DAAO interoperates with other datasets in a range of ways.  This is a quick update on a couple of recent developments with fellow humanities data sets.

HuNI
Congratulations to Prof Deb Verhoeven and the whole HuNI team for launching huni.net.au in 2014.

We’ve been playing with the Collection spring visualisations (here’s an example), which is not only a means of explaining the data, but also makes the database fun to use.  The usability of  HuNI’s interface has inspired our planned approach to DAAO’s researcher collaboration developments. In particular, it highlights the importance of simplicity – HuNI is a complex dataset, but for a user it’s simple.

We recently added the HuNI search widget to the DAAO homepage, so now you can search the HuNI dataset from DAAO.

ADELTA
The Australian Directory of Electronic Literature and Text-based Art (ADELTA) is an interactive directory of Australian writers and writing in the New Media Arts in development at the University of Western Sydney. ADELTA engaged Holly Sydney to install a RESTful disambiguation API/service on DAAO so that ADELTA can use DAAO as a name authority service.

How does the person disambiguation service work?
ADELTA is a Works based database; DAAO is  Biography based. So DAAO helps ADELTA by enabling their users to find artist records through the ADELTA interface,  and ADELTA in turn helps DAAO by contributing records.

The DAAO team is expanding as we get stuck into development.

We are lucky to have some very talented people join us, and some equally talented people return. Let me introduce you.

Somaya has a background in the arts, sound, media, broadcast, festivals, archives, libraries, digital preservation, digital collecting and curation. She has worked as a Producer of Australian Music for ABC Classic FM, as the Online Project Officer for the Australian Music Centre, and is the former Curator of Networked Media for the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. She has also undertaken consultancy work for the Australia Council for the Arts to research and deliver the Archives in the Digital Era Scoping Study Report. In recent years she has presented at conferences and symposia including the 2013 International Symposium on Electronic Art held in Sydney, and the 2013 International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives annual conference held in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Dr Anne Cregan – Semantic Advisor
Anne was previously Semantic Lead of HuNI and is currently a Board Member of Open Knowledge and Executive Director of CloudEarth.  Anne  joined us in November 2014 to write the initial scope for the first module of the project –  schema refinement.  In early 2015 Anne will guide developments to extend DAAO’s feed to HuNI.

Emily Wubben – Digital Content Officer, Melbourne
Emily is back! In 2015 she will further develop content partnerships with the University of Melbourne. More on that soon.

Since her previous role with the DAAO in 2012 as the Melbourne Digital Content Project Officer, Emily has worked for Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance on the delivery of the Galleries of Remembrance, which opened on 11 November 2014. She is a co-author of Architectural ornament: The history and art of Wilson Hall at the University of Melbourne, published by the University’s Cultural Collections department, and recently she presented a seminar paper for the Melbourne Portrait Group on the portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Emily is also now the Exhibitions Research Officer for the Shrine of Remembrance. She holds a Master of Art Curatorship and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.

Annie Murney – Project Administrator
Annie is a Sydney-based arts writer and has contributed to various print and online publications such as Concrete Playground and The BRAG. Her main research area focuses on art, politics, and collectivism across the post-Soviet world.  Annie will provide administrative support to the project team.

We must also say a belated thank you to the amazing Eric Riddler and Rhonda Hamilton, who each delivered content projects in 2014 to support CI research and inform our current LIEF developments.  You can read more about their work here.

While we’ve been working on scoping technical developments for the current LIEF project, we’ve also been busy on a couple of great content projects which will support our CIs and feed in to site developments.