Explainers
An "Intro to DA Technologies" series introducing the technical building blocks of digital archives (TEI, RDF, …), one element per video. Each video includes a full readable transcript.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to Fixity: Verifying Digital Files Have Not Changed
A beginner-friendly introduction to fixity: hashes (checksums) as digital fingerprints, comparing them over time to detect change or damage, fixity checks, and links to OAIS, BagIt, and PREMIS.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to ALTO and PAGE: Keeping OCR Results with Coordinates
A beginner-friendly introduction to ALTO and PAGE, two standards for keeping OCR/HTR results with coordinates rather than as plain text.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to Web Archiving: Preserving the Vanishing Web with WARC
A beginner-friendly introduction to web archiving: why pages vanish, the crawl/WARC/replay pipeline, how WARC bundles HTTP exchanges, WACZ, and links to long-term preservation.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to Dublin Core — A Shared Vocabulary for Metadata
A beginner-friendly introduction to Dublin Core (ISO 15836), the minimal shared vocabulary for describing resources. Covers why a common vocabulary helps, the 15 core elements (DCMES) and their optional/repeatable nature, the difference between simple (unqualified) DC and qualified DC (DCMI Metadata Terms: refinements and encoding schemes), application profiles and crosswalks, OAI-PMH's oai_dc, and use in RDF/Linked Data. The metadata foundation underlying the Omeka, OAI-PMH, RDF and METS explainers. An experimental, independently-composed video, fact-checked against the specifications.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to RDF Schema and OWL
A beginner-friendly introduction to RDF Schema (RDFS) and OWL — giving meaning to RDF data. Covers classes and hierarchies (subClassOf), property domain/range, inference (deriving new facts from declared meaning), OWL (sameAs/inverseOf/constraints), reasoners, the contrast with SHACL (inference vs validation), and shared vocabularies (schema.org/Dublin Core/FOAF/CIDOC CRM). A sequel to the RDF, SPARQL and SHACL explainers.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to RO-Crate: Packaging Research Data
A beginner-friendly introduction to RO-Crate, a lightweight way to package research data together with its metadata in a single 'crate' (a directory containing ro-crate-metadata.json). Covers the JSON-LD metadata based primarily on schema.org, the three kinds of entities (Root Data Entity, Data Entities, Contextual Entities), machine-readability, FAIR and portability, and tools/adopters such as Crate-O, ro-crate-py and WorkflowHub. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing openly published specifications.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalWeb Annotation and Mirador: Annotating Images
A beginner-friendly introduction to Web Annotation (the W3C standard that turns annotations into shareable web data) and Mirador (the IIIF viewer for creating and viewing them on images). Covers body+target, selectors for pointing at a part (an image region, a text quote), JSON-LD and annotations as first-class web resources with their own IRI, motivation, and annotating image regions in Mirador. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to OAIS — A Reference Model for Digital Preservation
A beginner-friendly introduction to OAIS (Open Archival Information System / ISO 14721), the reference model for digital preservation. Covers why long-term preservation is hard, the roles (Producer, Consumer, Management) and the Designated Community, the SIP/AIP/DIP information packages, AIP = Content Information + PDI (Provenance, Reference, Fixity, Context), and the six functional entities (Ingest, Archival Storage, Data Management, Administration, Preservation Planning, Access). Also relates it to PREMIS, METS and BagIt. An experimental, independently-composed video, fact-checked against the specification.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to SHACL
A beginner-friendly introduction to SHACL — validating RDF graphs against shapes. Covers node/property shapes, constraints (cardinality, datatype, class), the conformance/violation validation report, the alternative shape language ShEx (Wikidata EntitySchemas), and the relationship to SPARQL (querying) and XML schemas. A sequel to the RDF and SPARQL explainers. An experimental, independently-composed video, fact-checked against the specifications.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to CIDOC CRM: Connecting Cultural Heritage Data through Events
A beginner-friendly introduction to CIDOC CRM (ISO 21127), the common reference model for integrating cultural-heritage information across institutions. Centred on its event-centric design, it shows how classes and properties connect people, objects, places and time-spans, how the model is expressed in RDF and rides on Linked Data, how a shared model enables cross-institution integration, and how it is used in practice via profiles such as Linked Art. A sequel to the RDF/Linked Data introduction. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to GeoJSON and Linked Places Format
