Conference Agenda

Immigrant heritage is transnational by its very definition, yet immigrants’ lives often occupy marginal spaces in cultural heritage initiatives designed to collect, preserve and disseminate historical materials. Immigrants may be represented in the digital collections of multiple institutions under very different identities, or they may be wholly absent from the libraries, archives and museums of both their birth and receiving countries—vanishing into the gaps between collection scopes. While digitization has been highly successful in bridging physical distances, this is not the only challenge for researchers, professionals and communities working for the preservation of immigrant heritage.

This paper approaches questions of digital collaboration and sharing of written immigrant heritage across national and regional boundaries through the case study of the Icelandic Immigrant Literacy Database (IILD) at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík, which opened on 21 October 2023. The focus of IILD is on Icelandic-language materials that were created and/or owned by Icelandic immigrants in North America. The database is an output of the Fragile Heritage Project (Icelandic: Í fótspor Árna Magnússonar í Vesturheimi, 2015–present), which seeks to locate and document material in collaboration with Canadian and American LAM institutions, community organisations, families and individuals.[1] The data consists of digital images from 2009–2019 and notes on Icelandic-language manuscripts, books, letters and other documents, of which 1,000 items have been catalogued on IILD.

From 1873 to the beginning of the First World War, as many as 20,000 Icelandic men and women emigrated to North America, the majority of whom were destined for Western Canada.[2] Literacy rates were high in Iceland, with personal and household book ownership common by the early 1800s.[3] In recent decades, the literacy practices of non-elite Icelanders in the nineteenth century have attracted considerable attention, in particular the production of manuscripts in domestic settings and the existence of informal scribal communities or networks.[4] Virtually all adult immigrants had achieved some level of reading fluency prior to their departure, but writing skills were not universal: individuals educated before instruction in writing was made mandatory in 1880 were frequently self-taught writers, if they could write at all.[5]

The initial focus of the present author’s research was on digital documentation of older Icelandic literary manuscripts brought to Canada and the United States, with the preliminary objective of studying the quantitative effects of mass emigration on manuscript culture. A key shift came with the discovery of scribal networks within Icelandic settlements in North America that were comparable to those found in Iceland.[6] This finding underlined the need for a more holistic approach to immigrant literacy, both pre- and post-migration, to which IILD is a response.

Although the largest and best-known historical Icelandic immigrant settlement was New Iceland in Manitoba, the project fieldwork confirmed the value of initiating extensive cross-institutional and cross-community collaboration beyond a single region. Outside of LAMs dedicated specifically to the study of Icelandic-North American heritage, language emerged as the most significant barrier to the full interpretation and inclusion of written Icelandic immigrant heritage in digital collections. Given that many LAMs do not have easy access to fluent speakers of immigrant languages represented in their collections, digital collaboration and initiatives such as IILD can be mutually beneficial for researchers and professionals.

[1] Funding for the project was received from the Government of Iceland, Eimskip University Fund, the INL of Iceland, Landsbanki, Eimskip, the Canadian Initiative for Nordic Studies (CINS), the Manitoba Heritage Grants Program, the Icelandic American Society of Minnesota, the Áslaug Hafliðadóttir Memorial Fund and the Icelandic Department of the University of Manitoba. The present author is the project manager and database editor; Trausti Dagsson of the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies designed the database infrastructure.

[2] Vigfús Geirdal, cited in Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, “Sársaukans land: Vesturheimsferðir og íslensk hugsun,” in Davíð Ólafsson and Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (eds.), Burt og meir en bæjarleið: Dagbækur og persónuleg skrif Vesturheimsfara á síðari hluta 19. aldar, Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar 5 (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2001), 13–69, at 52.

[3] Sólrún Jensdóttir, “Books owned by ordinary people in Iceland 1750–1830,” Saga-Book 19 (1974–1977): 264–292.

