EVENTS

As the field of digital humanities evolves, it still appears to suffer from a split between large-scale digital infrastructures and the researchers who will use the created digital humanities tools. These infrastructures are often developed by institutions or consortia at an international level. Some of the more ambitious recent projects, such as the CENDARI project itself, were created under the 7th framework programme of the European Commission.

In this Expert Seminar we want to draw attention to the role of the user in large-scale digitisation projects and digital infrastructures. Who decides which tools are created or which projects are funded? Are users involved in that process? Can the target audience be accurately defined? Are the users of these databases and  infrastructures involved in the creation, testing, and adjustments? What can we learn from current projects and the way they may or may not involve the user from the initial stage to the digital infrastructure launch?

– 13.00: Marian Lefferts (Executive Manager CERL) Welcome
– 13.10: Stijn Van Rossem & Kathleen Walker-Meikle (Project Officers CERL): Trusted User? How to built a user base for digital infrastructures? Experiences from the CENDARI project

“We really need to get rid of the waterfall model when testing digital infrastructures”

– 13.25: Joris van Zundert (Researcher and Developer Computational and Digital Humanities Huygens ING): Consider a Spherical User…

“I return once again to the question of whether large scale digital infrastructures are compatible with user needs where ‘user’ is loosely defined as a humanities researcher. Of course, a sufficiently tortured definition of ‘user’ will grant any infrastructure a theoretical audience and use. But how can we sincerely answer to vastly complex and heterogeneous research requirements?”

– 13.40: Emiliano Degl’Innocenti (Associate Editor at Frontiers in Digital Humanities SISMEL, DARIAH-IT): Join or die: how large scale digital infrastructures will shape the future of digital humanities
– 13.55: Questions
– 14.05: Break
– 14.15: Alastair Dunning (Programme Manager Europeana): Europeana Research as a Platform

“Users do not need to know about large-scale infrastructures”

– 14.35: Marnix van Berchum (Head of Data Services, DANS): “Let’s Dance” – on digital musicology, preservation of research data and pragmatism

“Is there a ‘versus’ between the Preservation and Use of research data?”

– 14.50: Questions
– 15.00: Break
– 15.15: Discussion led by Marco de Niet (Director Digital Heritage Netherlands – DEN)
– 16.45: Conclusion