A beginner-friendly introduction to GeoJSON (the standard for geographic data: Feature/geometry/FeatureCollection, RFC 7946) and the Linked Places Format (LPF), a GeoJSON-LD extension for historical places. Covers why historical places are hard (names and locations change over time), how LPF adds names, types, when (time) and links, and how closeMatch/exactMatch connect places to gazetteers such as Wikidata, GeoNames and Pleiades (World Historical Gazetteer, Pelagios). An experimental, independently-composed video; specs were used for fact-checking only.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalCustomising TEI with ODD: Schemas and Processing Model
A beginner-friendly introduction to customising TEI for your own materials. Centred on the ODD (One Document Does it all) as a single source of truth, it shows how schemas (RELAX NG / DTD, with Schematron) are generated for validation, and how the Processing Model declares output (HTML/PDF, etc.) — a sequel to the TEI introduction. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to XSLT and XPath
A beginner-friendly introduction to XPath — selecting nodes in an XML tree — and XSLT, which transforms XML into other forms such as HTML. Covers XPath (// and predicates), XSLT templates (match→output, value-of, apply-templates), the XML+XSLT→processor→output pipeline, and DH uses like publishing TEI to the web. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to OAI-PMH
A beginner-friendly introduction to OAI-PMH, the long-standing protocol for harvesting metadata from repositories. Covers the two roles (data provider and service provider), HTTP+XML, the six verbs, record structure (header + metadata such as Dublin Core), selective harvesting by set and datestamp, and aggregation for cross-search and portals. Also framed against IIIF (images) and DTS (text). An experimental, independently-composed video; the spec was used for fact-checking only.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to ResourceSync
A beginner-friendly introduction to ResourceSync, a framework for keeping web resources synchronized between servers. Covers baseline synchronization (Resource List / Resource Dump), incremental synchronization (Change List / Change Dump), capability discovery (Source Description / Capability List), how it builds on Sitemaps (rs:md / rs:ln with checksums and change types), and how it relates to OAI-PMH (metadata harvesting vs resource synchronization). An experimental, independently-composed video; standards docs were used for fact-checking only.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to METS and PREMIS
A beginner-friendly introduction to two metadata standards for keeping digital materials usable over the long term: PREMIS (preservation metadata — objects, events, agents, rights, fixity and provenance) and METS (the wrapper that bundles descriptive, administrative and structural metadata, with a required structMap). Covers how METS wraps MODS and PREMIS and how this relates to the OAIS AIP. An experimental, independently-composed video; standards docs were used for fact-checking only.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework)
A beginner-friendly introduction to IIIF (the International Image Interoperability Framework), the community standard for working with images across institutions. Covers the Image API (requesting any region, size, rotation and quality of an image by URL, enabling deep zoom) and the Presentation API (manifests and canvases), plus viewer interoperability, cross-institution comparison, Web Annotation, and uses in the digital humanities. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to DTS (Distributed Text Services)
A beginner-friendly introduction to DTS (Distributed Text Services), a community-built specification for accessing collections of text through a standardized API. Covers the three endpoints (Collection, Navigation, Document), citation structure and references, JSON-LD and TEI/XML responses, and interoperability—framed as the text counterpart to IIIF for images. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to Omeka: Publishing Digital Exhibits
A beginner-friendly introduction to Omeka, the free and open-source platform for collecting and publishing digital materials. Covers the core building blocks (items with media and metadata, collections, Dublin Core), how exhibits present items as a narrative, and the difference between Omeka Classic and Omeka S (multiple sites, linked open data). An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to SPARQL
A beginner-friendly introduction to SPARQL — querying RDF graphs with triple patterns (SELECT … WHERE and ?variables), joining patterns to narrow results, FILTER / OPTIONAL / ordering, results as tables, and trying queries on public endpoints (Wikidata Query Service). An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to RDF and Linked Data
A beginner-friendly introduction to RDF — representing data as subject–predicate–object triples — and Linked Data / LOD. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.
▶ 2 videosAI / experimentalIntroduction to TEI and XML
A beginner-friendly introduction to TEI, the international standard for encoding humanities texts, and the XML it builds on. An experimental, independently-composed video referencing open CC-licensed materials.