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Research in theoretical and computer-based archaeology, from the 1950s onwards, established important perspectives for the formal representation and analysis of tangible cultural entities such as complex artefacts, iconographic compositions and archaeological assemblages, and became a precursor for the emergence of knowledge-based tools, methodologies and standards for artefact-centred information systems in contemporary museums. One particular case in point is CLIO, a semantic information system intended for research use, developed by ICS/FORTH and the Benaki Museum in Greece in the early 1990s, which became a foundation for the definition of the Conceptual Reference Model of the International Documentation Committee of ICOM (CIDOC CRM), recently adopted as the ISO standard for cultural information representation. It is argued here that, as the capabilities of computer applications to provide access to complex, multimedia cultural information increase, so does also the validity and importance of earlier research advances in artefact-centred archaeological computing; and, conversely, that the advent of digital infrastructures for material culture disciplines such as archaeology highlights the pertinence, and potential benefits, of further work on archaeological formal analysis and knowledge representation.

AbstractThe paper presents Intergraph, a graph-based visual analytics technical demonstrator for the exploration and study of content in historical document collections. The designed prototype is motivated by a practical use case on a corpus of circa 15.000 digitized resources about European integration since 1945. The corpus allowed generating a dynamic multilayer network which represents different kinds of named entities appearing and co-appearing in the collections. To our knowledge, Intergraph is one of the first interactive tools to visualize dynamic multilayer graphs for collections of digitized historical sources. Graph visualization and interaction methods have been designed based on user requirements for content exploration by non-technical users without a strong background in network science, and to compensate for common flaws with the annotation of named entities. Users work with self-selected subsets of the overall data by interacting with a scene of small graphs which can be added, altered and compared. This allows an interest-driven navigation in the corpus and the discovery of the interconnections of its entities across time.

International audience; Academic dictionary writing is making greater and greater use of the TEI Guidelines’ dictionary module. And as increasing numbers of TEI dictionaries become available, there is an ever more palpable need to work towards greater interoperability among dictionary writing systems and other language resources that are needed by dictionaries and dictionary tools. In particular this holds true for the crucial role that statistical data obtained from language resources play in lexicographic workflow—a role that also has to be reflected in the model of the data produced in these workflows. Presenting a range of current projects, the authors address two main questions in this area: How can the relationship between a dictionary and other language resources be conceptualized, irrespective of whether they are used in the production of the dictionary or to enrich existing lexicographic data? And how can this be documented using the TEI Guidelines? Discussing a variety of options, this paper proposes a customization of the TEI dictionary module that tries to respond to the emerging requirements in an environment of increasingly intertwined language resources.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) portal website aims to aggregate digitally available archival descriptions concerning the Holocaust. This portal is actually a meta-catalogue, or an information aggregator, whose biggest goal is to have up-to-date information by means of building sustainable data pipelines between EHRI and its content providers. Just like in similar archival information aggregators (e.g. Archives Portal Europe or Monasterium), the XML-based metadata standard Encoded Archival Description (EAD) plays a key role. The article presents how EADs are imported into the portal, mainly thanks to the Open Archive Initiative protocols.

International audience

International audience

More and more cultural institutions use Linked Data principles to share and connect their collection metadata. In the archival field, initiatives emerge to exploit data contained in archival descriptions and adapt encoding standards to the semantic web. In this context, online authority files can be used to enrich metadata. However, relying on a decentralized network of knowledge bases such as Wikidata, DBpedia or even Viaf has its own difficulties. This paper aims to offer a critical view of these linked authority files by adopting a close-reading approach. Through a practical case study, we intend to identify and illustrate the possibilities and limits of RDF triples compared to institutions' less structured metadata. Workshop "Dariah "Trust and Understanding: the value of metadata in a digitally joined-up world" (14/05/2018, Brussels), preprint of the submission to the journal "Archives et Biblioth\`eques de Belgique"

