TextGrid Newsletter 04 [October 22, 2007]
We are pleased to present you the fourth TextGrid Newsletter on recent developments in the project. This information is also available under the heading news on the TextGrid homepage www.textgrid.de.
This newsletter contains
TextGrid Tools: Trier Dictionary Service Online- TextGridLab
- Results of Evaluation
- First Advisory Board Meeting
- News from Related Projects: Interedition
- Recent Events
- Current Publications
- Website of the Trier Dictionary Service
TextGrid Tools: Trier Dictionary Service Online
First TextGrid WebService launched
The first webservice developed by the TextGrid team was launched a few weeks ago. Using the Trier Wörterbuchnetz, simultaneous queries over ten dictionaries can be processed. The high-performance service has proven to be stable and reliable even when search terms are left or right truncated or hit lists are large. New functionality will be available shortly, including fuzzy search and flexible combination of searchable dictionaries. Moreover, it will be possible to extend the search to external dictionaries.
The dictionary service is also integrated in TextGridLab for ease of textual and editorial work. Users can highlight a word within a text in order to initiate an immediate search for corresponding lemmas within the connected dictionaries. A single mouse click opens the definition of that lemma in the respective dictionary.
This both illustrates the efficiency of the TextGrid technology and the advantages of the TextGrid concept of a flexible working environment which integrates services and tools as needed.
- TextGridLab-Demo
TextGridLab
TextGridLab (TextGridLaboratory) is TextGrid's client application. Very soon it will provide users with tools and services that make distributed scholarly work on texts (analysing, annotating, editing, and publishing) as easy as pie. TextGridLab is an open service network platform that can be effortlessly extended to the special needs of new user groups and is interoperable with external services.
You can have a first look at TextGridLab in a live demo video stream presenting a typical Arts-and-Humanities use case of "annotating a text". In the demo, the concept of distributed resources and services is exemplified: the text to be processed resides on a server in Tübingen, its meta data are stored in Göttingen, the dictionary webservice to be used is hosted in Trier.
We will publish a development roadmap for TextGridLab for 2008 in our next newsletter. Regular reports on the development status of TextGridLab can also be found at www.textgrid.de.
Results of Evaluation
The D-Grid cooperation was assessed in March 2007 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). TextGrid, so far the only grid project in the arts and humanities sector, could achieve a very good overall appraisal. Recommendations were made that other grid projects in the arts and humanities should be launched.
First Advisory Board Meeting
During the D-Grid All Hands Meeting at Göttingen in September 2007, the TextGrid Consortium summoned the first Advisory Board meeting for TextGrid. The objective of this meeting was to ensure the project’s progress in technological and organisational terms.
A highlight of the technological discussion was the presentation of the first demo of TextGrid's client application TextGridLab. TextGridLab was put to the test in a typical Arts-and-Humanities use case of "annotating a text". In the demo, the concept of distributed resources and services was exemplified: the text to be processed resides on a server in Tübingen, its meta data are stored in Göttingen, the dictionary webservice to be used is hosted in Trier.
Various other issues were considered in the discussion including metadata, authentication andauthorization, interfaces and interoperability, or cooperation with relatednational and international projects. The Arts and Humanities sector being a heterogeneous field with lots of different needs and interests, it proves difficult for a project like TextGrid to combine, unify and standardise and bring people together in a virtual research community. Strong emphasis was, therefore, given to the questionof how to establish an active community of TextGrid users and provide them with acceptable standard data formats, generic tools and reliable services.
Being the first German project in the emerging e-Humanities, TextGrid was generally appreciated by the board members because of its potential of paving the way for novel methodologies and opportunities in the Arts and Humanities.
TextGrid Participates in the European Project "Interedtion"
The new 
COST action Interedition was approved on Wednesday 26 November 2007. TextGrid, being associated with Interedition, thus contributes to a cooperative network for interoperability and practical implementation of philological tools. The main objective of the COST action Interedition (An Interoperable Supranational Infrastructure for Digital Editions) is to produce a ‘roadmap’ or ‘manual’ conceptualizing the development of a technical infrastructure for collaborative digital preparing, editing, publishing, analyzing and visualizing of literary research materials. Instituitons from five European countries participate in the project: the Huygens Institute (KNAW, coordination), DANS, Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, University of Birmingham, Oxford Text Archive, die Technische Universität Darmstadt, die Göttingen State and University Library, CTB (KANTL), University of Antwerp, dept. of literature studies, l’Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes.
