@misc{Umerle2025,
title = {Engaging Researchers for Improving Services and Training: Insights from the ATRIUM Survey and Researcher Forum},
author = {Tomasz Umerle and Tiziana Lombardo and Iulianna van der Lek and Maria Ilvanidou and Carol Delmazo},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-07-14},
abstract = {The ATRIUM project enhances access to digital research infrastructures in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences by improving services and creating a tailored curriculum for the research community. The poster showcases how, through a survey and workshops, ATRIUM integrates community feedback to bridge skills gaps and deliver impactful open training resources.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@misc{Ilvanidou2025,
title = {Towards a collaborative map annotation workflow: Annotating ancient places on Rigas’ Charta of Greece. },
author = {Maria Ilvanidou and Massimiliano Carloni and Anna Aslanoglou and Vicky Dritsou},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15776216},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15776215},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-05-07},
abstract = {Historical maps are complex, multidimensional artefacts whose layered histories and narrative potential are often obscured. Annotation is proposed as a means to unlock these hidden layers of meaning and make the maps more analytically accessible.

ATRIUM Teams from ATHENA and the Austrian Academy of Sciences are creating a workflow for manual map annotation, tested using Recogito Studio but intentionally designed to be tool-agnostic. Using the case study of the 18th-century Charta of Greece, created by Greek writer and revolutionary Rigas Velestinlis, the richly illustrated Enlightenment-era map merges historical and mythological geography as a political call to resist Ottoman rule.

The workflow focuses on manual, collaborative annotation of features such as historical events and ancient coins, which are linked to external sources and geotagged for deeper contextualisation.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@misc{Pertsas2025,
title = {Creating a Knowledge Base of Research Methods from Archaeology Publications},
author = {Vayianos Pertsas and Nikolas Kapralos and Ioanna Ntountoudi},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-05-07},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@conference{Aslanoglou2025,
title = {Advancing CRMarchaeo: A Refined Approach to Modeling Archaeological Observations and Intellectual Processes},
author = {Anna Aslanoglou, Anna and Panos Constantopoulos and Vicky Dritsou},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-05-07},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}

@misc{Constantopoulos2024,
title = {A Blueprint for Digital Work Practices in the Humanities},
author = {Panos Constantopoulos and Vicky Dritsou and Katerina Gkirtzou and Helen Goulis and Patritsia Kalafata and Irakleitos Sougioultzoglou and Yorgos Tzedopoulos},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12080000},
year = {2024},
date = {2024-06-18},
abstract = {We present a blueprint for representing digital work practices in the Humanities, capable of accommodating domain-specific variations while fostering conformance with standards, metadata schemas and good practice guides. Its purpose is to help digital humanities researchers learn, adapt, apply and critically assess digital work practices, not only in isolated tasks, but in entire workflows. Understanding situation- and domain- specific workflows as specializations of more general processes can enhance effectiveness by virtue of normalization. It is then easier to reuse tools, information structures and vocabularies, to apply standards, to adhere to FAIR data principles [1] and data openness.

The blueprint was defined in the framework of the Greek project “The emerging landscape of digital work practices in the Humanities in the context of the European projects DARIAH and CLARIN” [2]. It was informed by an extensive survey of work practices, comprising a widely answered questionnaire [3] and six focus groups, and a critical review of relevant metadata schemas, conducted as part of the project in 2023. Relevant, among others, also are research requirements [4] recently reported by Europeana, previous analyses of work practices in the Humanities [5,6], and the findings of a pan-European survey conducted in DARIAH [7].

The blueprint features a structural and a procedural part. The structural part has the form of a knowledge graph, based on the Scholarly Ontology (SO) [8] and implemented using an opensource graph database system [9]. The SO provides a domain-neutral ontological model of research work. Specialized classes and domain-specific terminological resources are then employed to capture the work practices and support the requirements of different disciplines. In this way, processes, tools and information resources are contextualized in a manner allowing comparability and interoperability. In the work reported here, practices recorded in the survey have been represented in the knowledge base. Special effort was devoted to enriching the hierarchy of SO Activity Types to capture the scope of specific data seeking, production, organization and dissemination practices. A critical effectiveness factor is the alignment of metadata schemas and terminology with research practices. In our work we have identified metadata schemas appropriate to the domains and tasks recorded in the survey and mapped them to the relevant blueprint elements along with suggestions reflecting current best practice.