[4] Davíð Ólafsson, “Vernacular Literacy Practices in Nineteenth-Century Icelandic Scribal Culture,” in Ann-Catrine Edlund (ed.), Att läsa och att skriva: Två vågor av vardaligt skriftbruk i Norden 1800–2000 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2012), Nordliga studier 3: Vardagligt skriftbruk 1, 65–86.

[5] Loftur Guttormsson, Bernska, ungdómur og uppeldi á einveldisöld: Tilraun til félagslegrar og lýðfræðilegrar greiningar, Ritsafn Safnfræðistofnunar 10 (Reykjavík: Sagnfræðistofnun, 1983); Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson, Minor Knowledge and Microhistory: Manuscript Culture in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2017).

[6] Katelin Marit Parsons, “Albert Jóhannesson and the scribes of Hecla Island: Manuscript culture and scribal production in an Icelandic-Canadian settlement,” Gripla 30 (2019): 7–46.

Setting up a research data repository is a time-consuming task. Learning from others who went a similar way can be very helpful. For that reason we want to share our experience. This article is based on the lessons learned while setting up a repository based on Invenio RDM at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS) in Mannheim from March 2022 to September 2023. We explain our decisions and steps taken on the way. Even though our requirements differ from other institutions’ we are confident that this description can be helpful to others. Even though we mostly worked with language data, the basic considerations are as valid and relevant to all areas within the Digital Humanities and beyond. This article is neither intended to convince you to set up your own repository nor to do the opposite. It should, however, help you to make your own informed decisions.

We describe a recent project creating a new interactive web platform of the etymological dictionary of Icelandic, Íslensk orðsifjabók (ÍO), by the lexicographer and linguist Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon, now available at https://ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is/. This dictionary contains around 42,000 headwords and is a comprehensive resource for exploring the origin of a substantial portion of the vocabulary of Icelandic. The dictionary material was gathered over a period of decades and published in print in 1989. ÍO is the only etymological dictionary focusing on Modern Icelandic.

Like other etymological dictionaries, ÍO provides information about the history of words as well as information about how meaning and form of words may have changed. It shows how inherited words are derived from roots that can be traced back to an earlier stage of the language or a reconstructed proto-language. Cognates that may be present in various related languages are also listed. In many cases the words do not originate in an earlier language stage but have different historical roots. They can be borrowings from other languages; or neologisms, more recent creations resulting from Icelandic specific derivational or morphological processes.

Extensive information about various words and different types of origins and relationships between them appears in ÍO. The structure of the information in each entry is not entirely consistent but the same key words and phrases indicating types of relationships occur frequently.

To create a digital version of this dictionary, it was necessary to use the material from the print version. The dictionary was originally produced at the start of the digital age and the original TeX files have been preserved until this day. The first digital version of the dictionary was made available online on the web portal málið.is in 2016 using the original working files as its base and enabled a simple lookup of the headwords but did not offer any advanced search features or the possibility of browsing the entries alphabetically as only one entry could be displayed at a time.

We present a new rich online platform for the dictionary where references in the entries are cross-linked using automatic methods to parse the TeX files. The entries are also linked through common referenced words in foreign languages. The platform contains a graph-model component that enables users to explore these relationships through an interactive network visualization. The graph model was created by using the dictionary's parsed entries where referenced words were extracted from the descriptive text in each entry to create links between entries. The data was then imported into the graph database software Neo4j. These links are defined as different types of relationships based on the occurrence of particular words, e.g. sjá (e. see also), sbr. (e. compare) and skylt (e. related to). The graph model also includes references to words in other languages and therefore links entries across the whole dictionary that did not have direct cross-referencing before.

The new online platform of ÍO offers diverse ways of working with the dictionary and visualizing the data. It makes it easier for users to move between words and get an overview of related words.

ÍO offers insights into the historical development of Icelandic by examining the origins of words and the cultural and historical context in which Icelandic evolved. It highlights how the use of words has changed over time and what cognate words exist in related languages.

Overall, the online platform of ÍO serves as a valuable tool for anyone interested in exploring the history and evolution of Icelandic words and the cultural connections between them as well as a novel way of publishing and interacting with etymological dictionaries.

