Chain, chain, chain, the new CHAIN of digital humanities organizations

An important announcement about a new meta-organization of digital humanities organizations, the Coalition of Humanities and Arts Infrastructures and Networks or CHAIN (via DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, 02009 11 12):

A meeting was held at King's College, London, on 26th and 27th October 2009, between representatives of the following networks, infrastructure projects, and planning initiatives working with digital technologies in the Arts and
Humanities:

• arts-humanities.net (http://www.arts-humanities.net/)



• ADHO - Association of Digital Humanities Organisations (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/)




• CLARIN (http://www.clarin.eu/)



• centerNet (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/centernet/)



• DARIAH (http://www.dariah.eu/)



• NoC - Network of Expert Centres in Great Britain and Ireland (http://www.arts-humanities.net/noc/)



• Project Bamboo (http://projectbamboo.org/)



• TextGrid (http://www.textgrid.de/)

We identified the current fragmented environment where researchers operate in separate areas with often mutually incompatible technologies as a barrier to fully exploiting the transformative role that these technologies can potentially play. We resolved that our present, proposed, and future activities are interdependent and complementary and should be oriented towards working together to overcome barriers, and to create a shared environment where technology services can interoperate and be sustained, thus enabling new forms of research in the Humanities.

In order to achieve these goals we agreed to form the Coalition of Humanities and Arts Infrastructures and Networks – CHAIN. CHAIN will act as a forum forareas of shared interest to its participants, including:

• advocacy for an improved digital research infrastructure for the Humanities;



• development of sustainable business models;



• promotion of technical interoperability of resources, tools and services;



• promotion of good practice and relevant technical standards;



• development of a shared service infrastructure;



• coordinating approaches to legal and ethical issues;



• interactions with other relevant computing infrastructure initiatives;



• widening the geographical scope of our coalition.

CHAIN will promote an open culture where experiences, including successes and failures, can be shared and discussed, in order to support and promote the use of digital technologies in research in the Humanities.