The procedural part has the form of a workflow generator, i.e., a generic workflow of research work, in particular the information processes involved. Formulated as a BMPN-style diagram, it represents an archetypical overall process specified in terms of high-level SO activity classes. Through a specialization parallel to that performed in the structural part, contextualized workflows are generated to represent the flow of work in specific domains and tasks. The workflow has evolved from that in [10]. For validation, it has been used to generate specific workflows corresponding to practices identified in the abovementioned survey, in addition to previously having generated the workflow of unifying historical archives [10]. The generic workflow is shown in the Figure below. For illustration purposes, it also includes certain subordinate activity types, quite widely used.

References

[1] Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

[2] Digital Landscape project, https://digital-landscape.gr/

[3] Maria Ilvanidou, Vicky Dritsou, Maria Gavriilidou, Kanella Pouli, Yorgos Tzedopoulos, Irakleitos Souyioultzoglou. The “Digital Landscape in Greece” Web Survey. In Book of Abstracts, DARIAH Annual Event 2023: Cultural Heritage Data as Humanities Research Data?, p. 54. Budapest, June 2023.

[4] Research Requirements. A survey on the reuse of digital cultural heritage, Report edited by the Europeana Foundation, August 2021, v1. https://pro.europeana.eu/project/research-requirements

[5] Agiatis Benardou, Panos Constantopoulos, Costis Dallas, “An approach to analyzing working practices of research communities in the humanities”, International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing , 7, 105-127, 2013

[6] Hughes, L., Constantopoulos, P. and Dallas, C. (2016) Digital Methods in the Humanities: Understanding and Describing their Use across the Disciplines. In Schreibman, S., Siemens, R., Unsworth J. (Eds) A New Companion to Digital Humanities, Wiley-Blackwell.

[7] Dallas, C. and Chatzidiakou, N. (Eds). (2022). European survey on scholarly practices and digital needs in the human sciences. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6583037

[8] Pertsas, V., Constantopoulos, P. Scholarly Ontology: modelling scholarly practices. Int J Digit Libr 18, 173–190 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-016-0169-3

[9] Neo4j Graph Database. https://neo4j.com/product/neo4j-graph-database/

[10] Constantopoulos P., Dritsou V., Ilvanidou M., Chroni A. Aggregation and Curation of Historical Archive Information. In: Karagiannis D., Lee M., Hinkelmann K., Utz W. (eds) Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93547-4_23, 2022},
note = {Workflows: Digital Methods for Reproducible Research Practices in the Arts and Humanities - DARIAH Annual Event 2024},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@inproceedings{Pertsas2023,
title = {Ontology-Driven Extraction of Contextualized Information from Research Publications},
author = {Vayianos Pertsas and Panos Constantopoulos},
url = {https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2023/122541/122541.pdf},
isbn = {ISBN 978-989-758-671-2, ISSN 2184-3228},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-10-17},
booktitle = {In Proc. 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 2: KEOD, pp. 108-118. Best paper award.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}

@conference{Pertsas2023b,
title = {A Knowledge Graph for Humanities Research},
author = {Vayianos Pertsas and Panagiotis Leontaridis and Marialena Kasapaki and Panos Constantopoulos
},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.8107679},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-07-10},
booktitle = {Digital Humanities 2023. Collaboration as Opportunity. (DH2023) , Graz, Austria, 10-14 July 2023},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}

@article{Ilvanidou2023,
title = {The "Digital Landscape in Greece" Web Survey},
author = {Maria Ilvanidou and Vicky Dritsou and Maria Gavriilidou and Kanella Pouli and Yorgos Tzedopoulos and Irakleitos Souyioultzoglou},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7973681 },
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.7973680},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-05-26},
abstract = {The way of working in the Humanities undergoes a digital transformation. The Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation “APOLLONIS” and the European research infrastructures DARIAH for the Arts and Humanities and CLARIN for Language Resources and Technology are important facilitating agents of this transformation in Greece and in Europe respectively. The transformation has been forcefully accelerated by the recent pandemic and, as some early research initiatives are indicating, readiness for acceptance of digital work practices appears to rise. Also rising is the need to delve deeper into the nature of digital methods and practices and their impact on research.

