Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (CLARIAH) is a distributed research infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. The CLARIAH infrastructure will provide researchers with access to large collections of digital data and to innovative and user-friendly applications for the processing of these data. Both the data and applications will be managed in a sustainable manner so that they can also be useful in the future for researchers: from literary researchers, historians and archaeologists to linguists, speech technologists and media scientists.
Downloads
The final versions of the approaved CLARIAH-CORE (2014-2018) and CLARIAH-PLUS (2019-2024) proposals can be downloaded here. Moreover, the CLARIAH-CORE book can be downloaded as well.
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CLARIAH-CORE Proposal |
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CLARIAH-CORE Book |
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CLARIAH-PLUS Proposal |
CLARIAH-CORE
The project CLARIAH-CORE (2014-2018) designs, implements and exploits the Dutch part of the European CLARIN and DARIAH infrastructures. The wishes of future users take centre stage. Workshops, summer schools and demonstrators reveal which research possibilities the available data and tools offer, thereby increasing the involvement of the intended users.
CLARIAH is on the National Roadmap for Large- Scale Research Facilities drawn up by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). After the CLARIAH-SEED project (2013-2014) the CLARIAH-CORE project was awarded M€ 12.6.
Focus Areas
CLARIAH targets three focus areas that serve as the precursor for other disciplines within the humanities. Together they represent the most important types of data: text, images, audiovisual material and structured data (databases).
The three focus areas are:
In each area, multidisciplinary teams of researchers, infrastructure specialists and data managers work on curating, enriching and linking together existing data and applications. A supporting work package is used to develop and implement the generic components relevant for all focus areas.
Although CLARIAH currently targets these three focus areas, other disciplines from the humanities and social sciences can participate as well. They can contribute their data and applications to CLARIAH and make use of the infrastructure when carrying out their research.
Sustainable storage
The data and applications will be managed and sustainably stored for the longer term at various centres in the Netherlands.
At this moment, these centres are:
Huygens ING | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) |
Meertens Institute (MI) | Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV) |
DANS | National Library of the Netherlands (KB) |
International Institute for Social History (IISH) | Institute of Dutch Language (INT) |
User involvement
An important part of CLARIAH is to enhance the " involvement" of the people working in the field of digital humanities. The involvement is stimulated via courses, workshops and demonstration days to show what is available, how it works and what scholars potentially can do with it. At the same time, CLARIAH asks humanity scholars to identify what needs they exactly have in the digital infrastructure.
Course Task Force
CLARIAH wants to embed the use of digital applications and data in the standard education curriculum. In the CLARIAH Course Task Force, Digital Humanities lecturers from all Dutch universities make agreements about the development and use and reuse of digital humanities courses. Together with other parties CLARIAH is developing courses, crash courses and workshops for students, PhDs, lecturers and other members of staff. CLARIAH also participates in summer schools and winter schools.
The Course & Project Registry provides an overview of European courses and projects in the area of digital humanities.
Partners
CLARIAH is supported by more than 40 partners: not just all Dutch humanities research institutes, but also university libraries, heritage institutions, public organisations and SME-companies.
History
CLARIAH in the Netherlands is the successor project of two earlier infrastructure projects, CLARIN-NL (2009-2015) and DARIAH-NL (2014-2020). All these projects are national contributions from the Netherlands to the European CLARIN and DARIAH infrastructures (which resp. are controlled by the CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH ERIC).
The first version of the CLARIAH-proposal was submitted in 2011 and was "just-not" granted. However, the consortium got M€ 1 “seedmoney” to improve the next proposal submission in 2013. The effort was granted in 2014 by NWO, resulting in a grant of M€ 12,6 from the "Roadmap Grootschalige Onderzoeksfaciliteiten". CLARIAH started officially in spring 2015.
CLARIAH-PLUS
The CLARIAH-PLUS project (2019-2024) is a continuation of CLARIAH-CORE (2014-2018). The objective remains the same: to develop a good, useful, sustainable and user-friendly infrastructure for the humanities.
Within CLARIAH, an energetic start was made on setting up the infrastructure for the humanities in which, because it was not possible to "serve" the entire humanities directly, the focus was on three disciplines:
- Linguistics
- Social-Economic History
- Media Studies.
Although the working groups focused on their own 'area', cross-disciplinary projects were created.
CLARIAH-PLUS
In CLARIAH-CORE, due to financial constraints, we only worked on the first part of the intended infrastructure. In CLARIAH-PLUS, we will therefore continue the work begun in CLARIAH-CORE on the one hand, while addressing the issues that remain unresolved on the other. Moreover, we are also extending the scope of CLARIAH in CLARIAH-PLUS. CLARIAH-PLUS will also focus on disciplines that study texts for their content, such as literature, history, philosophy and theology
The current status of CLARIAH-CORE, and the desired staus of CLARIAH-PLUS are shown in the matrix on the right. This indicates the state of the various infrastructure components by colours: not present (red), under development (yellow) and ready to be used (green). It will be clear that in 2024 there will be almost no red or yellow boxes left.
Sustainable storage
The data and applications are managed and stored sustainably at the various Dutch CLARIN-centres. At the moment, these are the following centres:
Huygens ING |
Max Planck Instituut for Psycholingustics |
Meertens Institute |
Netherlands Instituut for Sound and Vision |
DANS |
National Library of the Netherlands |
International Institute for Social History (IISH) |
Institute of the Dutch Language |
User involvement
No infrastructure has an added value if it is not used intensively. An important part of CLARIAH is therefore to involve as many humanities scholars as possible who are able and willing to make use of digital data and tools. This involvement is stimulated through offline courses, workshops, demonstration meetings, online screencasts, presentations and tutorials showing what is possible, how it works and how scholars themselves can work with it.
At the same time CLARIAH would like to hear from the scholars what they need, what problems they face and what they still lack in the existing infrastructure. To find out, CLARIAH will visit the relevant research groups in the Netherlands to discuss with the scholars what is necessary and/or desirable within CLARIAH.
Course Task Force
CLARIAH also wants to embed the use of digital tools and data in the regular education curriculum. In the CLARIAH Course Task Force, Digital Humanities teachers from all Dutch universities make agreements about the development and (re)use of DH courses. CLARIAH, together with other parties, develops courses, crash courses and workshops for students, PhDs, teachers and other staff members. CLARIAH also participates in summer and winter schools.
In the Course & Project Registries there is an overview of Europeas courses and projects in the field of Digital Humanities.
Partners
CLARIAH-PLUS is, like CLARIAH-CORE, supported by more than 40 partners: not only by all Dutch Academic Humanities institutions, but allso by University Libraries, Cultural Heritage Institutuions , varios public organisations and SMB-companies.
History
CLARIAH-PLUS is the successor in the Netherlands to previous infrastructure projects: CLARIN-NL (2009-2013), CLARIAH-SEED (2013-2014) and CLARIAH-CORE (2014-2018). As a national project, CLARIAH also aims to design and manage the Dutch part of the European CLARIN and DARIAH infrastructures. CLARIAH was honored with M€ 13.8 from NWO’s Roadmap voor Grootschalige onderzoeksvoorzieningen and will run from 2019 till the end of 2023.