Researching the First World War in a Digital Environment. CENDARI Summer School 2014

Researching the First World War in a Digital Environment. CENDARI Summer School 2014

Organisatoren
CENDARI project (Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure)
Ort
Berlin
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
21.07.2014 - 25.07.2014
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Jakub Beneš, University of Birmingham

From 21-25 July, the second summer school of the CENDARI project (Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure) was held at the Freie Universität Berlin with the theme “Researching the First World War in a Digital Environment.” Approximately twenty participants came from thirteen countries (Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland, U.K., U.S.). They were mostly early-career historians, but some participants came from the fields of library and computer science. For five days they attended sessions led by experts in computer science, data curating in libraries and archives, First World War history, and the Digital Humanities drawn from the CENDARI project staff and beyond. These sessions explored a number of methodological possibilities for both individual and collaborative digital research on the First World War. The nascent environment that is developing to support this research (as well as research in other fields) holds a great deal of promise in spite of the fact that most primary sources remain undigitized.

JAKUB BENEŠ (University of Birmingham) opened the summer school, defining the overarching goals for the week and encouraging a collaborative atmosphere to make the most of the varied disciplinary expertise among those present. ALEXANDER MEYER (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) and WEI TAI (Trinity College Dublin) then introduced students to some of the technologies and tools that can enhance searching for and within historical sources, such as Natural Language Processing, Named Entity Recognition, extracting data from websites, rendering old documents in a more readable format with Optical Character Resolution, and so on. In the afternoon, students gained exposure to projects related to CENDARI that are also working to expand methodological horizons. OLIVER JANZ and MARGIT WUNSCH (both Freie Universität Berlin) introduced the 1914-1918 Online Encyclopedia and KERSTIN ARNOLD (Bundesarchiv Berlin) introduced the Archives Portal Europe (APEnet)/APEx project.

On Tuesday morning, SUSANNE WAIDMANN (Bundesarchiv/APEx) and PASCAL GOFFIN (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) led focus groups that respectively aimed to improve the search functions in Archives Portal Europe and to make the entity resolution in the CENDARI Virtual Research Environment (VRE) more attuned to researchers’ needs. This session underscored the stake that historians have in participating in such exercises and in understanding the basics of human-software interaction. Next, EVANTHIA DIMARA and NADIA BOUKHELIFA (both Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) introduced the CENDARI Virtual Research Environment and showed students how to begin working on their projects in this VRE. In the afternoon, a tour of the collections in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv led by CHRISTIAN SCHWARZBACH highlighted some interesting materials from the First World War and reminded all present of the overwhelming amount of undigitized archival collections (circa 38km in this repository).

The first Wednesday session presented by ALEKSANDRA PAWLICZEK and ANDREI ZAMOISKI (both Freie Universität Berlin) broached the subject of internationally dispersed archival collections and the possibilities of reconnecting them in a digital environment. Following this, students continued work in the VRE, which had less crippling bugs than the day before but was still in an experimental prototype state. To close the day, VALENTINE CHARLES and LOUISE EDWARDS (both Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag) introduced the CENDARI sister projects Europeana and The European Library as well as the fundamentals of their approach to metadata and the implications of this for research in their collections. The importance of metadata – the structured information that describes a collection or item, digitized or not – was a persistent theme throughout the summer school. To what extent this metadata can provide rich, historiographically informed information remained a controversial question: many worried that the interpretive categories that interest researchers the most (as opposed to legal metadata or basic descriptive metadata, such as author or number of pages) could pre-structure the field of study too much and thus foreclose new interpretations.

Thursday began with an inspiring session on the potential of crowdsourcing using the Zooniverse platform by JIM O’DONNELL and VICTORIA VAN HYNING (Oxford University/ Zooniverse). The War Diaries Project, a cooperation between Zooniverse, the UK National Archives and the Imperial War Museum, generated much enthusiasm even if professional historians have yet to exploit the masses of data gathered in any meaningful way. After this, PAVLINA BOBIČ (University of Birmingham) and FRANCESCA MORSELLI (Trinity College Dublin) gave students a primer in collaborative digital research using the CENDARI Archival Research Guides, a MediaWiki-based approach to collecting and organizing materials on large transnational and comparative research topics. CARSTEN THIEL (University of Göttingen) gave relevant technical instruction. Focusing attention back on the current historical questions that most of those present work to answer, ALAN KRAMER (Trinity College Dublin) gave a stimulating and incisive keynote address on trends in First World War historiography. Some students found his focus on Anglophone historical writing misplaced, given the international character of the group. On the other hand, his point that much of the conceptual innovation on the First World War has taken place within English-, French-, and German-speaking academies was persuasive.

On Friday, students worked in groups on finishing something presentable – if rudimentary – in the MediaWiki environment before presenting these results to their peers. Organizers of the summer school then led a structured discussion on the potential of researching the First World War in a digital environment, whether offered by the CENDARI project or not. Students found a great deal of promise in the early versions of the CENDARI Virtual Research Environment and the Archival Research Guides, along with the other projects and tools featured, particularly Zooniverse. The benefits for teaching students who are increasingly used to finding information and socializing in online spaces seemed obvious to many. The verdict is still out on whether the results of historical research will change as a result of these new methods. Yet in creating an interdisciplinary, international, and collaborative space for considering such questions, the 2014 CENDARI summer school has doubtless contributed to pushing forward conversations on the place of historical research within the Digital Humanities.

Conference Overview:

Wei Tai (Trinity College Dublin) and Alexander Meyer (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), Curating my research data I: The things we study – resolving entities

Oliver Janz, Margit Wunsch (Freie Universität Berlin) and Kerstin Arnold (Bundesarchiv, Berlin), CENDARI within the digital landscape: Synergies with 1914-1918 Online and APEx

Susanne Waidmann (Bundesarchiv, Berlin) and Pascal Goffin (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), Focus Groups: Searching in Archives Portal Europe and Sparklines visualization

Nadia Boukhelifa and Evanthia Dimara (both Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), Beginning research in the CENDARI Virtual Research Environment

Christian Schwarzbach (Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin), Tour of First World War collections at Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Aleksandra Pawliczek and Andrei Zamoiski (both Freie Universität Berlin), Reconnecting dispersed collections

Nadia Boukhelifa and Evanthia Dimara (both Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), Continuing research in the CENDARI Virtual Research Environment

Valentine Charles and Louise Edwards (both Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag), Curating my research data II: Getting the most out of library and other collections

Jim O'Donnell and Victoria Van Hyning, (both Oxford University/Zooniverse), Digital history at the First World War centenary: crowdsourcing, public history

Pavlina Bobič (University of Birmingham), Francesca Morselli (Trinity College Dublin) and Carsten Thiel (University of Göttingen), Collaborative research through the CENDARI archival research guides

Keynote address: Alan Kramer (Trinity College Dublin), World War I, New Historiography and New Methods

Pavlina Bobič (University of Birmingham), Francesca Morselli (Trinity College Dublin) and Carsten Thiel (University of Göttingen), Building CENDARI archival research guides

Jakub Beneš (University of Birmingham), Digital History for the First World War?


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