The COVID-19 outbreak and the restrictions it imposed brought about new needs in the Humanities research and teaching, introducing new modi operandi, accelerating a digital transformation that has been under way for decades in the Digital Humanities, but also demonstrating the gaps that remain. Funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI), the project “Digital Landscape” (The emerging landscape of digital work practices in the Humanities in the context of the European projects DARIAH and CLARIN, 2022- 2024), is capturing the impact of the pandemic in the way we work in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Greece, to better understand current trends and needs, and plan effectively for the future. To this end, we are employing a mixed methodology. The tools to collect evidence-based information are: a) a communities web-survey and b) Humanities and Social Sciences focus groups. The report resulting from the analysis of these data will be used to support the strategic vision and inform the future planning of the APOLLONIS research infrastructure.

The proposed poster will present the findings of the web survey, in which we analyzed data on digital research practices, tools and interaction with digital content gathered from the humanities and social sciences research community in Greece, paying special attention to the impact of COVID-19 on digital humanities research and practice.

Based on past experience and data collected in the context of European research infrastructures and projects in the Arts, Humanities and Language Technologies and Social Sciences, such as 1 E.g., “DH in the time of Virus: a Twitter Conference”, 02.04.2020, "DHgoesViral" workshop, 26.04.2021. Preparing DARIAH, DARIAH-EU, CLARIN-EU, EHRI (the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure), ARIADNE (Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Data Networking in Europe), SSHOC, SoDaNet and Europeana Cloud, we designed, disseminated and implemented the web survey which gathered almost 400 responses, subsequently analysed and discussed in comparison with past trends in Greece.

In this poster we propose that we present these findings and prompt discussions with our European colleagues.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@misc{Dritsou2022,
title = {The Greek Landscape of Digital Humanities Initiatives},
author = {Vicky Dritsou},
url = {https://www.casalini.it/retreat/web_content/2022/presentations/dritsou.pdf
https://youtu.be/YViAk77Vfoc},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-04-05},
abstract = {Over the last decade the Greek landscape of digital humanities has undergone considerable reframing. At the time of intense digitization, a significant number of cultural heritage institutions from across the country digitized and documented their collections, making them available online or locally for use by both specialists and wider audiences. This wave of digitization projects by Greek libraries, archives, museums, universities, ministry ephorates and publishers, have been instrumental in fostering the growth of major research and teaching resources online, as well as in providing the foundations for national digital infrastructures. The transformative effect of digitization and, more recently, of academic-led initiatives (projects and infrastructures) on Greek scholarship has appeared as the aftermath of increased access to primary and secondary resources, facilitated management of data, and enhanced reuse of digital cultural assets. Digital tools have not only transformed our engagement and interaction with the past, but they have also reshaped arts and humanities research, prompting a new community of digital humanists within, across and beyond Greece. Focusing on the example of APOLLONIS, the Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation, this talk will present the challenges and the significant shifts the Greek landscape of digital humanities has been going through over the last years.},
howpublished = {Presentation at Fiesole Retreat 2022, Athens, April 5},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@inbook{Constantopoulos2022,
title = {Aggregation and Curation of Historical Archive Information},
author = {Panos Constantopoulos and Vicky Dritsou and Maria Ilvanidou and Alexandra Chroni},
editor = {Dimitris Karagiannis and Moonkun Lee and Knut Hinkelmann and Wilfrid Utz },
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93547-4_23},
isbn = {978-3-030-93546-7},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-03-11},
booktitle = {Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling},
pages = {523-540},
publisher = {Springer},
chapter = {23},
abstract = {Integrating archival information from different cultural heritage institutions to support historical research has been a commonly pursued goal among humanities digital research infrastructures. Due to the lack of standards in performing such processes, there is a need to provide guidance to interested parties and share knowledge deriving from successful practices. In this chapter, we introduce the Historical Information Curation (HIC) model that aims to address this need. Based on our experience with aggregating and curating archival collections, we have developed a two-faceted model for such processes, capable of supporting both the structural representation of the required workflows and the analysis of their dynamics.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}

