BærUt!
Bærekraftige Digitale Vitenskapelig Utgaver

UB/SamDig
February 13, 2024

09:00 to 09:30

Annika Rockenberger

Background

IT for Research at the
University of Oslo

The Strategic Coordination Group for IT in Research (SK-ITF) coordinates and recommends measures within IT in research at the university and reports to the Research Committee.

Source: https://www-int.usit.uio.no/om/it-dir/strategi/masterplan/sk/sk-itf/

Hub/Nodes

  • Funded by UiO's Strategic Coordination Group for IT in Research as a Hub/Node network
     

  • Hub/Node organisation as a measure of implementing UiO's research infrastructure masterplan
     

  • Researchers, research support units, and central IT

Key information

  • Lead Annika Rockenberger (50%), specialist in textual scholarship and digital research methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences at UB
     

  • Digital Scholarship Center at the University Library supplies support staff & locations for workshops, training events, seminars, conferences; takes over activities after project end
     

  • Research Assistant(s) (50%)
     

  • Budget: 2.68 mio. kroner (salaries, events & conferences)
     

  • Project duration: 2024–2026

Partners

  • University of Oslo, mainly:

    • Faculty of Humanities,

    • Faculty of Theology,

    • Museum of Cultural History,

    • Museum of University History and History of Science

    • University Library

    • IT Department

    • HumIT at Faculty of Humanities

  • Oslo Metropolitan University

  • Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society

  • Munch Museum

  • Open for anyone, targeted towards researchers, software engineers and cultural heritage specialists

Why Do We Need BærUt?

Point of departure
Problem statement
Solution proposal

Humanities Data: 
Multi-disciplinary, Multilingual,
Semi-structured,
Costly and Crucial

  • Humanities data is often text or text-like phenomena & often in semi-structured formats

  • There are standards for markup, coding, metadata, but they are not widely known and discipline-specific

  • A lot of resources are invested in creating DSEs

  • They are aimed to be used widely across academic, cultural heritage, educational and cultural institutions and society at large

Problem:
Retention and Sharing of Skills & Knowledge,
Technical & Philological Maintenance of DSEs

  • In Norway, there are no national or international solutions for long-term archiving of DSE data, systems and user interfaces, for data accessibility, for operation of systems

  • Cannot guarantee access to and reuse of humanities data after project end

  • Valuable and precious data in outdated, unusable or legacy systems with no one to host, maintain and further develop

  • Non-Norwegian/Scandinavian materials will not be systematically indexed, archived, or kept accessible by large cultural heritage institutions like National Libary or National Archives

Transdisciplinarity as a Solution

  • Transfer & development of skills and knowledge between projects, disciplines, Departments and academic and cultural heritage organisations
     
  • Transfer & development of skills between project-based, departmental, and central IT and developer groups

University Library as a Key Player

  • Expertise in long-term preservation, accessibility, and curation of cultural heritage material

  • Strong focus on data management and FAIR & CARE principles

  • Longer-term strategy

  • Permanent hires

  • System admins, developers and digital research methods experts

  • Researchers with humanities domain expertise

  • Digital Scholarship Center

  • Physical meeting place

  • Methods partners, training and teaching

Structure

Hub and Nodes

Hub
UB

  • Data modeling

  • Systems and architecture

  • DSE foundational skills

  • Feasibility study

  • Mapping DSEs in Norway

  • Preparing NFR Infrastructure application

Encoding: Relational and Graph Databases

Material Philology

Automatic Transcription

User
Interface

HumIT

Encoding:
XML

IT Dept.

Organisation
of the Hub

Roles and Tasks

Ambassadors

  • Bring BærUt! into the Depts.
     
  • Distribute communications
     
  • Advertise the network to fellow researchers at their Depts.
     
  • Assist with distributing the survey
     
  • Inform the network about relevant developments at their Depts.
  • Should be on-site
  • Well connected at their Depts.
  • Allocate 1-2hrs per month

Node Facilitators

  • Domain experts for a specific node
     
  • Contribute to resources to the node
     
  • Hosting network meetings and skill-sharing sessions
     
  • Suggest activities, invitations to guest speakers, etc.
     
  • Relay wishes from the node to the Hub/coordinator
     
  • Editorial Board for the blog?
  • Monthly check-in meeting w/ coordinators
  • 5-10hrs per month for hosting, activities, resource gathering, etc.

Network Members

  • Anyone!
  • You want to learn something? Join!
  • You want to share something? Join!
  • You want to teach something? Join!
  • You want a sparring partner for a project? Join!
  • You want to get feedback from peers? Join!
  • You want to meet people who love dead languages and computers? Join?
  • You want people to use your scholarly editions? Join!
  • You need to do more productive procrastination? Join!
  • You are unsure whether this is for you? Join!

We're here for you!

Hub

Task Group
Surveying DSEs at UiO and in Norway

  • Annika Rockenberger (UB)
  • Johanne Emilie Christensen (UB)
  • Federico Aurora (UB)
  • Andrea Dale Wefring (HumIT)
  • Anders Nøklestad (HumIT)
  • Kristian Salcedo (UB)

Scientific Board
Surveying DSEs at UiO and in Norway

  • Hugo Lundhaug (UiO/TF)
  • Jens Erlend Braarvig (UiO/IKOS/Filologisk Institutt)
  • Ellen Wiger (NB)
  • Katrine Frøkjær Baunvig (Uni Aarhus/Grundtvig Center)
  • Martina Scholger (Uni Graz/ZIM)
  • Gioele Barabucci (Uni Cologne/CCeH)

Task Group
Feasibility Study

  • Members from
    UB,
    HumIT,
    IT Department

Activities

Knowledge and Competence 

Course offer

  • Hands-on workshops
    • XML
    • X-technologies
    • TEI, MEI
    • relational databases
    • graph databases
    • automatic text recognition
    • data modeling
    • archiving
    • minimal editing
  • 5 Research seminars
  • 2 Conferences

Events Spring Term 2024

11 March: Network Meeting

8-9 April: "404 not found" Approaches to Sustainable Editions

21 May: Shut Up & Survey 

28 May: Shut Up & Survey

10 June: Automatic Text Recognition of Astrid Lindgren's Short Hand Manuscripts w/Raphaela Heil

11 June: Workshop w/Raphaela Heil

 

 

Conferences 2025 & 2026

2.5 day conference in April 2025

 

2.5 day "project end" conference in late November 2026

Deliverables

2024/25

  • Surveying digital scholarly editions (DSEs) at UiO - and in Norway
     
  • Feasibility study for the establishment of a DSE infrastructure at the University Library together with HumIT and IT Department
     

2025/26

  • Whitepaper "Recommendations for the Long-Term Archiving, Accessing, and Maintenance of Digital Scholarly Editions Created in Norwegian Academic and Cultural Heritage Institutions"
     
  • Preparation of NRC-infrastructure application (2026)

Network

  • UiO-network for researchers, developers and  research support around DSEs

 

  • linking relevant national, Nordic and international research networks around DSEs

​

  • ​interdisciplinary, philological-technical, multilingual

Contact

baerut-admin@ub.uio.no