An Aggregation Framework for Digital Humanities Infrastructures: The PARTHENOS Experience

Abstract

Digital Humanities Infrastructures (DHIs) are research infrastructures supporting researchers in the field of humanities by providing ICT tools and facilities for performing their studies and investigation activities. A DHI typically serves either researchers of one specific sector of humanities (e.g. history, archaeology) or focused research groups working on specific research topics (e.g. studies on the holocaust, on a specific manuscript), with little or no re-use of tools, services and data that could be shared and successfully adopted to answer research questions of different research disciplines. This fragmentation often represents a barrier to inter-disciplinary research collaborations. We present a technical framework for the federation of DHIs where tools, data, services, and knowledge available from each DHI are shared in an integrated environment where researchers can collaborate on specific research topics by creating customized Virtual Research Environments.