Press release: Humanities Data Centre starts up operations

Nr. 154/2016 - 28.07.2016

First offers for research data management and long-term archiving

(pug) The need for an infrastructure that enables the long-term provision and sustainability of digital research data is growing in sync with the march of progress in digitisation and the establishment of "Digital Humanities" as an independent discipline. After a design phase funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture since 2014, the Humanities Data Centre (HDC) is officially going into operation on 1 August 2016. It is being run by the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG) – the Computing Centre for Göttingen University – together with the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB). The HDC provides initial services for research data management and long-term archiving. Through an ongoing dialogue with researchers, the services offered by the HDC will continue to be further developed moving forward.

The HDC’s offering is aimed at humanities research projects in Lower Saxony and at ensuring the sustainable provision and sharing of digital research data over a period of time that extends far beyond the life cycles of current technology generations and the digital research data affected by them. To meet this objective, the HDC also provides a wide range of consulting and training services relating to data management, extensive expertise and technical solutions for storing data and applications. Thus, the HDC helps scientists meet the German Research Foundation's (DFG) requirement to archive research data for a period of at least ten years.

Given the variety and diversity of the research methods and data used in the humanities, this task is being mastered by several partners working collaboratively with one another and possessing different competencies. The GWDG and SUB are now implementing the service offerings and concepts developed during the design stage. Their intention is to develop a network of partners in Lower Saxony and beyond to expand the consulting and curator services offered. These specifically involve the partners from the HDC design phase: the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen and the Herzog August Library (HAB) in Wolfenbüttel. The HDC is already collaborating with the Germany-wide joint project DARIAH-DE. By building a digital research infrastructure for tools and research data and developing materials for teaching and continuing education in the field of digital humanities, this project affords research and teaching support to scholars in the humanities and cultural scientists working with digital resources and methods.

For more information about the HDC, go to www.humanities-data-centre.de.

Contact:
Professor Ramin Yahyapour
Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG)
Am Faßberg 11, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Phone +49 (0)551 201-1510
Email: ramin.yahyapour@gwdg.de
Internet: www.gwdg.de

Dr. Wolfram Horstmann
Göttingen State and University Library
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Phone +49 (0)551 39-5210
Email: horstmann@sub.uni-goettingen.de
Internet: www.sub.uni-goettingen.de