DH Lab

Working Across the Institute 2022–2024

The Digital Humanities Lab is a collaborative and dynamic group responding to specific needs within the Institute and working to maximize potential and optimize resources. Since its foundation in 2019, the Lab has advanced from a supporting entity, which provided guidance and infrastructure for research projects relying on database systems, to a group that carries out autonomous research while promoting its outcomes to scientific groups within and outside the Institute. Its structure is task-driven and many of its members belong to existing units, with a core group interacting more often on development-related tasks (see e.g., Staccioli), and additional staff covering domain-specific cases and scientific requirements.
The label “Digital Humanities” highlights the idea that the group is applying methods of this new discipline, even if the DH Lab is not chiefly invested in major DH fields (like distant reading of textual data or computational linguistics applied to corpora). The focus lies on developing digital methodologies and applications for the discipline of Art History at large. Rather than operating under an overarching concept or a hierarchic directive, the DH Lab follows a bottom-up strategy, which it shares with the two Research Departments, Weddigen and Michalsky. Our activities are not always tightly interconnected to research projects, whereas efforts are made to establish a general digital infrastructure for the Institute.

The DH Lab closely collaborates with all Departments and Services and develops solutions to the particular problems they confront. It also reaches out to the Fellows by identifying their needs and making them aware of new technologies. It strives to enhance the online visibility of the Bibliotheca Hertziana and promotes free and open source software solutions, open data publishing practices, and open access digital publications for an international scholarly audience. 
Detailed sections describe some of the projects on which the DH Lab has been actively working as a unit, in addition to its general research activity and the work of collaborative coordination among projects linked to specific departments.

The Future

The effective functioning of this lightweight, collaborative unit has demonstrated in the last three years an ability to manage and collaborate effectively and in a timely manner under the coordination of Director Tristan Weddigen. Its organizational scheme has attracted the interest of a network of wider groups (CORDH, Pharos) when addressing relevant work topics, as well as initial instances of project funding from the DFG.
However, several issues hinder the future growth of this group: 

• Some vital members of the team will soon be retiring and others have only project-based funding; competitive recruitment has proven to be a major challenge for an institute based in Rome.
• A new MP Research Group led by Leonardo Impett will soon start its work with new requirements, e.g., in machine learning technologies, not yet represented by anyone in the group; consequently, novel positions need to be opened for this group to grow.
• The IT infrastructure will face an ever-increasing load of duties and, although it has been integrated into the shared infrastructure of the MPG, the local services are at full capacity; this situation brings with it the risk of collapse at any time and an inability to support increased requirements or address new challenges.
• The time needed to publish scientific progress is unsuitable for members of the group. This entails a risk of losing potential benefits of the work actually carried out. Meanwhile, the demand to present the completed work increases with the number of delivered projects due to the level of innovation and the quality of the content produced; fast peer-reviewed publishing and presenting papers at international conferences is key in Computer Science in order to ensure due recognition from the scientific community and benefits from shared technological progress.
• Graphic design needs to be outsourced or carried out without specific expertise, generating additional waste of time and products that do not meet standards.

To strengthen the collaborative structure and make it more effective, the group needs on the one hand to stabilize its existing membership and on the other hand to address the gaps of specific expertise in several areas with adequate expertise and resources. These new positions could be affiliated to the DH Lab unit or to one or the other department as in the current setup, without having to modify the existing and functioning organization:

• AI and Machine Learning Engineer: As identified and documented in the last assessment of the Institute, an AI ML Developer is urgently needed. This figure would greatly benefit the unit by supporting the incoming Research Group as well as the inclusion of AI tools in other existing tools.
• Graphic Designer: The demand for high-quality graphics in web-based digital products is self-evident, especially for a leading Art History institute, where third party designers or temporary shared resources will continuously be required to maintain standards. This will require dedicated funding. 
• Data Manager: The consolidated workflows of Library, Photographic Collection and Digital Publications need with the quantitative increase of requests and incoming data a dedicated specialist to take over and manage the assets.
• Junior System Administrator: Without support for the Institute’s IT, not only will new projects not be possible but existing services and resources may also be put at risk.

These resources, prioritized as above, would allow the DH Lab to continue to thrive within the ecosystem of the Institute and enable it to optimize the support it gives to the entire Institute by supplying it with the necessary resources to address quality and continuity requirements. At the same time, new personnel would allow the group to contribute specific research in the field of the Digital Humanities and to undertake the infrastructural work needed to ensure the products of their research, such as software, services, and data, remain internationally prominent.