Introduction

The growing number of Digital Humanities (DH) services, their heterogeneity (Ulutas Aydogan et al., 2021), and the dislocated locations where the data, applications, and metadata are stored require new approaches for humanities scholars to understand all the crucial aspects of a system. This paper argues for a novel understanding of the strong connection between the sustainability of DH projects and their paths using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. How can researchers monitor and address all the different phases from the start of a DH project until it becomes sustainable? What kind of framework is necessary to understand all the aspects? This paper presents the potential of LCA as a framework for disassembling such paths.

Life Cycle Assessment

LCA is defined as a framework for addressing how human production, such as technology or services, is sustainable, highlighting possible issues. It is used to define all the different steps of a life cycle, from the design, development, acquisition, production, and use phases, to when it becomes a waste (Finnveden et al., 2009). A general and important definition is found in Brekke et al. (2019), where the paper states LCA as “an umbrella term for several methods needed to translate both the uses of natural resources and the emissions and waste to the environment…”.

In addition, LCA is also used as a governance tool to support the transition to more sustainable results (Brekke et al., 2019), as well as to look into sustainability in ICT projects (Pendergrass et al., 2019). This paper argues for the use of this framework to understand more holistically, through the lens of sustainability how DH projects may be developed and governed better. Especially in the last phase, the transition from a controlled and intensive project period to a drift period is always subject to issues (Ciborra, 2000). A few other examples of the connection between an LCA analysis and a DH project are:

1. Competence: often dispersed with mobility of the staff or poor description of the development process

2. Data: not all data kept in a developed DH project is planned to be re-used. Creating and analysing data is also a form of energy consumption. Where the data is stored also has a measurable impact

Applying LCA to a DH project can include the following steps:

1. Design of the system

2. Production: Implementation of the system on various servers

3. Competence creation: if lost, what is the impact on sustainability?

4. Use: the use can be understood as the total ecological footprint of a DH project (based on the same calculation of CO2 emissions, water and energy use for servers running)

5. Reuse: since not all data inside a DH project is open and easy to be reused, what is the impact on sustainability?

6. End-of-life

This last stage is often underestimated. Questions regarding where to move the data and ensure that the data and metadata are not lost often coincide. Finally, the manner in which knowledge survives in the next phase determines the path ahead.

The LCA method also responds well to the selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations has outlined 17 SDGs that address various issues, needs, and perspectives related to poverty, gender, education, health, energy, consumption, production, peace, and climate change. Among these, problems associated with climate change and energy consumption have direct implications for DH and are well addressed by LCA.

LCA and sustainability

During the various phases of the LCA for DH projects, the value of using the LCA framework emerges. This transition, from a project period to a drift period, is crucial. In this space, one needs to plan the goal of extending the lifetime of the service allowing the resource to acquire values that support sustainability. For instance, easy access to the right users, and how data are used and made available from a longer perspective, can support the evolution of the service over the life cycle of the project. Those governing the project are responsible for making the correct choices. Often we see examples showing how valuable services, worthy to be valuable resources for researchers for decades, “die” over time for the lack of funding, leadership, and technological understanding. In addition, the core of such projects, the knowledge, if not addressed properly, may be lost. Also, the reuse of the data is often addressed poorly. Using the LCA as a tool to define and analyse all the aspects of the life cycle of a DH project it may be possible to avoid negative outputs. Usually, an LCA is done while a system is operational. Nevertheless, the paper argues the use of the framework several times during the development and also just before the launch of a project as a stable service.

