What happened? From the 28th to the 30th of May, there was the annual conference of the Italian Association for Digital Humanities and Digital Culture (in Italian, Associazione per l’Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale, a.k.a. AIUCD). It is the main meeting of national experts in Digital Humanities (DH) research, discussing methods, trends, tools, and data on the topic for three days. The complete proceedings of the conference will be published soon and made available on the website. This year was organised at the Monastery of San Nicolò l’Arena, an incredible complex of Baroque buildings, which is also the headquarters of the Department of Humanities Sciences of the University of Catania.
What I did. In the context of the AIUCD 2024 conference, there have been a few presentations of works (I am involved as a co-author) describing the research we are conducting around DH. Sebastian, Alice, and Bianca have presented a work that analyses reproducible research in the context of the humanities domain, presenting the creation of a digital twin of a temporary exhibition (which was already introduced in the previous log). Arcangelo has introduced HERITRACE, a semantic data management system tailored for the GLAM sector, based on SHACL for data modelling and the OpenCitations Data Model for provenance and change tracking. Last but not least, Arianna has shown a workflow she is implementing for creating replicable metadata schema crosswalks to facilitate the preservation and accessibility of cultural heritage in the digital ecosystem based on the RDF Mapping Language (RML) and surveys for abstracting and reformulating domain-specific knowledge. In addition, I was also approached about possible uses of the FRBR-aligned Bibliographic Ontology (FaBiO) in the context of GLAM institutions. It was a very interesting intake, with exciting collaborations in the following months.
What to read. Among the various possible new readings to suggest as a consequence of the latest knowledge gained within the AIUCD 2024 conference, I would like to highlight an excellent open-access book, published by the wonderful Open Book Publishers, about DH and modelling, which was presented in one of the talks of the conference:
Ciula, A., Eide, Ø., Marras, C., & Sahle, P. (2023). Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice (1st ed.). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0369