@book{Barker2021,
title = {DH Goes Viral},
author = {Elton Barker and Agiatis Benardou and Sara Di Giorgio and Vicky Dritsou and Quinn Dombrowski and Achille Felicetti and Katerina Gardikas and Vicky Garnett and Maria Ilvanidou and Alba Irollo and Justine Le Floch and Carlo Meghini and George Mikros and Eliza Papaki and Lorna Richardson and Susan Schreibman and Melissa Terras and Giannis Tsakonas},
editor = {Agiatis Benardou and Vicky Dritsou and Maria Ilvanidou},
url = {https://zenodo.org/record/5793151},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.5793151},
isbn = {978-618-85875-0-2},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-12-23},
abstract = {As a response to COVID-19 and while the onset of the pandemic was still in its very early stages, in April 2020 the Digital Curation Unit (DCU), Research and Innovation Center "Athena", as co-ordinator of APOLLONIS, the Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation, organized a Twitter Conference under the title “DH in the Time of Virus”. This event aimed at battling academic isolation and facilitating and supporting community building and osmosis in DH research and education. Due to its sensitive timing, with Italy going through extreme difficulties and Europe and the US entering quarantine and work-from-home regimes, the Twitter Conference provided a platform of communication of DH research pursuits as well as of expression of an unprecedented human experience. With the support of a DARIAH Theme grant, a year later, in 2021, we designed and organized a digital workshop in which we reunited the Twitter Conference participants alongside further DH researchers who were selected through an open call.
The outcome of these events is an electronic as well as a printed publication monitoring the effects of the pandemic on e-Education, e-Research and digital tools, methods and platforms, the developments the pandemic has expedited and the delays it may have caused in DH research and the distance covered and toils endured by DH researchers and practitioners to keep track of their work.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {book}
}

@article{Benardou2021,
title = {The vision of an open, transferable, hybrid reading hub in urban Greece},
author = {Agiatis Benardou and Michalis Kalamaras and Magdalini Sgouridi and Giannis Tsakonas},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1386/jgmc_00033_3},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-04-01},
journal = {Journal of Greek Media and Culture},
volume = {7},
number = {1},
pages = {125-136(12)},
publisher = {Intellect},
abstract = {In recent years the traditional concept of the library has been drastically diversified. Libraries appear in different forms, adding collections of content beyond books, expanding already existing services and developing new ones, while focusing on their engagement with audiences. This visual essay presents CLOISTER, a vision of an open, inclusive, non-profit, physical and digital reading space to be located in the heart of the Greek city. CLOISTER is envisioned as a sustainable, transferable and inviting library construction, that aims to disrupt the city flow by offering a new reading and collaboration space. The design of this pop-up library is inspired by the Athenian Agora, with its covered arcades and the open porticos running along building walls. The project aspires to transform Greek city squares by challenging the fixity of reading spaces and empowering the city pulse.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@article{Koubarakis2021,
title = {A retrospective on Telos as a metamodeling language for requirements engineering},
author = {Manolis Koubarakis and Alexander Borgida and Panos Constantopoulos and et al.},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-020-00329-x},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-00-00},
journal = {Requirements Eng},
volume = {26},
pages = {1-23},
abstract = {Telos is a conceptual modeling language intended to capture software knowledge, such as software system requirements, domain knowledge, architectures, design decisions and more. To accomplish this, Telos was designed to be extensible in the sense that the concepts used to capture software knowledge can be defined in the language itself, instead of being built-in. This extensibility is accomplished through powerful metamodeling features, which proved very useful for interrelating het- erogeneous models from requirements, model-driven software engineering, data integration, ontology engineering, cultural informatics and education. We trace the evolution of ideas and research results in the Telos project from its origins in the late eighties. Our account looks at the semantics of Telos, its various implementations and its applications. We also recount related research by other groups and the cross-influences of ideas thereof. We conclude with lessons learnt.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

