Core Facilities in de kijker | Spotlight on the Core Facilities - part 6

Context

A Core Facility often brings together highly specialised and indispensable scientific expertise, services and research infrastructure in a real or virtual entity (whether or not across disciplines and/or user groups). A Core Facility promotes cooperation between researchers, both internally and externally, and elaborates a strategy for the renewal and/or expansion of the research infrastructure within the Core Facility. Its use is open to all researchers within the Core Facility and/or other users within and outside Ghent University.

Since 2021 Ghent University supports a central recognition procedure and provides co-funding from the Special Research Fund.

Overview of Core Facilities formally recognised at Ghent University

Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities

The Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities offers several services to advise and guide digitally enabled research in the arts and humanities at Ghent University and beyond. The main beneficiaries of our services are researchers from Ghent University, or other knowledge institutes and partners situated in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector. We offer support throughout project lifecycles including funding applications, project management, development, measuring impact, and infrastructure sustainability. We have successfully supported funding applications within Ghent University, in Flanders (FWO), at Belgian federal level (Belspo) and in Europe (H2020).

The focus points of the services that we offer are:

Collaborative databases: advice and support for collaborative databases. We help researchers to develop database instances, powered by e.g. Nodegoat. We provide advice regarding data modelling, data standards and linked open data.
Digital text analysis and applied AI: we aim to improve digital text analysis by offering support and information to researchers You can contact us for advice on text encoding standards and digital editions, working with digital text analysis tools and AI assisted OCR and HTR - Handwritten Text Recognition.
Geospatial analysis: we offer advice, support and training regarding geospatial data management, analysis, and visualization. This also includes gazetteers adhering to Linked Open Data standards.
Digital heritage: we offer support regarding digital heritage, participation and virtual expositions. We help researchers, heritage institutions, teachers and students to create, manage and enrich their own digital collections and set up virtual exhibitions.

An example of a recent project developed together with local GLAM partners and coordinated by GhentCDH is 'Ghent mapped' which alliterates better in Dutch: 'Gent Gemapt'. The project provides a digital map of Ghent which stacks 20 historical maps and connects 4,000 places to 10,000 pieces of heritage which have been reunited virtually. Go explore Ghent, layer by layer, from the Middle Ages to today via gentgemapt.be. Gent Gemapt uses open technologies and standards like Omeka S, Madoc, IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) and Linked Open Data. While the focus is on Ghent, the project offers a playbook on how to gather, enrich and visualize heritage and geotemporal data in general.

If you are interested in the expertise we offer, please do contact us and we can collaborate on your next project.

Dec. 14, 2023, 8:24 a.m.