Presentation by: Panos Constantopoulos Athens University of Economics and Business, Athena Research Centre Costis Dallas Toronto University, Panteion University, Athena Research Centre Presenter: Dimitris Gavrilis Full-day session on archaeological infrastructures and services at the 18th Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (CHNT) conference Vienna, Austria 11th -13th November 2013

1. DYAS: The Greek Research Infrastructure Network for the Humanities
Panos Constantopoulos
Costis Dallas
Athens University of Economics and Business &
Athena Research Centre
Toronto University &
Panteion University &
Athena Research Centre
Presenter: Dimitris Gavrilis
CHNT 18 , Vienna, November 2013

2. New realities for arts and humanities scholarship
•Increasing multi-disciplinarity
•International, distributed communities of knowledge
•Rise of digital scholarship The promise of a virtually unified digital space
•“Primary” digital collections resulting from large-scale digitisation
•Distributed, heterogeneous information assets on the Web
•Digital communication for scholarship
Yet…
•Technical, intellectual and social barriers
•Continuing dependence of scholarly research on paper- and collections- bound primary resources
Digital information in the arts and humanities
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3. Digital information in the arts and humanities: levels of understanding
Object level
•Dealing with tangible and intangible cultural objects
•How are such objects constituted from an information viewpoint? Process level
•Dealing with information use
•How are arts and humanities information objects created, accessed, used, modified? Discourse level
•Dealing with knowledge system and practices
•How does the information system function, at the level of pragmatics, as a knowledge system?
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4. Some current issues
•Accumulation of vast amounts of disaggregated, digitised and born- digital information, some not from traditional collections
•Digital cultural assets not just about ‘primary’ cultural objects (texts, artefacts, art works, etc.), but increasingly about object histories, interpretations, narratives
•Significant loss of context and interpretation in the course of moving from paper-bound to digital information practices
•Emergence of diversified interpretive communities, with different frames of reference, goals and information affordances
•Multi- and inter-disciplinary research, multilingual audiences, the Internet generation, …
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A virtually unified digital space
•Due to unified access to autonomous digital collections
•Value multiplier
•Pre-condition: syntactic and semantic interoperability

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Interplay between scholarly and information lifecycles
Source: UC Curation Center / California Digital Library, Merritt: An Emergent Micro-services Approach to
Digital Curation Infrastructure, Rev. 0.6 – 2010-03-25

7. Actors in information processes
After D. Bearman & J. Trant,
http://www.archimuse.com/papers/ukoln98paper/index.html
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8. Digital resources
Kinds of digital resources:
Data, primary and secondary
Models
•Guides for interpreting and associating data Terminology
For all digital resources one should ensure:
quality
preservation
usability
digital curation
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9. Digital curation
A set of activities aimed at:
•producing good quality, trusted digital assets;
•organization and archiving;
•preserving the assets, as well as their conceptual foundation and context;
•enabling the generation of new knowledge from those assets; and
•enabling access and use Interdisciplinary
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10. appraisal
context management
ingestion
knowledge enhancement
classification
indexing
cataloguing
presentation publication dissemination
preservation
repository management
authority management
goal and usage models
domain
models
usage experiences
digital resources lifecycle management
digital curation
Digital curation process model (DCU)
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11. Major challenges
Support multiple interpretation and context
•Interpretive communities: by language, cultural identity, scientific tradition, …
•Alternative interpretations: authoritative interpretation challenged Evolving semantics:
•Research induces re-interpretation
•Collections are conceptually re-organized and symbolic representations renewed Support scholarly discourse and knowledge process
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DARIAH
The grand vision for DARIAH is to facilitate long-term preservation of and access to arts and humanities research data.
Scholars can use DARIAH to:
•find and use a wide range of digital content from across Europe
•find and use tools that aid data interpretation
•participate in experimentation and innovation with other scholars from across multiple domains
•seek advice, and exchange ideas and knowledge on all aspects of digital scholarship
•ensure that they work to accepted standards and best practices
•ensure the long-term preservation of data

