In addition, questions about copyright and the handling of digital image material arise regularly: How do you store the image material? How do you work with it? Which data should be displayed and which should be backed up? As a co-spokes institution of the National Research Data Initiative for Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage NFDI4Culture, TIB therefore supports a specialised helpdesk that provides advice on such questions (see also the blog post by Lozana Rossenova on the inclusion of Ukrainian guest researchers in the Open Science Lab, the helpdesk and the cooperation with SUCHO).
”We have to prioritise which types of data we should collect first and which could be added later. At the moment, cultural data collection is not so fast because we have to add the architects’ biographies. This information is hard to find and it is very time-consuming to create biographical data. There is hardly any evidence for many of them, sometimes I can find only surname and a first letter of the architect's name, and it requires engagement with research institutions and local archives to find more data. So in some cases it has to be compiled from many sources, which have to be checked individually before they can be used,” says Irina Gorodetska, describing the extensive documentation.
Valuable data for the reconstruction of historical buildings
The TIB is responsible for setting up a sustainable infrastructure for the photos and other data using Wikibase database technology. Professor Dr Ina Blümel from TIB’s Open Science Lab manages projects in the field of OpenGLAM and is co-spokesperson in the NFDI4Culture initiative.
As an architect, she is particularly interested in collecting and providing visual material for the preservation and reconstruction of architectural heritage: ”The workflows that we have set up with the open source software Wikibase make it possible to link information across different databases. This can be done by specifically invited experts, who gradually add to the information about the listed monuments.”
What these contributors do should not require a degree in computer science: They should be able to simply add the information – but at the same time, the aim is for the entire process to be very precise and comprehensible and to be permanently available to the global architectural history specialist community. It also enables citizen science – i.e. the involvement of citizens in research projects – as the TIB is already practising in similar projects with digital archive materials.
In this way, citizens, activists and local photographers can make a long-term contribution to the emergency documentation of the buildings. In addition to the photographers, Irina Gorodetska is in contact with a number of local scientists and building enthusiasts who are currently on military missions in the areas at the centre of the conflict or who live in the area that is constantly under Russian rocket and shell fire. They often risk their own physical safety and tirelessly photograph damaged, often unique and historically significant buildings. They do this voluntarily alongside their military duties and initially only save the images for themselves.
”Tools such as the Wikibase instance set up by the TIB are of interest to precisely these people because they enable citizen science. We are gradually professionalising these work processes, for example through advice and workshops – as far as funding frameworks such as NFDI4Culture allow,” says Blümel about the upcoming tasks in the project.
About the project
