Final report for the pilot project "Data and Service Center for the Humanities" (DaSCH)

This report describes the main lessons learned from the pilot phase we have carried out with existing real-world humanities research projects. Above all, it has become clear that no single, monolithic virtual research environment (VRE) with a generic user interface can meet the needs of all projects. A significant number of projects require an open, extensible platform that enables them to choose the functionality that is relevant to their needs, to create custom user interfaces and client applications, and to integrate new research tools into their workflow. The new Knora architecture has been conceived from the ground up to meet these requirements. Salsah still exists as one component of Knora, providing a powerful, but optional, virtual research environment with a generic user interface.