Culture Knowledge Base

The Ground Truth Guidelines have grown out of the DFG-funded initiative for Optical Character Recognition Development. They address the creation of ground truth, i. e. reference data for the development and evaluation of OCR systems.

An introduction to digitization for cultural heritage collections. It focuses on digital collection management and explains all the steps involved in the computer-assisted documentation of a collection and the subsequent networking of the data in comprehensive portals.

Recommendations for standardized and systematized documentation of results in provenance research, compiled by the Provenance Research Working Group and receiving a great deal of attention.

Specifications for the digitization of two-dimensional materials such as manuscripts, books, newspapers, and magazines, but also photographs, paintings, and graphic sheets. They are technically oriented and refer exclusively to the image quality and metadata of the primary file.

The "Masterplan Zeitungsdigitalisierung" summarizes the experiences and results of the DFG project "Digitalisierung historischer Zeitungen" and includes a summary of the most important recommendations.

The European Impact Centre of Competence in Digitisation has published this best practice guide to OCR. The guide provides an introduction to OCR and is more technical in nature, a bit older, but thorough.

The publication by Jake Carlson provides instructions on how to use the so-called "toolkit" for documenting research data, as well as templates and examples compiled for free use by Purdue University in the US.

The publication by Jake Carlson provides instructions on how to use the so-called "toolkit" for documenting research data, as well as templates and examples compiled for free use by Purdue University in the US.

The site provides detailed information on why, how and which research data should be documented in accordance with the FAIR criteria, with regard to formats, vocabularies, languages, protocols, repositories, persistent identifications.

The site explains the benefits of documenting metadata early in the research process, provides a good overview of the steps involved, and references best practices from everyday research.

This resource illustrates how 3D printing works and is used in museums through a series of practical examples. It is especially recommended because of the appendices, which complete the use cases with a valuable compilation of information about 3D printing, including a glossary,…

The page highlights the aspect of transcription (as writing down what is spoken and observed) of qualitative research data and offers, among other things, further links for audio and video transcription as well as literature recommendations on the topic.

The overview compilation of forschungsdaten.info offers a first insight around tools for data organization of scientific data. It refers to various tools and software as well as their documentation.

A research data policy for research projects creates transparency in the handling of research data and requires planning, documentation and description. The contents of the guide will be transferred to an online generator as the project progresses.

This resource provides an introduction such as an overview of long-term and sustainable data formats and covers file formats, conversion, compatibility, long-term stability, metadata, and machine readability.

The topic of data organization is addressed here in an overview and some measures for good data organization are presented, as well as references to other, related topics.

The article provides an overview of the data lifecycle and its individual stages.

In its discussion impulse on the scientific, scholarly and cultural use of collections, the Council for Information Infrastructures (RfII) addressed the (future) role of collecting institutions in the digital transformation of science with regard to the framework conditions.

The DFG Code of Conduct represents the consensus of the DFG's member organizations on the fundamental principles and standards of good practice, underscoring the importance of integrity in everyday research.

The publication identifies concrete data problems in research data on tangible cultural assets. Each problem is described by a structured profile that includes aspects such as the quality dimensions involved, examples, causes and ideas for improvement.

The position paper of the Council for Information Infrastructures (RfII) deals with quality assurance and enhancement in the documentation of research data and is a comprehensive and motivating analysis on the topic of quality assurance in the science system.

This page of the European Commission gives a very detailed overview of the possibilities and the related formalities to finance a project.

For all those who work digitally with cultural heritage and who would like to make an initial assessment of the legal issues. The 2021 amendment to German copyright law is reflected, which includes new legal permissions, particularly for the online presentation of historical…

The CARE Principles were formulated to complement the FAIR Principles with an important research ethics aspect. The topic is explained in an introductory way and via the page one can obtain both a summary and a detailed presentation (each as a PDF).

The guideline of the German Museums Association on dealing with collections from colonial contexts provides information and working aids for collections in researching, documenting and presenting objects and in cooperating with societies of origin.

iRights is an information platform and online magazine on law in the cultural sector, with a focus on copyright, data protection and Open Educational Resources (OER). Cultural heritage institutions are a special target group. iRights e. V. is the sponsor.

The Creative Commons offer a licensing toolkit that has been widely used in the cultural sector. The carefully compiled FAQ on this package covers not only the basics and basic questions, but also many specific topics.

The 2017 paper by Cordula Franzke ("Repositories for research data using the example of the Digital Humanities in national and international comparison") deals with the basic quality criteria for repositories.

With RIsources (RI = Research Infrastructure), the German Research Foundation (DFG) offers an information portal on scientific research infrastructures. RIsources provides an overview of research data repositories in Germany.

open-access.network offers an introduction to open access repositories and also provides an overview of open access repositories via OPENdoar.