Tools Digital Humanities & Research Data

Transkribus

Transkribus is a cloud infrastructure for transcription, text recognition and searching of historical documents. By using artificial intelligence Transkribus allows the processing of print and handwritten materials. Repeated training of the software by means of manual correction allows for continuous improvement of the text recognition results.

The software can be used free of charge for transcription work, but the text recognition can only be used by purchasing so-called credits. The Transkribus infrastructure is operated by READ-COOP, a European cooperative founded specifically for this purpose. Numerous international research institutions and cultural institutions are part of the cooperative. At the instigation of the university library, Kiel University has been a member of READ-COOP since 2020 and is thus directly involved in the further development of this future-oriented technology. In addition, membership benefits can be used for research and teaching. Feel free to contact us if you are planning to use Transkribus.

Oxygen XML Editor

Oxygen XML Editor enables the user to enter, edit and transform structured data using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

In the context of humanities projects, this editor has found widespread use, as it can be used to develop input masks, schemas and transformation pipelines rather easily. It can be easily connected to the XML database eXist via an interface. For larger use cases, frameworks can be created that can function as a research environment. Examples are ediarum for the field of digital editions or ediarum.mediaevum for the edition of medieval manuscripts.

Since this is a commercial product, a license must be purchased for use (discounted academic-licenses are offered). In the context of the Digital Learning Lab at Kiel University Library, a "class set" of licenses is available for use in courses.

Database systems

The structured digital collection of research data that enables new possibilites of analysis are an integral part of digital research in the humanities. Depending on the use case and context of the project, different database solutions are available. Frequently used databases in the digital humanities are document-oriented databases (e.g. eXist-db, CouchDB or MongoDB) as well as graph databases such as Neo4j. We would be happy to work with you to find the right solution.