@misc{Dritsou2020,
title = {Integrating archival materials for the study of the turbulent Greek 40s},
author = {Vicky Dritsou and Maria Ilvanidou and Isidora Despotidou and Vicky Liakopoulou and Karmen Vourvachaki and Panos Constantopoulos},
url = {https://zenodo.org/record/4271531},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.4271531},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-11-12},
abstract = {Humanities researchers often need to study heterogeneous digitized archives from different sources. But how can they deal with this heterogeneity, both in terms of structure and semantics? What are the digital tools they can use in order to integrate resources and study them as a whole? And what if they are unfamiliar with the methods and tools available? Towards this end, DARIAH-EU[1] and CLARIN[2] research infrastructures already support researchers in exploiting digital tools. Specific use case research scenarios have also been developed, with the PARTHENOS SSK[3] being a successful example. In this paper we describe our related (ongoing) experience from the development of the Greek research infrastructure APOLLONIS[4], where, among others, we have focused on identifying and supporting the workflows that researchers need to follow to perform specific research studies while jointly accessing disparate archives. Using the decade of 1940s as a use case, a turbulent period in Greek history due to its significant events (WWII, Occupation, Opposition, Liberation, Civil War), we have assembled (digitized) historical archives, coming from different providers and shedding light on different historical aspects of these events. From the acquisition of the resources to the desired outcome, we record the workflows of the whole research study, including the initial curation process of the digitized archives, the ingestion, the joint indexing of the data, the generation of semantic graph representations and, finally, their publication and searching. After the acquisition of the heterogeneous source materials we perform a detailed investigation of their structure and contents, in order to map the different archive metadata onto a common metadata schema, thus enabling joint indexing and establishing semantic relations among the contents of the archives. The next step is data cleaning, where messy records are cleaned and normalized. Natural Language Processing methods are then exploited for the extraction of additional information contained in the archival records or in free text metadata fields, such as persons, places, armed units, dates and topics, which enhance the initial datasets. The outcome is encoded in XML using the common schema and ingested into a repository through an aggregator implemented using the MoRE[5] system. A joint index based on a set of basic criteria is generated and maintained, thus ensuring joint access to all archival records regardless of their source. In addition, an RDF representation is generated from the encoded archival data, enabling their publication in the form of a semantic graph and supporting interesting complex queries. This is based on a specifically designed extension of CIDOC CRM[6] and a compilation of a list of research queries of varying complexity encoded in SPARQL. Preliminary tests of the entire workflows and the tools used in all steps yielded very encouraging results. Our immediate plans include full scale ingestion and indexing of the material from a number of archives, producing the corresponding semantic graph and streamlining the incorporation of new archives.

[1]DARIAH-EU, https://www.dariah.eu/
[2]CLARIN, https://www.clarin.eu/
[3]PARTHENOS Standardization Survival Kit (SSK), http://www.parthenos-project.eu/portal/ssk-2
[4]APOLLONIS Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation, https://apollonis-infrastructure.gr/
[5]MoRE Aggregator, http://more.dcu.gr/
[6]CIDOC CRM, http://www.cidoc-crm.org/},
howpublished = {Presentation at Scholarly Primitives - DARIAH Annual Event 2020},
note = {Honorable mention},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@inbook{Hughes2020,
title = {English language and digital cultural heritage},
author = {Lorna M. Hughes and Agiatis Benardou and Ann Gow},
editor = {Svenja Adolphs and Dawn Knight},
url = {https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-English-Language-and-Digital-Humanities/Adolphs-Knight/p/book/9781138901766},
isbn = {9781138901766},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-05-05},
booktitle = {The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities},
publisher = {Routledge},
chapter = {29},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}

