How to Facilitate Cooperation between Humanities Researchers and Cultural Heritage Institutions. Guidelines

The overall objective of this report is to support collaboration between humanities researchers (literary and cultural studies, history, arts) on the one hand, and cultural heritage institutions on the other, by raising awareness about the possibilities for reusing heritage resources in academic settings and increasing the visibility of online heritage collections. This publication aims to provide both cultural heritage institutions and researchers with know-how, examples of good practice which will enable and strengthen collaboration between both sides, and enable a greater circulation and reuse of heritage resources within the academic field.

This document was prepared during a hands-on workshop for representatives of the European academic community and heritage professionals who are working to share their collections online in order to promote digital methods and the academic reuse of heritage content. We engaged humanities researchers who expressed an interest in exploring digitised cultural resources, and heritage professionals who create internal institutional policies for providing access and sharing resources online. The workshop took place at the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (Poland) on 19–20 June 2018. Invited experts included Natalie Harrower (Digital Repository of Ireland), Mark Sweetnam (Trinity College Dublin), David Brown (Trinity College Dublin), and Marcin Werla (Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center). Twelve participants from various European countries were recruited through an open call for contributors (they are listed as co-authors of this document). The workshop participants explored the main problems associated with heritage reuse in the context of their expertise and later translated those discussions into this document through a ‘book-sprint,’ which was facilitated by Kamil Śliwowski. The workshop and the preparation of the guidelines were funded by a DARIAH Theme 2017 grant, which was awarded for the project ‘Facilitating Cooperation Between Humanities Researchers and Cultural Heritage Institutions,’ jointly proposed by the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, and Creative Commons Polska.