About the Competence Hub
BærUt! is a competence hub at the University of Oslo for promoting digital scholarly editions (DSEs). Our ambition is to consolidate expertise and knowledge in the field, gather researchers and practitioners, and, in the long run, create the foundation for a common platform for digital editions. We work closely with researchers, developers, and cultural institutions to digitize historical and cultural text documents and ensure these resources are accessible and useful for academic use.
We recognize that small humanities research communities often face challenges in transferring expertise and preserving resources after the completion of projects. A critical goal for BærUt! is to address this limitation by establishing long-term solutions for archiving and access, thereby ensuring that digital materials abide by the FAIR principles.
Today's digitalization takes place through semi-structured formats that meet international standards for markup and metadata. This ensures data interoperability, but the same cannot always be said about the systems and user interfaces involved. By focusing on these technical issues, BærUt! aims to preserve academic work in a way that keeps it accessible and relevant both now and in the future.
We are also aware that a wide range of digital projects – many involving non-Norwegian material – fall outside the preservation mandates of both the National Library and the National Archives. This initiative aims to include these in a robust storage and accessibility structure, thereby reinforcing Norway's position within digital humanities at an international level.
Join BærUt! – a collective step towards ensuring our digital scholarly editions remain perpetually relevant and accessible to all communities and research.
Deliverables
Networking
- Establishing and running a network for those creating/managing DSEs at the University of Oslo
- open network meetings with all participants (bi-monthly)
Skills Development
- Workshops on foundational and advanced methods for DSEs (XML/TEI, MEI, relational and graph databases)
- Data management and documentation for DSEs
- Seminars for sharing experiences and development
- Conferences discussing DSEs for relevant academic environments
Mapping
- Identify conditions, frameworks, procedures, and infrastructures necessary for long-term archiving, making accessible, and running semi-structured data from the interdisciplinary and multilingual humanities field
- Systematic mapping of existing and planned DSEs with a special focus on data types and structures, systems, technical infrastructure, and documentation
- Development and initiation of a feasibility study for establishing infrastructure for digital editions at the National Library at the national level
Recommendation
- Development and publication of a joint whitepaper "Recommendations for the Long-Term Archiving, Accessing, and Maintenance of Digital Scholarly Editions Created in Norwegian Academic and Cultural Heritage Institutions"
Nodes
- Digital Editions & Philology
- Materiality
- Automatic Text Recognition (OCR)
- XML/TEI
- Databases
- User Interface
Dissemination – DSE Network Blog
The blog DSEnetwork on the open academic blogging platform Hypotheses.org follows the activities of the network and the competence hub. Researchers associated with the network publish short articles about digital edition projects for a wider audience, participate in discussions, write opinion pieces, and make presentations from workshops, seminars and conferences available.
The blog's scope is as broad and varied as the field of digital scholarly editions, without limitations on theme, period, source language, format and data model, creating a valuable resource for future researchers when creating digital editions.
Financing
The University of Oslo funds the BærUt! Sustainable Digital Scholarly Editions skills hub for three years (2024-2026) as part of the IT in research master plan.
Join!
Everyone is welcome to join us - whether you're a researcher, developer, student, or cultural heritage specialist.
Join the network via the online form.
