing (Creative Commons if possible) Legal consulting 9 / 14
Over-all Strategy Over-all Strategy: Workflows 10 / 14
Over-all Strategy Over-all Strategy: Training Training of Project Partners Workshops Regular meetings Helpline Students Education BA Level Certificate Information Modelling Certificate Cyber Science MA Level European Joint Master Degree EuroMACHS (Europe, Digital Media, Arts and Cultural Heritage Studies) PHD Level Individual Support and Supervision DiXiT (Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network Marie Curie ITN) 11 / 14
Examples Some Projects Digital Editions Classical and medieval texts Moral weeklies from the 18th century Letters Sociological texts Language Corpora Image collections Art history Historical photographs Video collections Museum objects Coins Seals Archaeological collections Learning materials 12 / 14
Summary and Perspectives Conclusion In use for more than 6 years More than a simple data repository Suitable for many kind of research projects Complex objects: metdata, data streams Views: default and other representations Self awareness: data, context, views All-over strategy Individual workflows Training and education Perspectives More projects than we can handle High interest > 800 GB outgoing data / month Ongoing development of general services Many ideas 13 / 14
Summary and Perspectives http://gams.uni-graz.at Thank you for your attention! 14 / 14