@inproceedings{Constantopoulos2020,
title = {From Publications to Knowledge Graphs},
author = {Panos Constantopoulos and Vayianos Pertsas},
editor = {Giorgos Flouris and Dominique Laurent and Dimitris Plexousakis and Nicolas Spyratos and Yuzuru Tanaka},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-03-27},
booktitle = {Information Search, Integration, and Personalization. Revised Selected Papers from 13th International Workshop, ISIP 2019, Heraklion, Greece, May 9–10, 2019.},
pages = {18-33},
publisher = {Springer},
abstract = {We address the task of compiling structured documentation of research processes in the form of knowledge graphs by automatically extracting information from publications and associating it with information from other sources. This challenge has not been previously addressed at the level described here. We have developed a process and a system that leverages existing information from DBpedia, retrieves articles from repositories, extracts and interrelates various kinds of named and non-named entities by exploiting article metadata, the structure of text as well as syntactic, lexical and semantic constraints, and populates a knowledge base in the form of RDF triples. An ontology designed to represent scholarly practices is driving the whole process. Rule -based and machine learning - based methods that account for the nature of scientific texts and a wide variety of writing styles have been developed for the task. Evaluation on datasets from three disciplines, Digital Humanities, Bioinformatics, and Medicine, shows very promising performance.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}

@inbook{Benardou2020,
title = {The Digital Community Archives},
author = {Agiatis Benardou },
editor = {Angelos Varvarousis},
url = {https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/onassis-publications/hackathens-the-uncommon-planner},
isbn = {978-618-83618-4-3},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-00-00},
booktitle = {The Uncommon Planner: To Whom Does Athens Belong? Athens.},
publisher = {Onassis Foundation},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}

@misc{Constantopoulos2019b,
title = {From publications to knowledge graphs},
author = {Panos Constantopoulos and Vayianos Pertsas},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-11-12},
howpublished = {Talk at World Health Organization Global Technical Meeting 2019, Seoul, 12-14 Nov.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@misc{Constantopoulos2019,
title = {From the catalogue to the virtual information space},
author = {Panos Constantopoulos},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-08-24},
abstract = {Libraries have always been knowledge vaults, serving as indispensable infrastructure for research, education, and an array of important social functions. With time, sophisticated knowledge organization systems have been developed that support the access to the content of libraries. Effectively, these systems reflect our perception of various domains of knowledge through agreed, yet evolving, organizational schemes. The contents of libraries also undergo an important evolution: not only do the documents of knowledge become increasingly digital, they also come at widely different media and levels of granularity, from books, to articles, to images, tables, datasets, video, audio, etc., each independently identified. In addition, the entanglement of research processes with information processes becomes tighter in digital environments. In this talk we will review, in the context of these trends, the potential for knowledge access and integration offered by ontology-driven semantic graph indexing. We will also try to show that a wider margin for effective knowledge access is enjoyed when data- and process- oriented approaches are combined, especially in view of the increasing ability to use automatic knowledge extraction and indexing techniques. Libraries are thus facing the opportunity and challenge to create connected information spaces rendering, as close as possible, the rapidly evolving body of knowledge.},
howpublished = {Invited talk at IFLA World Library and Information Congress, Athens, 24-30 Aug.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}