You can download a brochure with descriptions of the individual action at the COST website.
Further in formation you can find at Interedition Homepage .
Recent Events
- <philtag n=“6“>: Workshop on Encoding Methods for Electronic Texts
Toward a Data Grid for the Arts and Humanities
The competence center for e-Philology at the Institute for German philology held the 6th workshop on 12th and 13th October. The slogan of this international meeting was "text encoding: baseline & more." Experts from the fields of literature and data processing tried to answer the question of how to reasonable apply the international encoding standard TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). This standard defines a reference system
for a variety of electronic texts. It creates the basis for texts
in electronic form to be indexed and referenced just like printed text available via library catalogues.
TEI, at times of change in media formats, thus helps keep the cultural heritage alive. This year, participants dealt
mainly with problems of encoding dictionaries and text editions, and the
electronic tools that are available for such purposes including Grid-enabled tools that are curently developed for the Humanities.
The discussion was opened by Lou Burnard (Oxford University Computing Services, European editor of TEI Guidelines) with a presentation on the development of version TEI P5. As a highlight, the prototype of TextGrid's client application TextGridLab was presented by Thorsten Vitt (Technical University of Darmstadt). TextGridLab is a grid-enabled workbench for processing, analysing, annotating, editing and publishing data in the Philologies and in adjacent disciplines. Peter Robinson (Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, University of Birmingham) gave a talk on "Building Distributed Editions around Unified Identifiers".
In a hands-on session in the afternoon, accompanied by Laurent Romary (Max Planck Digital Library) and Lou Burnard, the participants learned how to create, implement and customise a TEI5 schema. A round-table discussion on further talks in the area of digital editing and dictionary encoding rounded off the session.
The detailed program of the meeting, see atWürzburg University.
- DGI Workshop on Sustainability in the Grid
From October 9 to 10, 2008, the D-Grid Integration Project held a
well-attended workshop at Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der
Wissenschaften. Participants came in from the DGI and all Community
Grids. Also present at the meeting were evaluators and representatives
of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the
German Research Foundation (DFG), and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)
as well as international experts.
The representatives of the
Ministry (Jansen, Löwe) stressed that Grid technologies be made available for research, industry and society. They pointed out, however, that that the D-Grid fundig term is limited and that operation of the Grid must be ensured by the time funding expires.
Therefore, a roadmap for establishing Grid operability must be created.
For the DGI, Uwe Schwiegelshohn (University of Dortmund) presented a business model of the future Grid Support Unit (DGSE) for the operation of D-Grid's basic Grid infrastructure. Operation and modification of the Grid should be constantly double-checked by the Community Grids. An institutional agency responsible for Grid operation could be the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft (presentation R. Maschuw, FZK).
Being presented with the business models of the individual Community Grids, the workshop participants were made aware that sustainable Grid operation must be managed in spite of the difference of the communities. It was criticised that funding may take care of supplying hardware and maintanance, but tends to disregard the necessity of using external (Grid) resources and services. Thus, access to Grid resources and services might be difficult. Another obstacle could be the fact that the federal reforms brought about changes in funding application procedures (W. Bröcker, DFG).
While communities in the natural science have benefited from international networking infrastuctures for a number of years, the target communities of TextGrid are not yet fully accustomed to e-networking. TextGrid being the first Community Grid in the Arts and Humanities, therefore, plays a pioneering role. In TextGrid, the foundations of an e-infrastructure have to be established. The question of how to build up, maintain and extend a user community is a keystone in TextGrid's sustainability model. Finally Dieter Kranzlmüller (University of Linz) gave a talk on the European Grid Initiative (EGI), which strives to link up national grid initiatives in a cooperative network. Hans E. Roosendaal (University of Twente, NL) examined the issue of sustainability from a business perspective and moderated the final debate.
Workshop contributions can be found at theD-Grid website.
- 2nd Göttingen Grid Seminar
"Grid at your finger tips" was this year's slogan of the Göttingen Grid Seminar. Accordingly, aproximately 60 attendees, mainly from the academic field, could test and evaluate the community grid software of the projects MediGrid, Instant-Grid and TextGrid.
