The necessity of an European virtual laboratory for the processing of digitized cultural heritage: T

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The necessity of an European virtual laboratory
for the processing of digitized cultural
heritage The HOMO (Higher Order Morphologies
Observer) concept

• Sándor Darányi
• sandor.daranyi_at_hb.se

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Underlying, independent assumptions

• Folklore text as much document as scientific one
• Extract structure from database extract raw
  material for data modelling, where data
  beliefs, not knowledge
• FP6 wants to create the European Research Area
  (ERA), to integrate the humanities as well
  (Odense Declaration 2002,
• http//www.forsk.dk/dkeuformand/odense.pdf)

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The HOMO concept

• Knowledge is known to exist in structures, both
  in the mind and in computers.
• Such structures, prominently classifications
  the ways we humans assign items and individuals
  to categories characterized by shared features of
  the objects belonging to them - are underlying
  cultures and societies, and provide us with
  access to public collections as well.
• If concrete structures are shapes (morphologies)
  and vice versa, then abstract structures are
  higher order morphologies.
• The quest for them has been the paradigm for
  human cognition ever since its obscure
  beginnings, therefore we might want to conceive
  an instrument for doing this job, the Higher
  Order Morphologies Observer (HOMO).

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The intellectual landscape

• Very idea almost 50 years old (Lévi-Strauss,
  1955)
• Problem never solved by anthropologists because
  it was a documentation problem, ie a generic
  solution was needed -gt information management
• In the meantime, in the world,
• Integration of public collections (libraries,
  archives, museums)
• Socio-economical and political integration,
  addressing cultural integration -gt cultural
  identity, (immaterial) cultural heritage gaining
  importance

• Two points crucial here
• Immaterial cultural heritage is in public
  collections, ie nothing is new
• Immaterial cultural heritage is documents, ie
  providing access is information management
  problem
• Therefore, safeguarding immaterial cultural
  heritage has an information management dimension,
  ie access to texts, images and audio material.

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Constraints and goals

• Constraint 1
• Integration of public collections heading
  towards media- and language-independent access
• Constraint 2
• To serve the taxpayer is to increase her/his
  awareness about cultural identities/heritage

• To increase awareness, scholars have to know more
  to feed more in the publication cycle -gt new
  knowledge
• To know more, they need access to dormant
  (digitized or not) material, plus new research
  services -gt new opportunities
• To overcome fragmentation of research skills, a
  typical scholar needs access to a one-stop text
  processing shop, with a variety of
  output-on-demand options

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Conceptual mapping

• Create motif/type joint indices by FA
• Visualize coherent content agglomerations as
  landscape
• Extension multiple layered hypermaps

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Text variation modelling

• Creating classification of text variants by FA
• Mapping variants onto a simple chain process
  (black box indicating presence of positive value
  in respective corner of F1F2 coordinate system)
• Calculating their transitional probabilities to
  see if they constitute Markov chains

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Scholarly benefits

• Integrating the humanities in the information
  society,
• Cross-disciplinary cooperation between
  anthropology, folklore, semiotics, linguistics,
  language technology, library and information
  science, classification theory, information
  retrieval, computer science, mathematics, etc.,
• Cross-language cross-media large scale
  comparative research, including that of ancient
  and contemporary cultures,
• Prelude to the modeling of text (artifact)
  evolution
• Generating new knowledge by utilizing latent
  information in archives,
• Augmenting information retrieval research with
  new document genres,
• Cross-comparable results,
• Transportable know-how from problem solving area
  to disciplines with related problems,
• Raw material for curriculum development.

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Economic benefits

• Encouraging innovation in the humanities,
• Setting up an integrated service point for
  extracting latent knowledge,
• Shaping cultural technology for the content
  industry,
• Addressing cross-cutting technology issues,
• Creating new basic knowledge for applied research
  and development.

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Political benefits

• Feedback to citizens (taxpayers) of the
  information society,
• Integrating the humanities in the ERA,
• Fermenting European consciousness by promoting
  cultural identity,
• Promoting regionality by cross-cultural studies,
• Supporting UNESCO initiative (culture is
  universal),
• Transatlantic RD cooperation potential in
  several disciplines.

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