International audience; Since the end of the 1980s the historiographical context has changed considerably. Over the course of the last ten years, we have reached the “digital age” and computers as well as resources available via the Internet have become indispensable tools for all researchers. Be it for the stage of documentation or for actual writing, we are now living and working in a context where historians can no longer completely refuse all IT tools. As long as there are no solid, durable, large-scale training efforts to equip all historians with the skills to use the new and old IT tools, their potential is necessarily limited. While there have been studies on “researchers” in general and also on political scientists in particular, there has, to our knowledge, been no scientific study which would allow us to reach conclusions on the use of IT tools and digital resources by French historians. It is thus difficult to reach conclusions on a larger scale and we have decided to base our analysis on our own experience in order to consider what could be the transformations of the historian’s craft in the digital age. We will thus proceed first to a series of conclusions based on our activities in mediation (teaching and blogging), before proposing a typology of the principal evolutions. We will conclude with a certain number of propositions as far as training of historians is concerned.; Dalla fine degli anni ’80, il contesto storiografico è mutato in maniera considerevole. Nel corso degli ultimi dieci anni, siamo entrati nell’“era digitale” e i computer – così come le risorse disponibili attraverso la rete Internet – sono diventati strumenti indispensabili per tutti i ricercatori. Sia per la fase di raccolta della documentazione sia per la stesura vera e propria dei resoconti, viviamo e lavoriamo oramai in un contesto in cui gli storici non possono più permettersi di rinunciare completamente a tutte le risorse informatiche; ma fino a quando non saranno profusi sforzi di formazione robusti, durevoli e ad ampio raggio per dotare tutti gli storici delle abilità necessarie ad utilizzare gli strumenti informatici vecchi e nuovi, il loro potenziale sarà necessariamente limitato. Mentre sono apparsi studi su alcuni “ricercatori” in generale e anche su scienziati politici in particolare, non esistono – a nostra conoscenza – contributi di livello scientifico che ci permettano di trarre conclusioni sull’utilizzo degli strumenti informatici e delle risorse digitali da parte degli storici francesi: così, di fronte alla difficoltà di giungere a definizioni su larga scala, abbiamo deciso di basare la presente analisi sulla nostra personale esperienza, in maniera tale da prendere in esame quali trasformazioni potrebbero intervenire nel mestiere dello storico dell’era digitale. Procederemo quindi, in prima istanza, con una serie di valutazioni fondate sulle nostre attività di mediazione (insegnamento e pratica come bloggers), prima di proporre una definizione delle principali evoluzioni; concluderemo poi con un certo numero di considerazioni a proposito di quanto la formazione dello storico sia coinvolta in questo processo.

International audience

Over the last decade Digital Humanities has ceased being a “niche discipline” and have become a major phenomenon in academic and cultural debate. Significant scientific results and outcomes have been achieved, and fundamental research infrastructures have been realized. Despite these far-reaching outcomes, Digital Humanities still does not have a satisfactory influence in the traditional disciplinary fields. We need to find new methods to deal with cultural artifacts and texts. Amongst the many emerging research fields in the DH, two come forth as the most promising and interesting: Big Data and distant reading; Semantic Web and Linked Open Data. In my paper I will argue that Big Data in the Humanities, although very promising, have some critical issues, and I will propose the idea of a Semantic Cultural and Literary Web, a collaborative infrastructure based on ontology driven semantic annotation of primary resources.  Over the last decade Digital Humanities has ceased being a “niche discipline” and have become a major phenomenon in academic and cultural debate. Significant scientific results and outcomes have been achieved, and fundamental research infrastructures have been realized. Despite these far-reaching outcomes, Digital Humanities still does not have a satisfactory influence in the traditional disciplinary fields. We need to find new methods to deal with cultural artifacts and texts. Amongst the many emerging research fields in the DH, two come forth as the most promising and interesting: Big Data and distant reading; Semantic Web and Linked Open Data. In my paper I will argue that Big Data in the Humanities, although very promising, have some critical issues, and I will propose the idea of a Semantic Cultural and Literary Web, a collaborative infrastructure based on ontology driven semantic annotation of primary resources.