Recent Developments in Digital Assyriology - Zoom Workshop, Helsinki, August 26-27 2020

55-19.15 in Session 1: Creating and enriching text data.

ABSTRACT "Open Science at CDLI: Focus on collaboration and accessibility"

The main mission of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative () is to create and preserve, on the long term, digital assets of cuneiform collections such as digital images, digitized transliterations and translations, and catalogue information (metadata). Open access and collaboration is integral to this mission and for approximately 20 years now, the CDLI has put its digital resources at the disposal of both specialists and the general public.

Over the years, CDLI has diversified the type of information it stores and shares, adding linguistic annotations, 3D and RTI images, open format metadata, while also developing linguistic technology (in big part through the project), and imaging technology especially for the digital capture of cylinder seals (as part of the project).

To sustain existing and new operations, major work was undertaken at the infrastructure level through the . This developpement focused on the preparation of a location independent CDLI software package ("Framework") and a new moden web interface. These efforts have also engaged in enhancing the accessibility to both cuneiform digital information and processing software we curate, for humans and for machines.

In this talk I will discuss recent integration work at the CDLI. I will first address the human interface, with a spotlight on accessibility: browsing, searching, navigating, and general interacting with CDLI data. Next I will discuss the machine interface, including software service points, data exports (including automated translations) and formats (including linked open data). Finally, exposing some data structure decisions will reveal important improvements concerning data standardisation and management, including for bibliographic references, images, and the CDL journals.

Powerpoint presentation by Émilie Page-Perron: