Infrastructure Working Group
Introduction
In line with its mission and objectives formulated for 2025-2028, DARIAH-CH aims to adresses the question of research infrastructures for the arts and humanities. This is defined as a federated infrastructure that serves the needs of the arts and humanities; produces, enriches, and stores data; sustainably provides services; and remains open to scholars based in Switzerland.
Given the history of the DARIAH-CH consortium, the primary focus is on the arts and humanities, alongside a clear intention to coordinate and integrate with infrastructures from adjacent sectors, such as the cultural and cultural heritage domains (e.g. work conducted in the DARIAH-CH GLAM WG). Furthermore, such an infrastructure should adhere to established technological standards and best practices, while enabling the easiest possible production and reuse of data.
In the current Swiss landscape, a federated infrastructure for arts and humanities should comprise:
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The Swiss Data and Service Center for the humanities DaSCH, who holds the mandate to archive and preserve complex Humanities data.
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Other national discipline-specific infrastructures that cooperate in a federalist way with regard to funding, service provision to the scientific community, training and education, and technical aspects (e.g. interoperability, APIs, automated workflows).
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Where possible, infrastructures from adjacent sectors (e.g., the cultural heritage sector)
At present, the Infrastructure Working Group (WG) operates internally within the DARIAH-CH Board and consists of representatives from all DARIAH-CH consortium members. The Board recognises the need for such an infrastructure in Switzerland and is committed to jointly identifying funding opportunities required to build and maintain an internationally distributed infrastructure for the arts and humanities. This infrastructure will support the processing of research data in line with Open Science principles (as outlined in the DARIAH-CH objectives for 2025–2028).