@misc{Ilvanidou2019,
title = {And The First One Now Will Later Be Last, For The Times They Are A-changin': Modeling Land Communication In Roman Crete},
author = {Maria Ilvanidou},
url = {https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/boa/0632.html},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-07-11},
abstract = {The present contribution has a twofold aim: on the one hand it will seek to demonstrate how the use of digital tools and methods enabled the reconstruction of the road network in Crete, Greece during the Roman period (1st century BCE - 4th century CE), while on the other hand it will showcase how the rapid developments in digital tools often deems research in the field of the Humanities outdated or obsolete. Back in 2005, when I first started working on digitally modeling land communication in Roman Crete, the puzzle I was trying to put together was looking for the bits and pieces of relevant and useful information within a variety of diverse and scattered sources: ancient written sources (like, for example, Strabo’s Geography and Stadiasmus Maris Magni , an ancient Roman periplus detailing the ports on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea), archaeological evidence (paved road remains, bridges, miliaria, i.e. Roman milestones, and Roman sites), historical maps (like, for example, the Tabula Peutingeriana , a medieval copy of an itinerarium pictum, i.e. a painted itinerary, showing the layout of the road network of the Roman Empire, and Venetian maps of Crete), travel literature (15th-20th century travelers’ accounts) and topography (largely my own surveys).

Material heterogeneity and diversity of information and data collected called for sophisticated modeling; that is, an information schema that would capture and document any determinant detail, and, when implemented, be able to facilitate correlation and answer my research questions: which settlement types (for example cities, sanctuaries, farmsteads) were connected through the road network, what were the distances between them, how long it took to travel and by what means of transportation (e.g., by foot, horseback, mules, etc.), which route was followed by which traveler and for what purpose, do the routes mentioned by different travelers change across time, how accurate or credible is the information provided by ancient sources with regard to distances between settlements, what parameters affected the course of the route and the planning of the road, to what extend Cretan topography determined the route direction, what were the local topographic characteristics that affected transportation on the island, and can we reconstruct the original trace of the Roman road network with the use of digital tools and methods even though the archaeological evidence is scarce and fragmentary? The other challenge was to combine the use of Geographical Information Systems in order to restore visually the spatial data and exploit the GIS functionality to check and assess parameters that affected the planning of the road network in question.

The digital tools that made this endeavor feasible were two. The first one was ArcGIS (ArcView 9.0), a commercial GIS software still largely in use, for the spatial analysis of geographic data. The selection of the second one, the tool that would enable me to manage, store and correlate all historical and archaeological data, has proved more challenging and changed over the years. From MS Access, for the implementation of a relational database, back in 2005, to BetaCMS, an open source web-based content management platform, which used XML schema definitions to represent content, in 2010. The BetaCMS, later called Astroboa, was developed by a Greek IT company, Beta Concept, and allowed fast and easy modeling, storing and querying of all data, thus providing what it seemed to be, at the time (2010), a suitable alternative to switch into. The alternate and combined use of both systems (GIS and database) allowed for a long and intriguing iterative process from which a network of optimal paths emerged as a result. This enabled me to propose a reconstruction of the original trace of the public road network connecting the major cities and settlements of Roman Crete, and in specific cases test it against field trip data, with very promising results.

Such an initiative as the integration, connection and modeling of complex data on Roman road networks in the digital domain was indeed quite innovative in 2005. Had this venture been undertaken manually, i.e. without employing any digital methods or tools, it would undoubtedly have taken longer and it would most probably not been as accurate. Correlating the data so that they become meaningful and usable for my analysis and making more realistic calculations over geographic space, could not have been performed as efficiently relying on analogue methods alone. However, an analogue approach would still have been up to date and re-usable, unlike my 2005 and 2010 end-results. Sustainability of my Roman roads modeling project has proven to be a great challenge, as BetaCMS is not supported any longer, while ArcGIS is not an open source tool. Therefore, one could argue that, what the digital so generously offered my work, it has taken it back rather fiercely.

In this short presentation I will be going through my methodology and results of the Roman Crete land communication modeling and will be raising questions as to their usefulness, curation, re-usability and sustainability as well as the implications to Humanities research, also looking into the prospect of the employment of current innovative digital methods and tools that are available openly. While there is a considerable number of studies regarding digital preservation strategies and planning on an institutional level (e.g. libraries and archives), my intention is to address those very issues from the individual scholar’s perspective.},
howpublished = {Short paper presentation at DH2019 Conference, Utrecht University 9-12 July},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}