Digital humanities: German National Library opening a treasury of data to researchers

Digital humanities (DH) are a relatively new scientific discipline which is steadily gaining in importance as digitisation becomes more widespread. The German National Library (DNB) is following this development attentively and is involved at various levels – not least as an archive of holdings. The DNB accordingly offers its data holdings and digital collections for scientific and research purposes and for experimental and creative work. The DNB supports the digital humanities by issuing calls for proposals, granting fellowships and taking part in congresses.

DH call 2022

This year was marked by the third DH call for proposals for scientific and research projects, a wide range of which are supported by the DNB. The call is mainly directed at projects that rely on copyrighted data, and the DNB supports these by providing access to metadata, digital objects and infrastructures. The rules on text and data mining for scientific purposes set out in section 60d of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) apply. It is also possible to have a limited volume of analogue objects digitised. The following three projects have been granted funding with effect from this year:

• Mareike Schuhmacher, Marie Flüh: DisCo: Aufbau eines Diversity Corpus (DisCo) als Grundlage für die algorithmische Textanalyse (DisCo: establishing a diversity corpus (DisCo) as the foundation for algorithmic text analyses).
• Jan Oliver Schwarz, Christoph Bläsi, Markus May: FOREXSCIFI - Foresight Extraction from Science Fiction Literature.
• Erik Koenen: Der DNB-Katalog als Datengrundlage und Forschungsobjekt digitaler historischer Presseforschung (The DNB catalogue as a data source and research object for digital historical press research.).

DH fellowships

2022 was also marked by the award of the first DH fellowships, established with the aim of expanding the resources available in the field of digital humanities. The fellowships are mainly intended for early career scientists and offer them the opportunity to carry out their own research project using the DNB's open access data. The fellows receive a monthly allowance to cover their living expenses and are assigned project mentors from the DNB who support them as they work on their projects. The DNB also helps promote the visibility of the research findings and gives fellows the opportunity to network amongst themselves and with other data experts. Four project ideas were accepted in 2022 and presented at an inaugural workshop in Frankfurt am Main in August 2022:

• Leon Munz: Dissertationen in der Informationswissenschaft – Analyse einer heterogenen Disziplin (Dissertations on information science – analysis of a heterogeneous discipline)
• Suellen Dutra Pererira: Publish or Perish? Publikationen von Frauen in den Naturwissenschaften im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek, 1900–1970 (Publish or Perish? Publications by women in the natural sciences in the German National Library's catalogue, 1900–1970)
• Hendrikje Schauer: Literarische Öffentlichkeit 1945–1962: DH-basierte Analyse von DNB-Daten (Literary public 1945–1962: DH-based analysis of DNB data)
• Nicole Schwitter: Alters-, Perioden- und Kohorteneffekte in Stimmung und Schwerpunkt literarischer Werke (Age-related, period-related and cohort-related effects on the moods and topics of literary works)

You will find more information about the inaugural workshop for the DH fellowships in our blog.

EFA@DNB

September 2022 saw the introduction of a new educational format, a virtual open info day focusing on the DNB's metadata and digital objects. EFA22@DNB stands for "Erschließen, Forschen, Analysieren" ("Catalogue, Research, Analyse"). The target group for this low-threshold programme consisted of researchers, students, persons with an interest in citizen sciences and colleagues in the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) sector. The event shed light on the many ways in which data and content can be used, analysed and visualised. The aim was to give participants a broad impression of the DNB's services and resources and help them decide which data formats, content and supply channels are most suited to their own purposes.
Please refer to the DNB blog for a summary of the event including feedback from a final survey. Due its great success, the EFA is to be repeated in 2023 (EFA23@DNB) and supplemented by other informational and educational formats..

Sociology congress

For the first time in its history, the DNB took part in the Congress for Sociology in Bielefeld with an information stand on the topic "Data, Partnerships, Fellowships". The stand attracted large numbers of interested visitors and served as a good access point for detailed information about DNBLab, digital objects, metadata and the various ways in which the DNB supports research and teaching activities, particularly in the digital humanities.
The new DH fellowships in particular met with considerable interest from students. Numerous professors and research assistants expressed a particular interest in the data resources and collaborative teaching programmes. During the conversations at the stand, it became clear that the data and objects are already being used in the fields of teaching and research. Building on these all-round positive experiences, the DNB will also have an information stand at the 2023 German Historians' Congress ("Deutscher Historikertag") in Leipzig and at other relevant (specialist) events in the future.
Click here for more information about DNBLab.

DNBLab – bringing digital resources to life

Das DNBLab: the main hub for the presentation, access and re-use of digital resources. Interested users have been able to obtain data, open-access digital objects and full texts as downloads and through various interfaces since 2020. Online coding tutorials show how this works and provide a basic introduction to machine-based data processing and analysis. DNBLab also offers regular virtual introductory sessions that explain the various areas of the lab – questions will always be welcome, both now and in the future! After all, DNBLab is constantly developing.

