SNSF SPARK Project – Dynamic Data Ingestion (DDI): Server-side data harmonization in historical research. A centralized approach to networking and providing interoperable research data to answer specific scientific questions (http://p3.snf.ch/project-190161).

Short project descrition

The need for networking databases in historical research has been very high for years, especially in the field of contextualized digital prosopography, which today is no longer based on personal data alone, but can digitally reconstruct entire knowledge biographies and spaces, as in my other projects rag-online.org and repac.ch. In one part of the research field, the digital academic prosopography, however, despite international initiatives, it has also not yet been possible to harmonise the numerous databases available in Europe and to make them accessible to research and the public in a meta search with an exploratory objective. With the SPARK project, we are trying therefore to make the processes of networking and harmonization of historical data (and other datatypes) more efficient and centralized. To achieve this, a new software module will be developed within the project software, the so called dynamic data ingestion (DDI) module which will be then implemented into the open source virtual research environment nodegoat (github). In parallel, a common ontology for data networking together with selected database projects will be created and implemented on the DDI server. Running the DDI module based on the common ontology will create a meta-database of various research data, which can open up new insights and generate new research questions. The DDI module will give an impuls to research, especially because it is not limited to humanities data content, but can be used for any data type and data source. Researchers and students can apply the module not only to collect, harmonise and visualise research data, but also, for example, to collect metadata from research literature, enrich it with their own annotations and visualise this new meta-database in networks or on maps, thus making a knowledge landscape visible in terms of an archaeology of research knowledge.