Broadening the world’s knowledge

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Under the leadership of Trier Centre for Digital Humanities (TCDH), researchers from six different disciplines are involved in ‘LODinG’ network. | Quelle: Universität Trier | Copyright: Universität Trier | Download

Generative language models such as ChatGPT are not only trained on large amounts of text, but also with networked data. From its beginnings, Trier Centre for Digital Humanities (TCDH) has built up expertise in this area. “LODinG - Linked Open Data in the Humanities” is a new network which has now been launched under leadership of the TCDH to conduct research into linked data – which is nothing less than the world's knowledge. This is to be expanded and refined in order to be used to answer a wide range of questions.

Speeches by politicians, photos of historical events or video recordings of cultural events - today more and more data is available digitally. New knowledge can be generated from this data, if it is networked with one another. Further, it has to be available in machine-readable form so as to be processed by software or artificial intelligence. As part of their joint project, the researchers collect and analyse data and make it freely available. For example, they link texts with personal data or add geocoordinates to images, both manually and automatically.

Research into linked open data is being conducted in a total of seven projects. One project deals with historical wine labels. Images and texts on wine labels tell their very own story of how wine was marketed. At the same time, they are a reflection of the economy, culture and language of past decades and centuries. The project digitises wine labels and reworks the data using artificial intelligence and a standardised vocabulary so that it becomes machine-readable. The data is published accessibly for all, so that interested parties and other scientists can use it for their own research projects.

‘We would like to show that Linked Open Data furthers Humanities research’, says Prof Dr Christof Schöch, head of the network. Co-spokesperson Prof Dr Claudine Moulin adds: ‘Our goal is to not only link data, but also link research areas.‘ The participants in the network's projects are researching very different topics, from Early Modern medical treatises to current EU legal texts. In addition to researchers in Digital Humanities and Computational Linguistics, German Studies, Romance Studies and Sinology, the subjects Computer Science and Law are also involved in the research network.

‘In Germany the TCDH has already made a name for itself in the area of digitally networking data. This network gives us the chance to become more present internationally“, says Co-Speaker JProf Dr Susanne Kabatnik. Thanks to funding from the Rhineland-Palatinate research initiative, the researchers have a total of five years to complete the project. We will certainly be hearing a lot more from them.
More information on the research network: https://tcdh.uni-trier.de/de/projekt/loding

Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Prof. Dr. Christof Schöch
Trier Center for Digital Humanities
Mail: schoech@uni-trier.de
Tel. +49 651 201-3264