D8.1 Quantity of Access Offered -TA1

This deliverable describes the Trans National Access (TNA) activities carried out during the ARIADNEplus project within Work Package 8 (WP8) by PIN and describes the results achieved by this work package. PIN were responsible for the delivery of TNA entitled “Mapping Existing Datasets to CIDOC-CRM” at their premises in Prato, Italy. The first call went out in 2019 and one person was able to complete their in-house training before the pandemic restrictions stopped travel. No further activities could be undertaken until 2021, after the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions, when it was decided to organise the TNA as four Summer Schools and all previously accepted applicants were offered (and took up) places on the week-long courses.

All candidates had to send in application forms describing their projects and how these would benefit from the use of CIDOC CRM. One of three independent reviewers evaluated the applications and awarded a mark and recommendation to ensure the quality and relevance of the training for the applicants. Only two applications were rejected, one being incomplete and one not aligned to the course on offer.

The training had to address a wide range of interests as well as varying levels of knowledge, the project descriptions demonstrating the need for interoperability and future reuse of data. Only one student managed to attend their in-house TNA before the COVID-19 restrictions came in and the training enabled her to start work on a possible future CIDOC CRM extension for the encoding of graffiti information.

The main purpose of this TNA Summer School was to introduce the 13 participants to ontologies, in particular those of the CIDOC CRM family, and to other standards for encoding information generated in the field of cultural heritage, in order to make them understand the importance of using these tools to make their archives standardised, semantically rich and ready to be integrated and made interoperable with similar information coming from different databases, with the course structured accordingly.

Finally, each student was asked to complete feedbacks forms after completing their TNA placements. The student who attended in 2020 was very satisfied with her training which was obviously targeted towards her specific research requirements. Some of the students on the Summer School mentioned that they found the 3M Mapping Tool difficult to learn to use and would have liked more time which is understandable, as this is acknowledged (but they do have access to the tool and support after completing their TNA training). Other issues mentioned related specifically to individual projects (e.g. data format conversion) – one suggestion to send out a preattendance questionnaire could definitely be useful for future training of this kind.

Overall, the students were happy with their training, one comment being: “It is a great program and I feel lucky to be part of it.”. The training objectives were achieved and 14 of the 15 training places on offer were taken up despite the pandemic halting all TNA activities for two years.