Dallas 2013 - Digital Curatorship

8/12/2019 Dallas 2013 - Digital Curatorship

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Costis Dallas (2013) Digital curatorship: Onto-epistemological considerationsand implications for cultural information systems

Digital curatorshipOnto-epistemological considerations

and implications for cultural information systems

Costis DallasDirector of Museum Studies & Associate Professor

Faculty of InformationUniversity of Toronto

[email protected]


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Costis Dallas (2013) Scholarly activity, information requirements and researchinfrastructures: European initiatives and intellectual foundations

Outline

Introduction: research projects and interests Studying scholarly research practices and digital

research methods Formal representation of cultural objects Curation-aware cultural information systems

What is curated? An ontological inquiry

Who is the curator? An epistemological inquiry

The methods of digital curatorship The activity of digital curation Digital infrastructures as tools for curatorship


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RESEARCH PROJECTS ANDINTERESTS

Introduction


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Studying scholarly practices

and digital research methods

EHRI, DARIAH-EU, ARIADNE &

Europeana Cloud projects


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Studying scholarly practice and needsin EU research projects: background

Semi-structured interviews in the PreparingDARIAH project (Digital Curation Unit-IMIS,Athena Research Centre, Greece)

Mixed methods research in EHRI, based on: Researcher questionnaire survey (N: 277; DCU,

Greece)

15 semi-structured interviews with researchers

(DCU, Greece) 20 semi-structured interviews with archivists (KCL,

UK; NIOD, Netherlands)


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Studying scholarly practice and needsin EU research projects: ongoing

Europeana Cloud - Unlocking Europes Research via the Cloud Expert forums, case studies, questionnaire surveys (2013-2014)

DARIAH-EU Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts andHumanities Mixed methods research on Understanding scholarly practice,

based on transnational questionnaire survey and digital humanitiesproject profiling (2013-2015)

Digital methods ontology work, in collaboration with NeDiMAH(2013-2015)

ARIADNE - Advanced Research Infrastructure for ArchaeologicalDatasets Networking in Europe Archaeological research methods SIG (2013-2016)


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Europeana Cloud: Research user

requirements: digital research practices,

tools and content

Desk research: digital research practices and

digital tools state of the art

Research Communities web survey

Identification and creation of Humanities and

Social Sciences case studies

User requirements analysis


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Scholarly Research Activity Model


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DARIAH-EU VCC2 Task 2 work:approach and objectives

Specification of digital infrastructures for the arts andhumanities should address the historical practices,needs and perceptions of scholars

Evidence-based substantiation of infrastructure

requirements and specification How scholars interact with the whole spectrum of

information and conceptual entities, digital as well as non-digital

Understand differences between disciplines and approaches

Develop a conceptual framework for the identificationof methods, categories and properties representingscholarly research


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Formal representations of

cultural heritage objects

LoCloud and ARIADNE projects


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Representing cultural objects:background

CIDOC CRM (Conceptual Reference Model) CARARE Connecting Archaeology and

Architecture with Europeana project Definition of an XML schema for archaeological and

architectural monuments and their representations(CARARE Schema v. 1.0) Mapping of CARARE Schema to the Europeana Data

Model (EDM)

3D-ICONS - 3D Digitisation of Icons of Architectural

and Archaeological Heritage Extension of the CARARE Schema to cover the

representation of 3D architectural models (v. 2.0)


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Representing cultural objects:current and future work

LoCloud (2013-2015) Metadata mapping of cultural resources from

Wikimedia and social media contexts

Conceptual modeling of historic and vernacularnames, places and locations using SKOS

ARIADNE (2013-2016) Individuation, mereology and emergent

classification of archaeological monuments

Conceptualizing and representing artefact andmonument descriptions as knowledge objects


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Curation-aware metadata

repositories

LoCloud, ARIADNE and DYAS

Greek Network of Digital ResearchInfrastructures


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Repository work: background

Evidence-based specifications for acuration-aware research repository

Preparing DARIAH and EHRI projects

MoRe: Monument Repository

Developed for the CARARE project

OAIS-compliant architecture

OAI-PMH aggregator and server

Metadata mapping and enrichment


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Monument Repository data flow

15

Mapping toolContent

Providers

Repository

SIP

Define Mapping

Native XML

Checks

Structural

Well-formedness

Integrity

Enrich

AIP

Versioning

Europeana

Mapping AIP

EDM(selected data)

