Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

Quality - Established: Testing and application of curation criteria and quality standards for audiovisual annotated language data (QUEST)

The main focus of the joint project  "QUEST: Quality - Established: Erprobung und Anwendung von Kurationskriterien und Qualitätsstandards für audiovisuelle, annotierte Sprachdaten" is on the potential for subsequent use or secondary use of audiovisual, annotated language data in the humanities. Based on the development of quality standards and curation criteria for digital language data, quality assurance procedures for the creation and curation of such resources will be developed and tested. The QUEST project as a whole is divided into three priorities: "Quality Standards", "Curation Criteria" and "Quality Assurance Measures", which in turn are subdivided into individual work packages at four participating institutions.

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of  Education and Research (BMBF) and it has started on June 1st, 2019. It is coordinated at the Institute for Finnougristik/Uralistik at the University of Hamburg. In addition to the coordination site in Hamburg, the network consists of the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, the Archive for Spoken German/Leibniz-Institute for German Language (IDS) in Mannheim and the University of Cologne.

ZAS is working on two of the work packages of the subgoal "Curation Criteria": Kurationskriterien für sprachtypologische Sekundärnutzung (WP 2.1, headed by PD Dr. Frank Seifart) and Kurationskriterien für Sekundärnutzung in der „Third Mission“ (WP 2.4, IDS and ZAS, headed by Dr. Thomas Schmidt (IDS) and Dr. Mandana Seyfeddinipur (BBAW)).

Curation criteria are operationalizable (or discipline-specific) criteria that allow statements to be made about the potential for subsequent use of resources in certain disciplines. For example, the existence of traces of translation already allows use within the framework of certain language typological research projects. The definition of such criteria serves to exploit the post-use potential of research data across disciplinary boundaries. In addition to the subject-specific criteria, curation criteria are also defined for the non-scientific (third mission) re-use for cultural and other social purposes.

The following work packages are responsible for the development of the goals of the focus curation criteria:

  • AP 2.1 Kurationskriterien für sprachtypologische Sekundärnutzung (ZAS, headed by PD Dr. Frank Seifart)
  • AP 2.2 Kurationskriterien für sprachwissenschaftliche Sekundärnutzung mehrsprachiger Daten (UHH, headed by Prof. Dr. Beáta Wagner-Nagy)
  • AP 2.3 Kurationskriterien für multimodale Daten (UHH, headed by Prof. Dr. Beatá Wagner-Nagy)
  • AP 2.4 Kurationskriterien für Sekundärnutzung in der „Third Mission“ (IDS und ZAS, headed by Dr. Thomas Schmidt (IDS) and Dr. Mandana Seyfeddinipur (BBAW))