Facilitating Archival Research on the Study of the Turbulent 1940s
An online discussion on the particularities and challenges facing digital archives and collections holding resources from the 1940s.
About
In the context of the Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation, APOLLONIS, a designated Task Force led by DCU/IMSI/ATHENA R.C., focuses on identifying and supporting the workflows that researchers need to follow to perform specific research while jointly accessing disparate archives. Using the decade of 1940s as a use case, a turbulent period in Greek history due to its significant events (WWII, Occupation, Opposition, Liberation, Civil War), the Task Force assembled digitised historical archives from different providers to shed light on different historical aspects of these events. When this work is finalised, users of APOLLONIS will be able to explore this content in new and innovative ways, with access to different and disparate archives as well as to curated and enriched resources. Moreover, the users will be offered different curation and content analysis workflows, which they will be able to perform themselves both within and outside the infrastructure. Find out more about APOLLONIS.
Based on this work and in collaboration with Europeana Research, these online discussions in a digital panel seek to address and expand on the following questions:
- What are the particularities of archives and collections holding resources on the 1940s?
- What are the users’ needs when interacting with archival resources on the 1940s?
- What are the main challenges faced by archives and collections holding resources on the 1940s?
- How can we deal with heterogeneity, both in terms of structure and semantics?
- What are the digital tools one can use in order to integrate resources and study them as a whole?
- What if users are unfamiliar with the methods and tools available?
The discussion took place on 10 September 2020 from 14:00 — 16:00.
Speakers
- Maria Spiliotopoulou (Researcher, Modern Greek History Research Centre, Academy of Athens, National Coordinator for DARIAH-GR), Digital history portals: a tool for modern Greek history
- Stathis Pavlopoulos (Historian, Contemporary Social History Archives / ASKI), The challenges of ASKI as a digital archive
- Maria Ilvanidou (Researcher, DCU/IMSI/ATHENA R.C. and Athens University of Economics and Business), From archives to digital research infrastructures: towards a thematic micro-infrastructure for the study of Greece in the 1940s
- Victor-Jan Vos (Head Collections and Services, NIOD), Accessing the Dutch records of World War II via the NIOD Institute
- Veerle Vanden Daelen (Deputy General Director & Curator, Kazerne Dossin), The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) as a routeplanner for Holocaust research: experiences, challenges and plans for the future
- The online event was chaired by Agiatis Benardou (DCU/IMSI/ATHENA R.C. and Athens University of Economics and Business).
Resources
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