Digitization

  • consultation with regards to digitization planning (timeline, scan parameters, formats, workflows, OCR, preservation)
  • metadata curation (jointly with the library of the Austrian Academy of Sciences BAS:IS, the ACDH-CH provides an instance of the software Goobi)
  • use of premises and equipment at the Digitization Centre (workstations need to be pre-booked via a booking system. All users must receive initial consultation and a technical instruction for the use of various scanners and software before utilizing the Digitization Centre)

If you are interested in using the facilities and equipment of the ACDH-CH Digitization Centre please contact acdh-ch-digitization(at)oeaw.ac.at.

If you are planning to use TRANSKRIBUS please contact transkribus(at)oeaw.ac.at .


Data Modelling and Curation

We offer support in collecting, organizing, and accessing large quantities of data by

  • modelling databases or text encoding,
  • custom web-based forms for editing data,
  • maintenance and publication of controlled vocabularies [ACDH Vocabularies],
  • metadata quality assurance,
  • measures for enhancing the interoperability of data, and
  • preparation of digital data for long term archiving [ARCHE Deposition Process].

Development and maintenance of Data Applications

In addition to its data-related services, the ACDH-CH also provides corresponding technical solutions.

The ACDH-CH’s software products are generally specialized digital tools allowing the production, description, visualization, annotation and analysis of a wide range of data types. The institute strives to provide optimal software solutions while trying to keep development and maintenance costs to a minimum. The team continuously evaluates existing solutions to expand its portfolio of services, but also engages in the customized adaptation of available open-access software or the development of new, bespoke solutions, tailored to the specific data models and needs of the project and users.

Besides developing software, we also host applications on our servers, collaborating to this end with the Computing Centre of the Academy (ARZ).


Our applications

  • are mostly web-based,
  • support collaborative approaches,
  • are standards conformant,
  • have APIs for programmatic access to data, and
  • are reusable.


The services aim to support the following phases of the research process:

  • data import and export
  • data management and curation
  • format conversions
  • data analysis, processing and enrichment (especially NLP processing)
  • indexing and searching, exploration and browsing
  • online viewing/presentation (3D models, high-resolution images)
  • interactive visualization of geospatial data on geographic maps (GIS), of numeric or tabular data as various charts, and of network/graph
  • different options for data retrieval

    - download of the raw data
    - REST API service
    - SPARQL endpoint to query RDF data
    - download of metadata