The consortium includes not only the historical sciences, but also other disciplines that use historical data as part of their methodology, such as economics and social sciences, geography, and regional studies. The consortium's goal is to ensure the quality of historical research data and thus safeguard the crucial role of the humanities in complex, rapidly changing societies. Among other things, NFDI4Memory aims to explore how the long-standing traditions of source criticism - a specialty of disciplines working in history - can be applied to digital data. Organizationally, the consortium establishes systematic, sustainable links between producers and users of historical data: historical research, memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums, and collections), and information infrastructures.

NFDI4Memory aims to make heterogeneous historical data searchable and reusable  that exist in very different data formats and result from numerous specific application contexts and requirements. These include texts from ancient to modern times, images, photographs, audio and video recordings, statistics, structured data, metadata, and ontologies. Other areas of focus for NFDI4Memory include data on historical persons, spatial structures, and changes in classification systems and categories over time.

The consortium

Applicant and coordinator of the consortium is the Leibniz Institute for European History IEG in Mainz. In addition to FIZ Karlsruhe, co-applicants are nine other institutions such as the Association of Historians, the State Archive of Baden-Württemberg, the Bavarian State Library, the Herder Institute, and four universities. In addition, the consortium cooperates with more than 80 partner institutions (participants).

FIZ Karlsruhe@ NFDI4Memory

FIZ Karlsruhe’s e-Research unit is responsible in the consortium for Task Area TA 3 "Data Services", which is to provide robust and reliable services, tools, and data collections in an interoperable "NFDI4Memory Data Space" and link them via standardized technical interfaces. FIZ Karlsruhe's Information Service Engineering research area is participating by building and implementing a knowledge graph for the 4Memory Data Space and for networking with other NFDI consortia. The contribution of FIZ Karlsruhe's research area Intellectual Property Rights focuses on legal and ethical aspects within Task Area TA 6, because compliance with data protection and copyright laws is important for the NFDI4Memory community when it comes to the collection, storage, and reuse of research data.