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Among the potential intellectual outputs of the ENCODE project is the production of a MOOC that introduces teaching staff and scientific experts to the digital transition in the field of ancient writing cultures. The basis for this MOOC is the need to foster awareness of the importance of digital competences and to use a structured framework to introduce people to the available innovative teaching and learning materials and opportunities for organizing (self-)training in this field of research. For specialists in the humanities, there is often an unexpected reluctance to go beyond simply using digital tools and to deepen their understanding of the implications of the digital transitions of research fields, as well as considering the readiness of young graduates to acquire digital competences. This MOOC, which is easily accessible, affordable, sustainable, and flexible, may achieve the initial aim of the project, namely, bridging the gap between the highly specialized competences in the humanities and the innovative digital skills needed in open science practices. The main methodological issue concerns the design and adaptation of cooperative tools in order to implement a common pedagogical approach and to produce MOOC content that integrates the different competences and insights of the project participants. This report on the experiment provides useful insights into the differing expectations of academic staff as content producers, issues surrounding MOOC-cooperative design between universities in different countries, the usability of the tested platform and of the different features provided, and sustainability, as guaranteed through the connection with digital infrastructures. In the concluding section, the originality of the MOOC at a more general scale is emphasized. The ways in which the MOOC can facilitate and support the digital transition are assessed according to the FAIR principles in Higher Education Institutions. Moreover, the MOOC offers models for hands-on experiences of digital training and the evaluation of learning outcomes according to shared European frameworks; it demonstrates the importance of being connected with larger projects and digital infrastructures. ispartof: Education Sciences vol:13 issue:43 pages:1-12 status: Published online

Digital archives of memory institutions are typically concerned with the cataloguing of artefacts of artistic, historical, and cultural value. Recently, new forms of citizen participation in cultural heritage have emerged, producing a wealth of material spanning from visitors' experiential feedback on exhibitions and cultural artefacts, to digitally mediated interactions like the ones happening on social media platforms. Citizen curation is proposed in the context of the European project SPICE - Social Participation, Cohesion, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement - as a methodology for producing, collecting, interpreting, and archiving people's responses to cultural objects, with the aim of favouring the emergence of multiple, sometimes conflicting viewpoints, and motivating users and memory institutions to reflect upon them. We argue that citizen curation urges to rethink the nature of computational infrastructures supporting data management of memory institutions, bringing novel challenges that include issues of distribution, authoritativeness, interdependence, privacy, and rights management. To approach these issues, we survey relevant literature towards a distributed, Linked Data infrastructure, with a focus on identifying the roles and requirements involved in such an infrastructure. We show how existing research can contribute significantly in facing the challenges raised by citizen curation, and discuss challenges and opportunities from the socio-technical standpoint.

Abstract. Digital literacy and technology education has gained much relevance in humanities and heritage related disciplines during the recent decades. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to examine the current state of educational programs in digital cultural heritage and related disciplines primarily in Europe with supplemental information from the US. A further aim is to highlight core topics, challenges, and demands, and to show innovative formats and prospects.

Developments in information and communication technologies and their repercussions for how cultural heritage is preserved, used and produced are the subject of several research and innovation efforts in Europe. Advanced digital technologies create new opportunities for cultural heritage to drive innovation. Digital humanities are an important domain for cultural heritage research in Europe and beyond. Digital tools and methods can be used in innovative ways in cultural heritage research. The research and innovation efforts and framework of digital humanities, and cultural heritage as one of its research fields, are influenced by EU policies and legislation. This article describes the existing policy initiatives, practices and related legal setting as framework conditions for digital humanities and cultural heritage research and innovation in Europe – focusing on urban history applications in the age of digital libraries. This is a multifaceted study of the state of the art in policies, legislation and standards – using a survey with 1000 participants, literature surveys on copyrights and policies.

The paper introduces into a new Science Gateway, developed in the framework of the European Horizon 2020 project EGI Engage - DARIAH Competence Centre, which started in March 2015 co-funded by the European Union, with the participation of about 70 (research) units in over 30 countries. In this paper the authors focus on trans-disciplinary collaboration in the framework of explorative lexicography in cultural context. On the one hand, they give a short overview of the architecture of the Science Gateway, used techniques, and specific applications and services developed during the DARIAH Competence Centre. On the other they mainly focus on possible added value and changes concerning work flow for Lexicographers and researchers on Lexical resources. This is exemplified on the European network of COST action IS 1305 “European Network of electronic lexicography (ENeL)”.

DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, is a large user community that gathers scientists across Europe from the research field of the Arts and Humanities (A). The aim of DARIAH is to enhance and support digitally-enabled research and teaching across the Arts and Humanities in Europe. The objective of DARIAH is to develop, maintain and operate a research infrastructure for ICT-based research practices. The DARIAH infrastructure aims to become a fully connected and effective network of tools, information, people and methodologies for investigating, exploring and supporting research across the broad spectrum of the Digital Humanities. To achieve this goal, a significant amount of effort has to be devoted to the improvement of the current infrastructure. A part of this effort is the EGI-DARIAH Competence Centre (EGI-DARIAH CC), established within the EGI-Engage Horizon2020 project. The EGI-DARIAH CC aims at bridging the gap between the DARIAH user community and the European e-Infrastructure, mainly those provided by the EGI community. To achieve this goal, EGI-DARIAH CC focuses on strengthening the collaboration between the DARIAH user community and EGI by deploying A applications in the EGI Federated cloud and increasing the number of e-Science services and applications, as well as raising awareness of A researchers about the advantages and benefits of e-Infrastructure by providing end-user support and organizing training events. Considering that the DARIAH community, as well as the general A research public, is very specific in their requirements and needs on e-Infrastructure, one of the first actions of the EGI DARIAH CC was to collect all relevant information about the DARIAH research requirements. The collection of the required information was conducted via a comprehensive web-based survey. The aim of this survey was to collect feedback from DARIAH end-users, application/service providers and developers on their knowledge and background on e-Infrastructure (e.g. computational and storage resources, user-support services, authentication policies, etc.), on how research data (information) are shared and accessed, about AAI requirements, what services and application researchers are using in their research and what are their characteristics, etc. Based on the inputs, a set of specific A services and application will be developed, such as gUSE/WS-Pgrade workflow oriented gateway, gLibrary framework for distributed information repositories and information retrieval service based on CDSTAR. Concurrently with the application development, a significant working effort is put in the education of DARIAH researchers since many of them have minor or no technical knowledge required to efficiently use various e-Infrastructure resources or new application/services that will be developed during this project. Therefore, a set of training events will be organized to demonstrate the specific applications and services developed within EGI-DARIAH CC, as well as give a general introduction on how to utilize various EGI resources, applications and services.