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DARIAH Virtual Competency Centres
VCC1 : e-Infrastructure
VCC2 : Research & Education Liaison
VCC3 : Scholarly Content Management
VCC4 : Advocacy, Impact & Outreach

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The Greek National Digital Infrastructure for the Humanities – DYAS / DARIAH-GR
Construction phase: 2013-2015
Objective
To support the Greek communities of humanities researchers in advancing their work using ICT and in exchanging knowledge and working practices;
to broaden the scope of and opportunities for research through the interconnection of various distributed digital resources;
to promote the access, use, creation and long-term preservation of research data, both primary and secondary, in digital form.
DYAS also operates as DARIAH-GR , i.e. the Greek component of DARIAH, the European Infrastructure for Arts and Humanities.

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Specific goals
Offer a mechanism for sharing digital resources developed by the research community and for facilitating the development of those resources.
Support the creation of mechanisms and systems for the trusted management of research data.
Ensure the creation of a dynamic unified information space for the humanities through the interoperability of data and systems.
Spread the use of open tools for research and collaboration.
Contribute to the spreading of knowledge and skills for the effective use of digital resources and ICT in the humanities.
Contribute to the development and adoption of mechanisms and systems for rights management.
Explore and promote ways for social exploitation of the digital resources of the humanities.

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Curation services
DYAS architecture
Computational services (cloud)
Repository services
Preservation services
Interoperability services
Resource sharing services
DARIAH services
Digital Humanities Observatory
Portal
Resource development services & guidelines

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Resource sharing services
Data source and collections registry
Metadata registry
Ontology and terminology registry
Software services registry

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Resource development services and guidelines
Data collections development Metadata development Terminology development Standards and best practices Rights management Training Content management
•Guidelines for content management, repository development, and long-term preservation
•Systems for small users

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DARIAH services
Coordination with the activities of DARIAH-EU
Accessing DARIAH services

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Digital Humanities Observatory
Activities
•Continuous monitoring and recording of the advances in the field of Digital Humanities
•Qualitative and quantitative analyses
•Focus groups
•Dissemination actions

21. DYAS consortium
Academy of Athens, co-ordinator
Athena Research Centre
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Athens School of Fine Arts
Institute for Communication and Computer Systems, National Technical University of Athens
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas
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22. DYAS organization scheme
DYAS is designed as a distributed infrastructure with members at distinct levels of involvement and procedures for admitting new members. The levels of involvement are reflected in the hierarchy of roles: Members:
•Management nodes provide the services of the infrastructure and set the specifications for digital resources currently, the Academy of Athens and Athena Research Centre
•Curators responsible for specific collections and added-value repositories
•Affiliates provide selected metadata for ingestion by the management nodes External users:
•subscribe to specific services of the network, thus widely offering the benefits of DYAS and DARIAH services to researchers, educators and collection managers.
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23. Infrastructures
Best practice networks
DYAS links
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CARARE
DARIAH - EU
DYAS / DARIAH - GR
ARIADNE
EHRI
3D-ICONS
Europeana Cloud
CLARIN- GR
Lo Cloud

24. Conclusion : A digital infrastructure for scholarship
Central for scholarly research Scholarly processes grounded on the needs of specific epistemic communities, e.g. in art history, or archaeology Integration of contextual information on form, function, provenance and cultural-historical interpretation through event-centric representation methodologies Accounting for domain knowledge in specific disciplinary domains Accounting for needs of dynamic evolution of knowledge through social semantics, annotation, versioning etc. Attention to requirements for current and emerging methodologies in humanistic research
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25. The development of the DYAS infrastructure is funded by the National Strategic Development Framework (ΕΣΠΑ) 2007-2013 through the projects DARIAH-ATTIKH and DARIAH-ΕΠΑΕ.
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