Short Report Epigraphy.info Workshop IV

The Epigraphy.info community is disseminating a short report summarizing it’s fourth meeting (Hamburg, February 2020). A full report is in preparation.

Epigraphy.info is an international open community pursuing a collaborative environment for digital epigraphy, which facilitates scholarly communication and interaction. We apply FAIR principles to epigraphic information in order to efficiently create, use and share it among researchers, students and enthusiasts around the globe. The Epigraphy.info community works to gather and enhance the many existing epigraphic efforts, and serves as a landing point for digital tools, practices and methodologies for managing collections of inscriptions.
Since 2018 four official meetings of the community have taken place:

● Heidelberg, March 21st – 23rd , 2018: http://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00024397
● Zadar, December 14th – 16th 2018: http://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00026330
● Vienna, May 30th – June 1 st 2019: https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00027928
● Hamburg, February 19th – 21st 2020: http://epigraphy.info/workshop_4.html

The 4th Epigraphy.info workshop was preceded by the 2-and-half day EpiDoc and TEI training, given by Pietro Liuzzo. Twenty participants from 6 countries attended the training and coded their first inscriptions in EpiDoc.

Then, the Hamburg workshop took place from 19th to 21st February 2020. In the beginning, the community was introduced to the Hamburg-based Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts”, that primarily focuses on improving our understanding of the diverse manuscript and epigraphic cultures around the world. An afternoon of networking and presentation of new projects followed and this time, we focused not just on Greek and Latin epigraphy but also on Indian and Chinese inscriptions. The two following days consisted of presentations of current projects, reports on ongoing tasks, working-group discussions and a hackathon.

Here are the highlights of the meeting:

● Short report on the presentation of Epigraphy.info at the Third North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (NACGLE) 2020 in Washington, D.C.;
● Short report on the status quo of the social media representation of Epigraphy.info (Twitter, Facebook);
● Ratification of the “Statement on handling of unpublished inscriptions”: https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00027952;
● Preparation of a draft on the “editorial advisory board”;
● A working group on finances was established;
● Discussion about the terms of membership within the Epigraphy.info community;
● Hackathon on epigraphic ontology and an RDF model for epigraphy, followed by a brainstorming session on technical needs of the Epigraphy.info community and the rough estimate of related costs

With regard to community administration, a new tool for managing the tasks of the working groups will be selected and implemented by the committee. Following up the hackathon and the technical discussion of the ontologies an expert workshop on XTriples configuration files is planned to take place in Mainz in collaboration with the Digitale Akademie in mid-2020.

The next workshop will be held in Leuven (Belgium) in the second half of this year (October-December); organizer of the next workshop: Tom Gheldof (Leuven).

The following committee members were elected to substitute the two resigning members until the next meeting: Jonathan Prag (Oxford), Franziska Weise (Hamburg); ongoing members: Chiara Cenati (Vienna), Tom Elliott (New York), M. Cristina de la Escosura (Zaragoza) and Vincent Razanajao (Bordeaux).

For more information and suggestions visit our website Epigraphy.info , follow us on Twitter ( @epigraphy_info ) and Facebook ( Epigraphy.info ). If you want to become a member of the community and join the working groups, write an email to info@epigraphy.info .

About Tom Elliott

Associate Director for Digital Programs and Senior Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
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