Native, CARARE, Mapping,Provider & item admin info(package independence)

EDM

RDF

CARARE

Negotiation for acceptance

AIP

DIP


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Element & attribute

clean/filling

1717

001

http://acropolis.gr/001.tiff

tiff

Acropolis

Athens

Greece

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

IMAGE


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Spatial transform

1818

EPSG:28992

point

121821; 487476

Check coordinate system:spatialReferenceSystem : EPSG:28992

TransformWGS84 :

52.37415441823642

4.899978444680552

Check if X/Y Lat/Lonor

Lon/Lat

Check if the monument is located in the country that is

described in the record (country code = NL)

121821

487476


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CARARE Record 1

heritageAsset ID: H-1

digitalResource ID: D-1



CARARE Record 2





CARARE Record 3





CARARE Record 1





CARARE Record 2


digitalResource

Relation : H1D-1


ID: D-4

CARARE Record 3



Relation : H1D-1

Relation : H2D-5

De-duplication


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22/64Subtitle here, if required

s

Instructions for Minute MadnessA curation-aware repository for scholarly research

S. Angelis, A. Benardou, P. Constantopoulos, C. Dallas& D. Gavrilis

1Understanding scholarlyinformation requirements

Research supported by

Analysis of scholar interviews

to identify typical processesbaConceptual modeling of

scholarly information work

2

Enhancing MOPSEUS

repository for scholarly use

Layered architecture supporting

Virtual Research Environmentsb

Annotation, versioning, full

curation lifecycle functionalitya


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Subtitle here, if required


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Subtitle here, if required


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Research infrastructure

architecture


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Metadata providers

Standards

Organizations

and other

Providers

ARIADNE archaeological research infrastructure

Original

metadata

(for: literature,

monuments,

geo-data,

scientific

datatsets,

images, 3D)

OAIPMH

providerHarvester

Metadata

Schemas

Aggregation

service

SKOSification

service

Import

Common

formats

PreservationServices

Visualizationand

interfaces

service

SKOS

Vocabularies

(thesauri)

WP13

WP15WP3

WP12

Semantic

Annotation and

Linking service

Mapping/cros

swalks

ARIADNE

Linked

Data

Cloud

Export

Indexing/retrieval

Ingest

WP16

NLP ServicesData mining

Metadata Repositories

Metadata

repository

Metadata

repository

Metadata

repository

Service

Orchestration

Repository

Management

Metadata

Registry


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Metadata providers

Standards

Organizations

and other

Providers

An architecture for ARIADNE

Original

metadata

(for: literature,

monuments,

geo-data,

scientific

datatsets,

images, 3D)

OAIPMH

providerHarvester

Metadata

Schemas

Aggregation

service

SKOSification

service

Import

Common

formats

PreservationServices

Visualizationand

interfaces

service

SKOS

Vocabularies

(thesauri)

WP13

WP15WP3

WP12

Semantic

Annotation and

Linking service

Mapping/crosswalks

ARIADNE

Linked

Data

Cloud

Export

Indexing/retrieval

Ingest

WP16

NLP ServicesData mining

Metadata Repositories

Metadata

repository

Metadata

repository

Metadata

repository

Service

Orchestration

Repository

Management

Metadata

Registry


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Cultural-historical activity theory

Activity: purposeful interaction of a subject with theworld

Directed toward an object, a physical or conceptual entityembodying the fulfilment of some objective or motive,intended to meet a specific need ofthe subject

Activity systems are composed as a hierarchy of activities,constituted by consciousactions, which in turn areconstituted by sub-conscious operations

Subjects can be individuals, but also communities ofpractice,sharing needs and motives.

