NFDI4Culture Metadata API

The secure and sustainable handling of research data is a core competence at the intersection of science and cultural heritage. Since 2021, the Cultural Research Data Academy (CRDA) of the NFDI4Culture consortium has been committed to promoting the development of culture-related data and code competence (data literacy) across institutions and disciplines. The focus is on computer-assisted thinking and data curation skills in the fields of art history, musicology, film and media studies, performing arts and architecture.

In the past few years, we have developed networking formats, offered individual counselling and held training courses for these target groups at universities and cultural heritage institutions.

With our 4th forum, we wanted to discuss tools and approaches to data collection and data curation in more detail on the basis of selected projects in order to stimulate dialogue about experiences in everyday work and to discuss specific expertise as well as infrastructural and individual needs.

On the 25th September, we were particularly interested in the following:

• which data competences are needed in the respective projects and plans,
• the exchange between projects with similar research or metadata
• and how sustainable research data management, standards and LTA services come into play.

We had the opportunity to gain insights into working practice by means of five case studies. The first session was kicked off by Hans-Joachim Maempel from the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin. In his presentation 'Metadaten für verschiedenartige, wechselseitig abhängige und richtungsbezogene Forschungsdaten aus Wahrnehmungsexperimenten in virtuellen Aufführungsräumen', he explained issues relating to space and acoustics, aesthetic interrelationships and the technical principles of the simulation environment of a virtual concert hall, in order to finally emphasise the importance of FDM standards and metadata.

In the second contribution, ‘Personendaten in 'Bach digital' als Bindeglied zwischen Quellen, Werken, Dokumenten und sonstigen Wissensspeichern’, Christine Blanken presented the history, changes and structure of the Bach Archive and the associated research portal. She emphasised not only its value for research on the history of the life and influence of the Bach family, but above all for cross-referencing, networking potential of personal data as well as other and related fields of research (watermarks) for related issues. The discussion focussed on questions relating to spatial data, the possible creation of barriers through and expansion of standard data sets, especially those relating to art history, architecture and geography.

The second session featured Ke Ma from the Academy Project Corpus der barocken Deckenmalerei in Deutschland at the LMU Munich and Benjamin W. Bohl on the ontology for the content-related and text-critical indexing of the Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Gesamtausgabe at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The intersections were the reconstruction using heterogeneous sources and the classification of the material for comprehensive machine readability. The discussion, which focussed on 3D reconstruction and on critical editorial work, was linked to the topics of the two previous sessions. Standardised data, difficulties in the comparability of research data structures as well as potentials and problems (interoperability, LTA) of own publication platforms and working environments determined the discussion.

Julia Rössel concluded the event with insights into the documentation of buildings with LIDO at the German Digital Library's Department of Monument Preservation and the Deutschen Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgesichte – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg. The importance of further education and training opportunities, handouts and workshops was emphasised, but above all the further development of authority data and standards was underlined. The subsequent concluding discussion highlighted a number of problem-related points of contact, which above all pointed to application-related and project-specific needs in working with standards and tools, but also showed how beneficial exchange formats such as this forum can be.

Presentation slides are available for download here.