Launch of the CENDARI infrastructure in Berlin

On 14 January 2016, the CENDARI project was launched in Berlin at the beautiful Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. CENDARI is a powerful new toolkit for digital historical research, with an emphasis on World War One and medieval culture. The CENDARI project has been coordinated from the Dublin-based Trinity Long Room Hub by Dr Jennifer Edmond, in collaboration with partners in 14 institutions and 8 countries and was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research. As such the project has strong affiliations with PARTHENOS.

Over the past 4 years a virtual research infrastructure has been developed as a collaboration between historians, cultural heritage institutions and technical experts.

3 Research Tools

CENDARI’s work has resulted in 3 research tools: the Transnational Archival Sources, the Working Spaces, and several Thematic Research Guides. The CENDARI Transnational Archive Directory is a large database of archival descriptions and collections that contains information on more than 1,000 institutions across Europe and the world. The Directory allows historians to view sources in a rarely seen transnational and comparative view, with a focus on the medieval era and the First World War.

[pullquote]CENDARI is a powerful new toolkit for digital historical research, with an emphasis on World War One and medieval culture.[/pullquote]The core resources of the CENDARI Working Spaces are a Note-Taking Environment and an advanced search functionality. Historians can access data by pursuing their own search queries through a dynamic user interface. They can analyze data; create and upload their research documents, organise them and draw connections between them. The Note-Taking Environment provides linked panels for transcribing and taking notes on uploaded images or texts. Researchers can organise their work for personal use or collaboration.

Thematic Research Guides are introductory guides to archival material, structured thematically around either one or many archival collections. The CENDARI Research Guides present primary sources from different geographic areas and countries, in a variety of languages. Also available is the CENDARI White Book of Archives, which outlines their Data Exchange Recommendations.

Launch event

With the launch of the CENDARI infrastructure, digital history becomes more accessible to a wider audience. It therefore represents a major milestone in digital cultural empowerment.

Highlights of launch event included demonstrations of the new digital infrastructure, expert panel discussions and keynote addresses from leading historians Prof. Maciej Górny on “World War One Research in a Transnational and Digital Age” and Dr Erik Kwakkel on “Something Old, Something New: Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age.”

Find out more on www.cendari.eu