Activities take place by means of tool mediation, whichinclude both physical and cognitive mediationalartefacts


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The compositional structure ofactivity


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A simple(r) activity theory model


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Descriptive vs. normative aspects ofscholarly activity


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Scholarly information activity

as digital curation at the source


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Co-reference, merging objectidentity

Quite frequently a scholar might find a fragment of asculpture or vase in one museum that joins to a similarpiece in another museum. Dyfri Williams has done justthat with an Archaic Greek vase fragment, in the Ure

Museum [], that joins a dinos (bowl) attributed tothe painter, Sophilos, which is housed in the BritishMuseum []. So access to the fragment on the Ure DBgives visitors only a glimpse of the whole, and to seethe more significant parts of the vase, one has to haveaccess to the corresponding piece in the BritishMuseum (Fuchs, Isaksen & Smith, 2005)


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Object collocation, attribution

[] The same Archaic fragment is also partof several distributed assemblages ofobjects. For example, someone interested

in the works of Sophilos would wish toconsult all of the 91 works attributed to orsigned by that artist [...] These are

fortunately brought together, albeit inlimited form, on the Beazley Archive.(Fuchs, Isaksen & Smith, 2005)


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Note organising, sorting

Are the notes from Evernote printable one on a 5

by 7 notecard that I could then spread out on thefloor? (a whiteboard with magnets, what an idea,

hadn't thought of that-- I have a fear of magnetssince they used to destroy things on disks and Iwas always afraid of losing all my work due to an

errant magnet.) I've fantasized about getting a

bunch of these mounted on the wall somehow.Usually I spread out my notecards on the floor.

(Anon. 2010, chroniclecareers.com forum)


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Versioning, curating

Okay, you get someone annotating or correcting orsending information. You can get it as a list ofemails, and then you have to work with that, andthen you need the management tool for that. You

need to know, okay, this one must be sent to thisadvisor ... This one is something that I can ignore.This one needs another consultation with thisexpert. This one I want to take into account andchangethe authorised description. So this kind of

administrative tool does not exist, we [haventfound] yet a good tool for that anywhere. (Speck &Links 2013: archivist interview)


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Searching, organising

I want to be able to search through all notecards Ihave ever made ever in my life, not just those for acertain text I've read since that would limit my quotesto that text. I want every quote I've ever jotted downthat contains the word "umbrage" to appear if I searchfor that term. [] I want to then have a space where Ican take the results of multiple such searches: Victorian

Honor

Umbrage

and order the notecards or quotes in a way I want.(anon. 2010, chroniclecareers.com forum)


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Term selection, construction,definition

As far as possible I use established terms asclearly as I can. I would rather try to describewhat Im looking at and see how it sits withinthe framework of discussion in the literature. I

think if you have to call a new term you couldhave to be really sure what you are doing. []Where one does have to create a new term itneeds to be glossed with the kind of definition

that you hope will then get into the secondaryliterature in its own right (UK archaeologist,quoted in Benardou et al. 2010)


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Scholarly primitives as research activity-centred relations


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Relationship between activities andinformation objects


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Interplay between facts and theories

[i]t is conceivable that, through the use of links, website visitors may be able to see how the archaeologistmoves back and forth [] between images, artifacts,documents, and theories, to arrive at aninterpretation about the site. They may be able tobetter understand which of the archaeologist'squestions were NOT answered what "testimplications" were NOT met. Suppose visitors could"see", with image maps, say, the artifacts as they layin the ground and experience links between thoseartifacts and the ethnographic examples thatsuggested certain kinds of artifact patterning to thearchaeologist? (Landow 1992)


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From objects to theories

categorical knowledge,

domain knowledge,

theories, classifications,

ontologies

things in the

world

identifications,

descriptions, facts


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Epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina 1999)

Particular configurations of Working practices Institutional arrangements

Roles and hierarchies Technologies

They differ amongst different communitiesof epistemic practice

E.g., between high-energy physicists andmolecular biologists

Not only diffferent disciplines!


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Tool mediation

Archaeologists need to be more aware not only of howwe span the multiple gaps, the multiple fields, betweenthe material world and text, plans, maps, illustrations andso on, but also of how these processes are caught up indiverse networks linking fields which encompasseverything from funding bodies, sociopolitical alliances,

media and materialities [] to, for example, even themodes of engagement and articulation practised by anartillery officer in the British military during theNapoleonic wars. We need [] to situate this process inrelation to these larger networks []. Things (our tapes,trowels, theodolites, media, etc.), too, have a stake in our

nonlinear and interconnected paths of knowledgeproduction []. They too must be included. This scheme ofmultiple fields is a means of maintaining something of thecomplexity of archaeological practice in our modes ofdocumentation and language. (Witmore 2004)


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Tool mediation: a broader account

A continuum of epistemic objects, mediated by Thick descriptions, materiality-informed inscriptions

