Data modelling is a central challenge in every Digital Humanities endeavour. This activity comprises both the conceptualization of the domain of discourse (conceptual model), as well as formalizing the conceptual model in concrete schemas.

Created at the outset of every project, the resulting data model is an agreement between the humanities domain experts and the development team which guides the technical development and sets the boundaries for what kind of information can be captured. The data model also defines how the resulting data will be interoperable with other datasets and tools.

Although each project may have specific requirements, we base project-specific solutions on established reference models, standardized terminology, and recommended digital formats that address the specific challenges of humanities data (i.e., sparseness, ambiguity, inconsistency or lack of information). For example, we use TEI for encoding textual resources in XML, and the CIDOC CRM family of ontologies for structured data in RDF.

The modelling task must also take into account the formats of source data, as well as the constraints imposed by the tools used to curate and present the data. Legacy data is often available only in textual documents or spreadsheets thus making custom conversions an important part of many data processing workflows.

XML files are usually curated by the team in a git repository, which ensures detailed versioning and reproducibility of all changes. Automated pipelines implemented as GitHub actions are in place to convert the XML/TEI documents into HTML pages, creating a static site which has little infrastructural requirements and is easy to maintain and host in the future. Usually, this conversion workflow is implemented by using our core software DSE Static Cookiecutter. In many cases, indexes of named entities (like persons, institutions or places) are curated within project-specific instances of APIS, our framework for prosopographic data, thus lowering the barrier between (semi-structured) philological analysis and structured (meta)data sets.

ADD – Astronomical Diaries Digital

ADD – Astronomical Diaries Digital

Astronomical Diaries Digital (ADD) is a cooperation project with the University of Vienna analyzing Late Babylonian observational records, offering a digital edition and new insights using digital tools.

APIS – Austrian Prosopographical Information System

APIS – Austrian Prosopographical Information System

APIS is a project dedicated to creating a digital environment for new modes of access to prosopographical/biographical data.

Approaching Byzantium in Ottoman Istanbul

Approaching Byzantium in Ottoman Istanbul

The project analyzes how visiting Constantinople affected the reception of Byzantium by humanists from the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century.

CONNEC – Connected Clerics: Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West

CONNEC – Connected Clerics: Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West

The project analyzes how a ‘universal’ Late Antique Church was constructed despite the context of political fragmentation.

Danube Trade 2.0

Danube Trade 2.0

Account books on toll revenues such as the well-known Sundzoll registers are first-rate sources for researching trade in the early modern period. For the Austrian provinces, the Aschach toll records preserved in the Upper Austrian Provincial Archives (Linz) occupy…

Documenting Zargari

Documenting Zargari

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION The project is dedicated to documenting and analyzing the highly endangered Zargari Romani variety spoken in North-West Iran.

Digital Archive Barbara Frischmuth

Digital Archive Barbara Frischmuth

The project consolidates the archive holdings, documents and describes the primary sources and their academic and public reception in a digital environment to serve as solid basis for research of Frischmuth’s oeuvre.

HIOB – Job in Early Medieval Jewish Literature

HIOB – Job in Early Medieval Jewish Literature

This project investigates the reception of the book of Job in early medieval Jewish literature.

HistoGis – A Geographical Information System

HistoGis – A Geographical Information System

This project develops a Geographical Information System, workbench and repository to collect, create, and share historical temporalized spatial data.

Inscribing Authority

Inscribing Authority

The goal of this collaboration with the Institute for Iranian Studies is to establish a database of architectural inscriptions dating from the 10th–13th centuries, recorded in an area encompassing present-day Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan,…

InTaVia – In/Tangible European Heritage

InTaVia – In/Tangible European Heritage

The InTaVia project overcomes barriers to European cultural heritage data by integrating tangible and intangible assets, fostering enriched storytelling and research.

Jelinek online – Work and Reception

Jelinek online – Work and Reception

The project makes the content of the publication “Elfriede Jelinek: Work and Reception” as well as newly researched data accessible.

Kabinettsratsprotokolle

Kabinettsratsprotokolle

Critical moments of a republic in its own words: a scholarly edition of Austria's cabinet council minutes 1919-1920.

Max Kalbeck: Networking Practices in Vienna 1900

Max Kalbeck: Networking Practices in Vienna 1900

In cooperation with the ACDH, this project produces a digital edition of the diaries (1895/1897) of music critic and Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck.

Karl Kraus – Legal Papers

Karl Kraus – Legal Papers

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION This project will provide a digital scholarly edition of the legal papers of the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus (1874-1936).

LOI – The Land of Israel in Geonic Times

LOI – The Land of Israel in Geonic Times

Explore Jewish relationships with the ancestral homeland through literature from the rise of Islam to the First Crusade (7th–11th centuries).

Margins at the Centre

Margins at the Centre

Book production and practices of annotation in the east Frankish realm (ca. 830–900).

MINE – Prosopography of the Members of the Austrian Academy of Sciences 1847–2022

MINE – Prosopography of the Members of the Austrian Academy of Sciences 1847–2022

MINE is dedicated to collecting, analyzing, and evaluating prosopographical and biographical data in a structured and sustainable manner.

