CLARIN-D Blog

Data Management in the Humanities: Progress in the Standardisation of Metadata Formats for Language-related Research Data

Data Management in the Humanities: Progress in the Standardisation of Metadata Formats for Language-related Research Data

In July 2019, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a new standard which contributes to describing language-related research data in a significant and sustainable way during archiving. The Standard ISO 24622-2 "Component Metadata Specification Language" standardizes procedures for defining a schema for descriptions tailored to requirements of specific types of research data.

When research data is archived, information about the data is collected and made available in a way that allows other researchers to find the data and to assess the relevance of the data from the description. In addition, potential users can get an idea of how they could incorporate this data into their own research and use it to answer research questions of their own. These descriptions are called metadata.

Experience shows that due to differences in the types of research data and research questions, it is very difficult to find an all-encompassing, universal pattern - or schema - according to which these descriptions can be created. For instance, the description of psychological experiments (number of test persons, research question, free and bound variables, recording system, etc.) are described in a different way than collections of texts for grammatical investigations or for the creation of word embeddings (number of "words", language, length of texts, source of texts, age of texts, authors, etc.). Despite their long tradition, libraries for books have a variety of metadata formats, e.g. Dublin Core, MARC 21, PREMIS, MODS. Many metadata schemas have some fields - also called data categories - that resemble each other, as well as some areas where they differ. In order to enable both an adequate description of research data and the utilisation of similar metadata

Read more

Learning DH and Networking across Europe with CLARIN

Learning DH and Networking across Europe with CLARIN

Take 70 international young scholars in the digital humanities (DH), 11 different classes taught by experienced experts, a couple of presentations by scholars showing their work from various DH subfields, add a social program with excursions to museums and sites of culture: Voilà. In the summer 2017, "Culture & Technology" - The European Summer University in Digital Humanities (ESU) was an excellent venue for scholars to learn about and practice DH methods, expand their horizon to different research questions in the DH and create international networks of expertise.

Existing tools and data sets were utilized to demonstrate usecases and to work on classroom projects based on participants’ interests. CLARIN, as a major contributor to the DH infrastructure in Europe, strongly supported these activities by sponsoring classes related to the CLARIN services, which provide tools, data sets, and workflows.

ESU 2017 organizers: Elisabeth Burr and her team organized the summer school at Leipzig University
ESU 2017 organizers: Elisabeth Burr and her team organized the summer school at Leipzig University

Organized by an enthusiastic team around Elisabeth Burr, the summer school, which was established at the University of Leipzig, Germany in 2009, was again cosponsored by CLARIN – besides receiving funding from Leipzig University, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and other national and international institutions.  This allowed about 70 participants from almost all over the world to take part in the proceedings of the summer school, including intensive courses in small groups applying DH methods and working on research questions. From Russia to the USA, with the majority of participants coming from European countries ranging from Bulgaria to France, the summer school was an international networking event for young scholars and international experts in DH.

Participants of ESU 2017 listening to a presentation on an international art project
Participants of ESU 2017 listening to a presentation on an international
Read more

ESU European Summer School for Digital Humanities, Leipzig 2015

https://youtu.be/Oh7UJi_21l8

The European Summer University in Digital Humanities has brought together Digtal Humanities students and researchers, to discuss different topics and to learn about new methods. CLARIN-D a research infrastructure for the Digital Humanities, wich works with language data, was part of the Summer School.

This clip shows interviews with participants, scholars and organizers of the summer school.

Read more