Importance of secondary archive

Complex subject access Overlapping and inconsistent terminologies

Different languages, disciplinary traditions

Persistence of value of old knowledge

Static or slow-changing information resources, e.g.corpora

Legacy research always important


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Object-centered research mediation

Epistemic cultures in object-centred disciplines Information-intensive, object-centred

E.g., molecular biology, archaeology, art history

Typically idiographic rather than nomothetic

Densely connected, deeply nested, topologicallycomplex objects

Inconsistency of facts, intransitivity in reasoning

Practice informed by thingy mediating tools Quasi-objects, boundary objects, mutable mobiles

Material tools, interactive kinds

People in situated action


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How an archaeological siteremembers its facts


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Costis Dallas (2013) Digital curatorship: Onto-epistemological considerations


The world of activity

Activity model

Epistemic agency

Epistemic process

Epistemic object

A second-level articulation between anontology, an epistemology and a

methodology


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Scholarly activity meta-domains

Scholarlyactivity

Epistemicagency

Epistemicobjects

Epistemicprocess

Epistemology


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Costis Dallas (2013) Scholarly activity, information requirements and research

infrastructures: European initiatives and intellectual foundations

Questions and issues


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Infrastructure requirements

Individual disciplines (will) have their own mechanisms,repositories, tools and other resources

In this light, where are particular needs for cross-disciplineresources, services, tools, infrastructures?

Which of the following is a) desirable, b) feasible? Do nothing is should be an issue for each discipline to solve

Focus just on cross-discipline information dissemination, so thatpeople can know and adopt tools and services used succesfully inneighbouring disciplines

Identify those collections/resources/datasets used across specificdisciplines, and provide cross-discipline access

Federate and provide collective access to all discipline-basedinformation sources (collection-level, people, methods etc.)

Federate and provide full access to individual resources across thehumanities


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Requirements information access anddiscovery

Do we need information services on Research problems, programmes, long-term initiatives?

Topics, research areas, concepts, theories as entry points?

People, i.e., scholars, researchers? E.g., a registry or communityof practice where humanists can find out what others are working

on; who works on a particular area, etc? Collections of research sources, existing databases, repositories,

archive? E.g., a collection level registry? Should it include justdigital or all collections?

Research methods, procedures, best practices? E.g., an systematic

index of methods related to disciplines and research problems?Also with particular projects / people / collections involved?

Tools and services? Listing what tools are available, and for whichpurpose?


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Requirements curation

Primary cultural object repositories, corpora, databases etc.exist in different countries, disciplines, research areas, andrightly so, ensuring reliability and authenticity

Given the nature of humanities information objects, and therise of online research, how do we keep up to date

information on corrections, annotations, links as knowledge onthese objects evolves?

Given that scholarly research is evidenced in publication -increasingly digital, especially for journals- is it useful toconnect these to resources, and how?

How do we imagine online scholarly communication? Apartfrom digital publication, is interaction in blogs, forums etc.important? Should it become part of the information record ofresearch? How should it be preserved and supported?


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Requirements - sociotechnical

Should infrastructure projects (such as DARIAH) focusmostly on developing their own systems, or not?

Which of the following are a) desirable, b) feasible? Develop prescriptive mechanisms for particular areas of scholarly

information, e.g. for scholarly resource metadata and work

towards enforcement across Europe Develop tools; a workbench; a virtual research environment Develop / evangelise standards, guidelines etc. to mine connect,

integrate existing resources, tools etc. Develop canonical meta-collections, filters, recommenders Energise particular business models, trial initiatives etc. in the area

of scholarly communication, publication, open access, academicadvancement etc.

Advocate adoption of digital humanities, provide information,learning materials etc.


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Costis Dallas (2013) Scholarly activity, information requirements and research

infrastructures: European initiatives and intellectual foundations

Six truisms on the specification of

humanities digital infrastructures


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Truism #2: Digital infrastructures should be

based on digital services humanists ask for


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Truism #3: Digital infrastructures should

provide access to primary research data


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focus on serving information seeking needs


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support the humanities research workflow


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Truism #6: digital infrastructures shouldprovide an integrated virtual research

environment for humanists


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Thank you!

For more info:http://www.dariah.eu

http://[email protected]

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Dallas 2013 - Digital Curatorship