The lecture part was opened by Klaus-Peter Mickel (DGI coordinator) with a contribution on "Grid applications in Germany" (
presentation). Another
introductory talk on "e-Infrastructure" was held Laurent Romary
(Director of Max Planck Digital Library, presentation). It was followed by talks on both general and
community-spedific use cases from the natural sciences,
life sciences and the humanities (the individual presentations can be
found here). Recently, a new member joined the Göttingen Grid community: a Tier-2 center is currently being built in Göttingen for HEP-Grid.
Arnulf Quadt (2nd Institute of Physics at Georg-August-Universität of Göttingen) is responsible for the management of this project. His presentation provides
information about the status and plans of this project.
In a panel discussion, a keen interest in the work of the Göttingen Grid community became evident. At the end, moderator Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sax (Department of Medical Informatics, MediGrid) invited all participant to the next event in 2008. This year's program and all presentations can be foundhere.
- D-Grid All Hands Meeting
Two of the objectives of the first D-Grid All Hands Meeting were the
exchange of information among specialists and social networking. Taking
place from September 10 to 12, 2007, at Göttingen State and University
Library, the conference attracted more than 220 participants.
The keynote was given by Tony Hey (Microsoft Research), who pointed out that an adequate cyberinfrastructure is a prerequisite for new paradigms in research methodology.
After introductory remarks on D-Grid by Wolfgang Gentzsch (D-Grid coordinator) and on the D-Grid infrastructure by Klaus-Peter Mickel (DGI coordinator), representatives of the individual D-Grid projects talked about their work and strategies. During the coffee breaks the poster and demo sessions provided a deeper insight into the projects’ work. On the second day there were workshops on specific technical and technological topics in which the question of synergies between the projects was raised.
Finally, the discussion turned to the topic of sustainability, and the participants showed concrete plans for the extension of the D-Grid infrastructure within the next few years.
TextGrid presented the first live demo of TextGridLab, the integrated workbench of the TextGrid project.
The conference was sponsored by theBMBF. The agenda is available here.
Current Publications
• TextGrid Kerncodierung – Ein Beitrag aus der AG TextFormate
Wozu Kerncodierungen?
Texte von Projekten, die in TextGrid veröffentlicht werden, sollen auf zwei verschiedene Weisen durchsuchbar sein:
- eine projektspezifische Suche durchsucht nur Texte jeweils eines Projekts, die Projektmacher können jedoch Suchmasken und Ergebnisdarstellung auf die ganz spezifischen Besonderheiten ihres Projekts anpassen;
- die TextGrid-übergreifende Suche bietet eine Suchmöglichkeit über alle in TextGrid veröffentlichten Texte hinweg. Für ersteres können die Projekte alle Freiheiten der TEI-Codierung (oder sogar darüberhinausgehende XML-Codierungen) nutzen.
Für letzteres ist es jedoch nötig, die projektspezifischen Codierungen auf eine gemeinsame Kerncodierung abzubilden. Diese Abbildung wird durch einen Adaptor (etwa ein XSLT-Stylesheet) realisiert.
• Das Projekt "TextGrid. Modulare Plattform für verteilte und kooperative wissenschaftliche Textdatenverarbeitung - ein Community-Grid für die Geisteswissenschaften". Chancen und Perspektiven für eine neue Wissenschaftskultur in den Geisteswissenschaften.
Andrea Rapp. In: Jahrbuch der historischen Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Berichtsjahr 2006 / ed. by Arbeitsgemeinschaft historischer Forschungseinrichtungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München: Oldenbourg 2007, p. 61-68.
• e-Humanities - eine virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Geistes-, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften
Heike Neuroth, Andreas Aschenbrenner, Felix Lohmeier. In: Bibliothek. Forschung und Praxis, 1 (2008). Preprint.
More publications can be found at: http://www.textgrid.de/berichte
Public Relations and Presentations
TextGrid plans to participate in these events:
- Edirom Musikedition: "Digitale Edition zwischen Experiment und Standardisierung", 6.-8.12.2007, Paderborn
- 3rd IEEE e-Science, 10.-13.12.2007, Bangalore Indien
- 3rd Digital Curation Conference, 11.-13.12.2007, Washington
- Second IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and
Technologies, 26.-29.2.2008, Thailand
TextGrid Info
All reports and publications can be found on the TextGrid Homepage under "Reports".
If you would like to get in contact with the project team, please send an email to 
Newsletter
The newsletter is a joint effort of all TextGrid partners. You can subscribe to it on the TextGrid Homepage (www.textgrid.de). This page also contains an archive of past newsletters.