During the past years, digital tools and methods have entered mainstream academic discourses at different speeds and with differing intensity. As long as there is no critical mass of data available, as long as there are no case studies informed by scholarly expertise, most researchers see little sense in tackling literature that often seems rather abstract or investing precious research resources into digitally reworking their prior results.
From today’s perspective, however, the process of adopting a digital paradigm in both the data and the analysis dimension seems inevitable in the long run: Funding agencies will insist on data sustainability, and research communities gravitating around collaborative resources are already proving more innovative and robust.
Historical research on the Habsburg Monarchy has generated many remarkable results over the past two decades, most of which have come as the direct output of two Vienna-based research institutions: the IfÖG, part of the University of Vienna since 2015, and the IHB (the former INZ). Since its foundation in 2015, the ACDH-CH (previously ACDH) has likewise been a pivotal partner for projects in terms of data structure, data management, and digital strategies in general. Apart from hosting ARCHE, one of the main Austrian repositories for humanities data, the ACDH-CH has also started providing tools and specific infrastructure components to facilitate digital processes and enhance collaboration. As a consequence, several projects at the ÖAW and beyond are using the same tools and infrastructures, although they rarely handle them in the same way. Only few of these projects have engaged in a structured discussion about common data modelling or collaborative analysis.
The “Digital Habsburg Platform” initiative intends to address this situation by creating a bottom-up communication framework while official institutional policies concerning the granular aspects of data sharing are still in the making.
Institutionally conceived as a loose partnership between the aforementioned institutions (for now), the initiative targets
a) all humanities projects dealing with the (early) modern history of Central Europe—and the Habsburg Monarchy in particular—that wish to enter into a dialogue about digital matters;
b) host departments/institutions for such projects that are working on data management plans and looking for test cases;
c) researchers not yet familiar with digital tools and methods who want to acquire knowledge in an informal way.
The design of the Digital Habsburg Platform is constantly evolving, with the state presented here mirroring the results of an initial workshop held in February 2020. It was revised a month later (already considering the effects of the COVID-19 crisis). The platform offers four levels of interaction: (a) a (this) website; (b) a Slack forum accessible to all interested parties; (c) a mailing list; (d) a series of workshops.
Workshops address various needs and therefore need to combine different forms of interaction. Firstly, they create a common basis for discussion (plenary sessions); secondly, they facilitate concentrated and structured group work on a specific workshop-related topic (break-out groups); thirdly, they offer an opportunity to pursue preexisting dialogue or work on specific predefined tasks (parallel sessions). In general, workshops naturally serve as a framework for informal exchange.
Plenary sessions are designed to offer broad introductory information about the specific topic of the workshop, about existing tools and initiatives in the respective field, about best-practice examples (digital and non-digital), but also about potential perspectives for collaboration—both content-related (large-scale analysis) and strategic (proposals). Plenary sessions are also the venue where the break-out groups report after the end of their sessions and where their designs are discussed collectively.
Break-out groups are part of the overall chronology of a workshop. A group consists of at least two different projects/initiatives, ideally represented by one scholar and one DH expert each.
Parallel sessions can be held before or after the main workshop or during break-out sessions. They are designed as platforms for people who want to participate in the event and be kept up to date, but prefer to pursue a specific agenda concerning the overall topic.