In 2022, DNBLab was redesigned and expanded, e.g. by implementing a test query function based on an SRU interface. This uses drop-down menus and makes it possible to send queries using a web form, thus allowing users to familiarise themselves with the interface and its responses. Various explanatory videos on DNBLab and the open interfaces have also been published in order to make it easier to get started. Practical examples of how our data are used for science and research were published in DNBLab in October 2022.

DNBLab for students

Last year also saw significant developments in the area of knowledge transfer. Seminars were held jointly with the University of Marburg and Leipzig University of Applied Sciences in the context of various collaborative teaching programmes. These offered participating students an insight into DNBLab and how to work with metadata. To this end, they were given hands-on introductions to DNBLab and the DNB's DH resources in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Afterwards, they were able to try out an interface query and make their first attempts at data cleansing and visualisation by themselves. Particularly gratifying: three students are now undertaking internships at the DNB. They will be able to complete part of their work placements in DNBLab and will be carrying out their own small project in this setting at the beginning of next year.

International lab networking

DNBLab initiated two network meetings in 2022. The aim was to facilitate networking and an exchange of experiences between various library labs located in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Representatives of several labs were invited to discuss the need for such an exchange and talk about their initial experiences and topics of interest within the framework of a small, informal circle. Since these meetings have met with considerable interest, they will continue and be successively expanded throughout 2023. The lab staff themselves had the opportunity to take part in several lab workshops organised by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK). The initiative thus succeeded in significantly expanding the dialogue and links with other library labs in the German-speaking countries.

DNBLab is still growing

Work on DNBLab never stops. Besides establishing further collaborative teaching programmes, the goal is to develop the introductory events still further. More theme-based modules are to be added. In addition, several events aimed at specific target groups are to be created from a general introduction, e.g. by dividing the target group into beginners and advanced. There will also be workshops designed to facilitate a deeper exploration of various key themes - from data referencing to data analysis and data visualisation.
Click here to find out more about DNBLab.
Click here to go to the various videos that explain DNBLab DNBLab introductory video.

New possibilities for research: the NFDI Text+ project

The aim of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) is to systematically catalogue and link valuable science and research data stock for the entire German knowledge system besides improving its quality and making it available for permanent use. The federal and state governments are funding a total of 27 disciplinary consortia for periods of five years each. All of them are contributing to the development of a permanent digital knowledge repository as an indispensable requirement for new research questions, knowledge and innovations. Text+ is one of these NFDI consortia – and the German National Library (DNB) is playing a leading role in it.

Along with the main applicant, the Leibniz Institute for German Language, the Text+ consortium consists of nine academies of science, 14 universities, five libraries and archives, and five foundations and centres. Their common goal: to create an infrastructure for language and text data with Text+. The focus lies on digital collections, lexical resources and editions. These are extremely important for all language and text-based disciplines, especially for the fields of linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, classical philology, anthropology, and non-European cultures and languages. However, language and text-based research in the fields of sociology, economics, politics and the humanities can also benefit from Text+.

Tasks which previously required laborious research at various locations, e.g. searches of extensive data pools and the collation of individual collections for specific research questions, will in future be performed conveniently at one central location. Text+ also offers access to software and tools suitable for scientific work with language and text data. As a "one-stop shop", Text+ thus saves valuable time that can be invested directly in research – rather than carrying out searches.

The DNB's expertise is indispensable

As one of the co-applicants, the DNB plays a special part in Text+. It coordinate the data domain "Collections" and – together with Göttingen State and University Library – is in charge of the cluster "Unstructured Texts". With the Integrated Authority File (GND), it also provides an important cross-sectional service that enables research data to be linked in a common ecosystem – far beyond the scope of Text+. The DNB, with the GND, also plays an active part in the NFDI's other three humanities consortia (4culture, 4memory and 4objects). The DNB also brings expertise in long-term archiving and copyright/legal matters to all areas of Text+ and the NFDI.

Central access to research texts

The DNB's internal launch in October 2022 stressed the core objective of the DNB's commitment to Text+: the opportunity to grant a diverse scientific community centralised access to its own collections – including those of the German Exile Archive, the German Museum of Books and Writing and the German Newspaper Portal. The DNB with its regular library portal would not be able to achieve the reach generated by the Text+ web portal as a research data infrastructure focused on science. Text+ will also offer a significantly more expansive range of search functions with which it will be possible to collate specific corpora for dealing with complex research questions.

Positive side-effects of Text+

Moreover, the DNB's work for Text+ is also functioning as a catalyst for certain important developments at the DNB itself. These will have positive effects in many areas of the institution. There has been a desire to realise plans relating to the structuring of the collections and the extraction and provision of structured full texts for quite some time. However, these plans have repeatedly had to take a back seat due to lack of capacity. Text+ has now given them a significant boost. It is important that the additional workload for DNB staff is kept within reasonable limits. After, the activities for Text+ are in many cases directly derived from their daily tasks.