Moving Byzantium

Moving Byzantium

The project highlights the role of Byzantium as a global culture and analyzes the internal flexibility of Byzantine society.

NeFA – Networks and Female Agency

NeFA – Networks and Female Agency

The aim of the project is to reconstruct the personal network of Empress Eleonora Magdalena of Pfalz-Neuburg (1655–1720) and to demonstrate how she deliberately used it to develop and maintain her social and political agency.

NoMansLand

NoMansLand

This project aims to explore if a process of transculturation occurred between the conqueror and conquered societies and how closely Islamic sedentary elites interacted with nomadic conquerors between the 13th and the first half of the 15th century in present day…

ÖBL – Austrian Biographical Dictionary

ÖBL – Austrian Biographical Dictionary

The ÖBL is the only encyclopaedic work in Europe to record the life courses and career paths of prominent personalities in the entire territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as well as in the First and Second Republics. In selecting the entries, we are…

PFP – Prosopographical Research Platform Austria
A network diagram showing networks between bubbles with portraits. The title of the platform "prosopographical research platform" is written at the bottom.

PFP – Prosopographical Research Platform Austria

The Prosopographical Research Platform Austria (PFP) integrates person-based research at OeAW using DH methods, Semantic Web, Linked Open Data, and AI.

PMB – Personen der Moderne Basis

PMB – Personen der Moderne Basis

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION A web service for individuals, works, institutions, places, and events specifically for Vienna around 1900.

PROVIDEDH – Progressive Visual Decision Making

PROVIDEDH – Progressive Visual Decision Making

The Austrian part of PROVIDEH, carried out by exploration space, is an open innovation space against the background of art driven innovation, artistic activism and social innovation to explore how the humanities might contribute to co-create a more just, inclusive,…

(Ps.)-Athanasius – Expositiones in Psalmos

(Ps.)-Athanasius – Expositiones in Psalmos

The Expositiones in Psalmos appeared in the fourth or fifth century and circulated under the name of Athanasius of Alexandria. It is a foundational source for the development of patristic exegesis in the tradition of Origenes and Eusebius of Caesarea.

RELEVEN – Re-evaluating the Eleventh Century

RELEVEN – Re-evaluating the Eleventh Century

The ERC project RELEVEN aims to explore the events in the Christian world in the “short eleventh century” (c. 1030–1095), while devising a novel methodological approach to express heterogeneous and even conflicting data.

SiCProD – Sigmund of Tyrol’s Court

SiCProD – Sigmund of Tyrol’s Court

SiCProD is creating a prosopographical database of Archduke Sigmund of Tyrol’s court, offering detailed biographical data and network insights to historians.

Arthur Schnitzler – Literary Correspondences I

Arthur Schnitzler – Literary Correspondences I

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION This project edits Arthur Schnitzler’s (1862–1931) correspondences with more than 40 writers and puts them on a website.

Arthur Schnitzler – Literary Correspondences II

Arthur Schnitzler – Literary Correspondences II

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION Digital critical edition of 45 complete correspondences and more than 3,600 correspondence pieces exchanged between Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) and fellow writers.

Shahi – Cultural Formation and Transformation

Shahi – Cultural Formation and Transformation

The project considers for the Shahi kingdoms (c. 7th–10th centuries) which played a pivotal role in the history of Central, Inner, and South Asia.

THANADOS – The Anthropological and Archaeological Database of Sepultures

THANADOS – The Anthropological and Archaeological Database of Sepultures

THANADOS focuses on the digital collection and presentation of Early Medieval cemeteries in the area of present-day Austria.

TibSchol – The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Scholasticism

TibSchol – The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Scholasticism

The cooperation project TibSchol, hosted at the IKGA, explores the formative phase of the Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition by means of digital editing and a prosopographic database.

Tillich Correspondence

Tillich Correspondence

The project “Edition of Paul Tillich’s Correspondence (1887–1933)” is creating the first hybrid edition of the letters of the important theologian.

Tillich Lectures

Tillich Lectures

The project “Edition of Tillich’s Lectures on Religion and Culture” investigates and publishes the sources on Tillich’s seminal lecture on Religion and Culture.

Translation Spaces

Translation Spaces

Translations are a useful source for investigating the emergence and establishment of knowledge. As part of this collaborative project, a corpus of bibliographic translation data is being compiled and evaluated that is not oriented towards a specific source or…

VICAV – Vienna Corpus of Arabic Varieties

VICAV – Vienna Corpus of Arabic Varieties

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION This online Corpus of Arabic varieties is a virtual research platform for Arabic dialectology and a testing ground for new text technological methods.

VieCPro – The Viennese Court

VieCPro – The Viennese Court

The VieCPro project is creating a prosopographical database of the early modern Viennese court and uses innovative digital methods for documentation and analysis.

WIBARAB – What is bedouin-type Arabic?

WIBARAB – What is bedouin-type Arabic?

CROSS-UNIT COOPERATION The linguistic and socio-historical realities behind the millennia-old dichotomous concept of nomadic and sedentary people in the Middle East and North Africa

YouBeOn – Young Believers Online

YouBeOn – Young Believers Online

YouBeOn is an innovatice, participative research project investigating religion on social media. Results will be published in a web-app.