1. Data Archiving and Networked Services
Computational history among
e-science, digital humanities and
research infrastructures:
accomplishments and challenges
Peter Doorn (Director, DANS)
Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research
Lisbon, November 18, 2011
DANS is an institute of KNAW and NWO

2. Contents
• What is DANS?
• E-Science & Digital Humanities
• Computational History
• Research Infrastructures

3. What is DANS?
• Institute of Dutch Academy and Research Funding
Organisation (KNAW & NWO) since 2005
• First predecessor dates back to 1964 (Steinmetz
Foundation), NHDA (Historical Data Archive 1989)
• Task: provide permanent access to data in the humanities
and social sciences (gradually expanding to other domains)
• Main activities:
– digital archive (eg. collections in history, social sciences,
archaeology)
– data projects in collaboration with research communities and
partner organisations
– advice and support (Data Seal of Approval, Persistent Identifier
Infrastructure)

4. Mission and tasks
• DANS promotes permanent access to digital
research data
• DANS encourages scientific researchers to archive
and reuse data by means of our online archiving
system EASY
• DANS provides access, through Narcis.nl, to
thousands of scientific datasets, e-publications
and other research information in the
Netherlands
• DANS provides training and advice
• DANS performs research into archiving of and
access to digital information

5. www.dans.knaw.nl

6. Electronic archiving system EASY: 20,000 data sets

7. 5 Criteria
16 guidelines
Research Data:
• can be found on the
Internet
• are accessible (clear
rights and licenses)
• are in a usable format
• are reliable
• can be referred to
(persistent identifier)
29-1-2015
Data Seal of Approval

8. Connecting content & community

9. NARCIS.nl: Research Information

10. Computational History

11. e-Science, e-Humanities and e-History
• e-Science: “Science increasingly done through
distributed global collaborations enabled by the
Internet, using very large data collections, tera-scale
computing resources and high performance
visualisation.“ (Department of Trade and Industry;
Research Council e-Science Core Programme)
• Humanities computing: “Humanities computing is an
academic field concerned with the application of
computing tools to arts and humanities data or to
their use in the creation of these data.” (McCarty
1999)

13. Historical computing
• Charles Harvey: historical computing must be concerned with the creation
of models of the past or representations of past realities.
• Matthew Woollard: History and computing is not only about historical
research, but also about historical resource creation.
• George Welling: Historical Informatics (computational history) is a new
field of interdisciplinary specialization dealing with pragmatic and
conceptual issues related to the use of information and communication
technologies in the teaching, research and public communication of
history.
• Lawrence McCrank (2002): Historical information science integrates
equally the subject matter of a historical field of investigation, quantified
social science and linguistic research methodologies, computer science and
technology, and information science, which is focused on historical
information sources, structures, and communications.”
• Boonstra, Breure, Doorn (2004): Historical information science is the
discipline that deals with specific information problems in historical
research and in the sources that are used for historical research, and tries
to solve these information problems in a generic way with the help of
computing tools

14. Four categories of information problems in
historical research
• information problems…
– of historical sources (representation)
– of relationships between sources (harmonization, linkage)
– of historical analysis (qualitative and quantitative)
– of the presentation of sources or analysis (visualization,
edition)
Life cycle of
historical
information

15. What kind of digital infrastructure do
historians and other humanities
scholars need?

16. Digitalising historical censuses

17. www.volkstellingen.nl

20. Shipping in the “Golden Age”

21. Journal entries, 26-29 September 1758
Ship’s name: Noordbeveland
Month: September
Year: 1758
Day: Tuesday
Date: 26th
Weather on board Wind
Peculiarities

22. Dutch Shipping Routes 1750-1850
Courtesy of CLIWOC project, KNMI

23. Collaboratories

24. Qualitative interviews and oral history data
• Sustainable storage of digital collection
of “Telling Witnesses”
– 500 interviews (videos en transcripts) with
eyewitnesses to WW II
– 46 projects, funded by Ministry of Health,
welfare and sport
• Veteran Tapes
– Collaboration with Veterans Institute and
KWALON (Working Group for Qualitative
Research), funded by SURF Foundation
– 1000 interviews with veterans (WO II to
Bosnia)
– Enhanced publication: 25 transcripts, 6
researchers, book & web, links to archive

25. Medieval Memoria Online

26. Infrastructures are required to support
and maintain the collaborative efforts
• Services need to be sustainable
• Therefore they need to be generic and re-usable
DARIAH, the emerging
Digital Research
Infrastructure for the Arts
and Humanities aims to
“link and provide access to
distributed digital source
materials of many kinds”

27. European Research Infrastructures: DARIAH.EU
and CLARIN.EU
• DARIAH: Digital Research Infrastructure for the
Arts and Humanities
• CLARIN: Common Language Resources and
Technology Infrastructure
• Collaboration: CLARIAH – Common Lab Research
Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities
(proposal for National Roadmap submitted
yesterday!)

28. DARIAH member states and national contact partners
29.01.2015Name 29.01.201529.01.2015 Seite 28
Zagreb/Croatia
Copenhagen/
Denmark (VCC2)
Ljubljana/Slovenia
Vienna
Goettingen
Den Haag/
Netherlands
(VCC3)
Dublin
Paris
Athens
Germany
(VCC1/
VCC4/DCO)
France
(VCC3/DCO)
Austria
(VCC1)
Ireland
(VCC2)
London
UK
Vilnius
Lithuania
Swit-
zerlandBern
Italy
Norway
Oslo
Tirana/
Albania
Belgrade
Serbia
Ministry of Tourism Culture
Youth and Sports
Digital Renaissance Foundation (FRD)
Florence
Swiss Academy of Humanities
and Social Sciences
National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
TGE ADONIS
University of Goettingen
Goettingen State and University
Library (SUB)
Irish Research Council for the
Humanities and Social Sciences
(IRCHSS)
King's College London
Centre for e-Research (CeRcH)
Data Archiving and
Networked Services (DANS)
University of Oslo
Museum of Cultural History (KHM)
Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)
Institute for Corpus Linguistics
and Text Technology
Institute of Contemporary History (ICH)
Center for Digital Humanities (CDH)
Academy of Athens (AA)
Research Centre for the Study
of Modern Greek History
Digital Curation Unit (DCU)
Institute for the Management
of Information Systems
Vilnius University
University of Copenhagen (KU)
Department of Scandinavian Research
Member
Observer
Cooperating Partner
Non-EU (Cooperating Partner)
Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI)
Centre for Information and Computer Science

29. Add 3D and Virtual Reality content to Europeana

30. 19 partners from 13 countries

31. Data Archiving and Networked Services
Anna van Saksenlaan 10, 2593 HT Den Haag. Postbus 93067, 2509 AB Den Haag.
T 070 3446 484, F 070 3446 482, E info@dans.knaw.nl
Thank you for your attention!
www.dans.knaw.nl