You will find more information about the NFDI here
More information about Text+
You will find a report on the workshop "Corpora in Text+" in the February 2022 edition of Dialog mit Bibliotheken, pp. 24 ff.

A network of information: a tour of discovery with GND Explorer

New display and research tool for the Integrated Authority File (GND): the first beta version of GND Explorer went online in 2022. It is available to all and was developed as part of an internal project at the German National Library (DNB). Users can now browse the Integrated Authority File's semantic network at their convenience – and identify exciting links between different sets of information at a glance.

Authority data represent and describe entities, e.g. people, places and works connected with cultural and academic collections. Libraries in particular use the GND to catalogue literature. Archives, museums, cultural organisations and scientific institutions are also increasingly working with the GND as part of their research projects. The advantage of authority data? They make cataloguing easier, offer definitive search entries and establish links between different information resources. The new GND Explorer now makes all this much easier by granting users convenient and comprehensive access to the DNB's semantic network.

How does GND Explorer work?

The metadata are clearly presented on fact sheets. A search for "Christiane von Goethe", for example, will return information about her name, profession, biographical data, family relations, or the places where she was born and died. The metadata are in turn linked to fact sheets that provide further information, e.g. about her husband Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or her career as a modiste.

GND Explorer Image: DNB

Another advantage of GND Explorer: the dynamic visualizations of the connections between the information contained in the data. All of these can be seen at a glance, as if in a spider's web.

Spiderweb Image: DNB

When entering general terms such as "violin", GND Explorer shows the whole hierarchy of stringed instruments. The new tool also offers extensive navigation and filter options. The filter options include different types of entity such as persons, geographic entities and corporate bodies as well as country, language, form etc., thus enabling users to adapt the results of each search to their own requirements. The first beta version of GND Explorer was completed at the end of 2022 – and is continually being developed further with an eye to the needs of the GND community.

Click here to discover GND Explorer and have fun browsing!

Online and on site: German National Library with new user services

Whether "Coffee Lectures" or "Book a Librarian": the German National Library (DNB) has developed formats tailored to specific user groups with the goal of addressing new target groups and strengthening contact with existing ones. The new formats are also a reaction to the changes in user behaviour observed in the wake of the COVID-19 restrictions. Both formats are very popular and are to be expanded and supplemented further in the future.

The COVID-19 restrictions had a particularly severe impact on user services. It therefore came as a great relief when the regular modalities of use were largely restored in the middle of 2022. However, there has been no return to pre-pandemic conditions. As in many other libraries, reading room usage is still strongly influenced by experiences gained during the pandemic; former routines still have to be re-established. User services have also undergone change: the DNB has used the insights gained from the amended framework conditions to optimise its range of services it offers.

"Coffee breaks with information content"

A new, low-threshold information format has been created, firstly to appeal to former visitors and secondly to attract the attention of persons who have never used the DNB before. The first series of "DNB Coffee Lectures. Coffee breaks with information content" was launched in May 2022. Every Wednesday afternoon at coffee time over a period of seven weeks, the DNB gave a series of brief, descriptive online lectures on the DNB's collections and the opportunities open to researchers and users. Attendees were for example taught research strategies for newspapers and journals, granted insights into the special collections and given tips on searching for and in online databases – each within a period of just 20 minutes.
With their online format, the Coffee Lectures build on the user introductions that were virtualised in 2021; however, they address a wider target group. They are designed in such a way that they can be perceived as an opportunity to get to know the DNB or as a creative break that may even offer inspiration for the attendee's own research questions. Users and all kinds of people with an interest in research are invited to take part regardless of their location – no registration required.

DNB exclusive: 30 minutes of personal advice

While the Coffee Lectures – in fulfilment of the DNB's legal mandate – are intended for a wide general public, the DNB also aims to increase its personal contact with media users. At the end of 2022, the DNB rolled out a new service named "Book a Librarian", which gives users the opportunity to book a personal information session on a specific research topic. During a consultation lasting approx. 30 minutes, the DNB's research specialists take time to answer individual queries either on site, by phone or virtually. The service can be used by both individuals and working groups. It covers everything from help getting started with a research topic to assistance with extensive research queries and support when searching for subject-specific literature. Sessions focusing specifically on music are offered every two weeks.

New formats now established

These individual research consultations are now booked on a regular basis; they are also receiving positive feedback and being recommended to others. The same applies to the Coffee Lectures, which due to the positive feedback they have received are now firmly established in the portfolio of user services. In future, they will be offered biannually in the spring and autumn. The positive experiences with the new consulting services for literary research and use are now flowing into the further development of these formats and the conception of supplementary services covering the diverse interests of the various target groups.