ENCODE

This paper analyses the ENCODE project (ENCODE, n.d.) and affiliated (dislocated) resources as examples of a DH project on which the LCA framework can be applied. In the framework of ENCODE, a three-year (2020-2023) Erasmus+ Strategic partnership for higher education, partners from 6 European universities (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Julius Maximilian Universität Würzburg, KU Leuven, Università degli studi di Parma, Universität Hamburg, and Universitetet i Oslo) aimed enhancing the digital competences of students and researchers who are studying ancient writing cultures. This resulted in the creation of several outputs, such as an open online course on the #dariahTeach platform and a platform for collecting guidelines to use existing digital resources and tools in this (broad) field. (Salvaterra e.a., 2023)

Maintaining (DH) services in a sustainable manner requires a combination of strategies, including institutional support, collaboration agreements, keeping costs manageable, keeping user communities engaged, and keeping (or at least exporting) data in forms that can survive a loss or transition of support. It is almost equally important to involve and provide long-term support for technical specialists, obtain institutional commitments to ensure this support, and intentionally engage partner projects and share data with them to ensure the long-term preservation of these projects’ outputs. Some of the affiliated DH services that partnered with the ENCODE project (all making use of Linked Open Data to adhere to the FAIR principles), Papyri.info, Trismegistos and Epigraphic Database Heidelberg (EDH), especially struggled with the last phases in the LCA, the “Use”, “Reuse” and “End-of-life” phase.

All these projects obtained longer funding in their initial stage, resulting in the creation of several services for the study of Ancient World Data, such as providing URIs, searchable databases, RDF and XML data exports, et cetera. However, after their initial funding, to sustain the uptake of these services and/or their data, different solutions were applied, ranging from a large-scale endowment and crowdfunding rounds (Papyri.info) to the implementation of a subscription model (Trismegistos). Other projects, such as EDH, make their data available via Linked Open Data methods and data dumps. (Cayless, 2019)

Finally, for a short-term funded project such as ENCODE, other possibilities exist, such as applying in the European Blended Intensive Programmes (BIP) programme. This is intended for EU-funded educational initiatives that bring together students, educators, and researchers from across Europe for intensive training in DH. As a result, participation in BIPs can extend the life cycle of DH projects by facilitating knowledge transfer and dissemination, building capacity among students and educators, fostering networking and collaboration, and supporting sustainability planning for long-term viability, thus hopefully preventing a negative outcome of the LCA “End-of-life” phase.

Findings

The findings show how the LCA can be used during different phases of a DH project. For instance during the design process, just before the transition to a drift situation, or can be used when the end-of-life is approaching. The discussions toward the end of the project period have been focused on how to support a long-standing service for scholars. As mentioned, this Erasmus+ project is interdisciplinary and international, where the last stage culminated in launching the various platforms across Europe and writing the very demanding final report. Usually, after this effort, a project group focuses on other tasks. Thus far, this has been the de facto situation for the authors. Projects are often based on the willingness of the participants to use their work and free time to bring a DH project to fruition. The LCA framework may address some of the aforementioned issues, especially unforeseen side-effects, and phases usually where the focus is weak during a DH project.

Discussion

DH projects are interdisciplinary, and often international because experts are part of a small research milieu, and are not easy to enrol. Projects must include them part-time. This context creates a vulnerable situation, and we have countless examples of projects ending in an improper manner. Proposing a framework for guidance and governance, different roles emerge: users, researchers, PIs, funding organisations, universities, and libraries are all important stakeholders. The LCA helps a project focus on the vulnerable stages, for instance, funding, and personal resources, such as experts, since they are underestimated, especially in the transition period from a project to a drift situation, and have quite an important impact and implication when the end-of-life is approaching. If the vulnerable stages are not properly addressed, in a later stage, the lack of resources will result in disrupted services, dissatisfied scholars, an - in the end - even more difficulties in proving funding.

Conclusion

This paper emphasises the critical need for sustainable approaches in Digital Humanities projects, particularly in understanding and addressing the various phases of a project's life cycle. The use of Life Cycle Assessment is a novel and valuable way of looking into hidden aspects of DH projects. By advocating for the application of the LCA framework, the paper highlights how this method offers a holistic perspective on sustainability, encompassing design, production, use, and end-of-life considerations. Through the analysis of the ENCODE project and affiliated resources, the article underscores the challenges faced during the transition from project implementation to long-term sustainability.