A key deliverable of our current LIEF grant is to refine DAAO’s Events and Works schema to better match researcher queries.

While this is a refinement, not a rebuild,  the team has put considerable effort into ensuring that proposed changes are fit for purpose and meet accepted standards.  Dr Anne Cregan, our Semantic Adviser,  established our approach of reviewing the data model in full, rather than focussing exclusively on Events and Works entities.  This approach means any change is considered against the bigger picture and other possible future needs that are out of scope of this current LIEF.   Somaya Langley, our Data Manager, further developed the proposed refinements, referencing the FRBR00 conceptual model to help us respond to questions like ‘How do we accurately represent work that is performative, temporally and spatially extended, or iterative in nature?’. *Note that we have not adopted the FRBRoo model in full,  that would be a massive and complex undertaking.  We’re simply using the model as a guide for our Works/Events changes.

Click diagram for full-scale view.

DAAO Data Model - Proposed Revisions (February 2015)

These refinements are based on feedback from CIs and DAAO users.  Some of the questions and issues the model responds to include:

• How to collect data where the line between a WORK and an EVENT becomes blurred, such as in performative work.
• How to collect data on groups of WORKS such as series, installations made up of many WORKS, WORKS that evolve into new WORKS, ‘impermanent or abstract groupings.’
• How to collect complex relationships between groups of EVENTS while not locking the user in to a predefined hierarchy.
• How to collect data where the line between an EVENT and a RECOGNITION become blurred.
• How to collect data on collectives and organisations that work together.
• How to correctly attribute and show collaboration between DAAO artists/designers and non-artists or international artists for whom we do not collect full records.
• How to represent critical response to WORKS and EVENTS.
• How to investigate where Exhibition funding comes from.
• How to record more less concrete relationships between people, such as ‘Protege of/Mentor of’, Influenced/Influenced by’ etc.

We’re very excited to be working with two of our LIEF partners, The University of Melbourne (Prof Jaynie Anderson and A/Prof Alison Inglis) and Deakin University (Prof Deb Verhoeven), on this upcoming event.  We’ll post more details shortly.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES: WHERE DOES ART FIT IN?
The Australian Institute Of Art History
5 June 2015

Prof Deb Verhoeven
Deb Verhoeven is Professor and Chair of Media and Communication at Deakin University, She is also Director of the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI) project, a national linked data initiative that unites and unlocks Australia’s cultural datasets.

Dr Gillian Fuller
Gillian Fuller is Visiting Research Scholar at National Institute of Experimental Arts, UNSW and former Research Director of Design &  Art Australia Online.

We’ve been hearing a lot about e-research and Digital Humanities in recent years. Coupled with these term are other terms, equally opaque, such as metadata, virtual laboratories, data mapping. Then come the acronyms, NLA, DAAO, HUNI, RDF,SQL, API. It seems so removed from established research practices in Humanities. In this talk Verhoeven and Fuller will discuss how data-driven research is being used in the creative arts and showcase two leading digital humanities projects in the area: Design & Art Australia Online and HuNI (Humanities Networked Infrastructure).

We will also address three pressing issues for Digital Humanities:

• Representation: ensuring Australia’s cultural heritage is preserved and visible.
• Methods of Analysis; what can you do with cultural data? What kind of research does it afford? And what critical discussions need to be had about data driven methods?
• Participation and engagement:  What do we really mean by this?

HUNI
HuNI (Humanities Networked Infrastructure) is a national Virtual Laboratory project developed as part of the Australian government’s NeCTAR (National e-Research Collaboration Tools and Resources) program. HuNI combines information from 30 of Australia’s most significant cultural datasets covering more than 2 million authoritative records relating to the people, organisations, objects and events that make up Australia’s rich cultural heritage. HuNI also enables researchers to work with and share this large-scale aggregation of cultural information.

DAAO
Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO) is a collaborative e-Research tool built upon the foundations of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. DAAO is an open source freely accessible scholarly e-Research tool that presents biographical data about Australian artists, designers, craftspeople and curators.

How are these for some happy stats!?  These figures from the National Library of Australia show that DAAO is the second largest contributor of PEOPLE records to Trove.  DAAO is second only to Libraries Australia, which draws on the Australian National Bibliographic Database, bringing together records from libraries throughout Australia

Content partners with more than 1000 identities – March 2015

Congratulations to all DAAO content contributors.  Now, do you think we can get to position number one?