Draft:Engineering Historical Memory (EHM)

Engineering Historical Memory (EHM)
Type of siteDatabase and search engine for primary historical resources and secondary multi-media references
Launched2007
Founding Editor-in-ChiefDr Andrea Nanetti
Websitehttps://engineeringhistoricalmemory.com/

Engineering Historical Memory (EHM) is an online database in the digital humanities discipline used as a research tool for primary historical materials.[1] It adopts computational methods to make historical documents machine-understandable.[2] EHM parses traditional artifacts such as historical maps, travel accounts, chronicles and codices into machine-readable formats, and links them to secondary multi-media references,[3] a process referred to as the "automatic narrative generation".[4]

History edit

EHM was first theorised in 2007 by researcher Andrea Nanetti when he was a visiting scholar at Princeton University,[5] and the preliminary test results were published between 2008 and 2011.[6] In 2013, the EHM research team was set up in Singapore following Nanetti's professorship at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).[7] Two years later, after receiving several Microsoft research grants, EHM went live on Microsoft Azure.[8] In 2018, the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CoHASS) at NTU Singapore formed the Digital Humanities Research Cluster, as part of which, EHM has been an ongoing interdisciplinary research project led by Nanetti.[9] Partnering with international educational and cultural institutions such as Ca' Foscari University of Venice, University of Florence, Taylor & Francis Group, Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), and SenticNet, EHM has been supported by over 130 scholars and engineers.[10]

Applications edit

Historical materials on EHM are curated into categories including maps, travel accounts, chronicles, codices, sites, archival documents and paintings.[11] EHM has been adopted by cultural organisations as an exhibition and research tool in the digital humanities field.[12] Examples include the publication of a digital interactive edition of Fra Mauro’s Map of the World, a collaboration project between NTU Singapore and the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana of Venice commenced in 2018.[13] The digitisation process of the map on EHM involved transcribing and geo-referencing the textual content in the 15th century map, followed by creating semantic annotations to connect the map's content with related secondary data sources.[14] The e-map was subsequently adopted and launched online by Museo Galileo in March 2022 and incorporated in the virtual exhibition “Venezia and Suzhou: Water Cities along the Silk Roads” (online, September-December 2022).[15][16]

EHM is also being used as a history database for researchers and students at international institutions such as the Digital Humanities Laboratory at the University of Cagliari,[17] the German Center for Venetian Studies,[18] the European Research Council MEDEA-CHART Database,[19][20] the University of Virginia,[21] and Hong Kong Baptist University.[22]

Image-Based Video Search Engine is another experimental project under the EHM scope led by the research teams at Delft University of Technology (TUDelft) and NTU Singapore.[23] This ongoing project aims to improve the efficiency in retrieving targeted objects from audio-visuals.

Awards edit

In 2021, EHM won the GLAMi Awards (MuseWeb Conference - Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums Innovation awards) in the “Resources for Scholars and Researchers” category.[24] In the same year, EHM was a Falling Walls finalist for Science Breakthrough of the Year in the category Social Sciences and Humanities after nominated by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.[25]

In April 2022, the Italian National Commission for UNESCO has selected and sent the EHM project to the organisers of the “Jikji Memory of the World” Award for final evaluation.[26]

References edit

  1. ^ Nanetti, Andrea (2022). Computational Engineering of Historical Memories: With a Showcase on Afro-Eurasia (ca 1100-1500 CE). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003310860. ISBN 9781032316802. S2CID 252294659.
  2. ^ Nowotny, Helga (2021). In AI we trust : power, illusion and control of predictive algorithms. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. p. 113. ISBN 978-1-5095-4881-1. OCLC 1237252446.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  3. ^ Nanetti, Andrea; Radzi, Zaqeer; Benvenuti, Davide (2021-07-02). "Crafting the next generation of web-based learning tools for manuscript artefacts in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. A focus on science, technology, and engineering codices, world maps, and archival documents in exhibition settings". SCIRES-IT - SCIentific RESearch and Information Technology. 11 (1). doi:10.2423/i22394303v11n1p97. S2CID 238780006.
  4. ^ Bystritskiy, Nikolay (2020). "System Approach for Digital History". ITM Web of Conferences. 33 (3002): 8. doi:10.1051/itmconf/20203303002. ISSN 2271-2097. S2CID 226428958.
  5. ^ Nanetti, Andrea; Cheong, Siew Ann; Filippov, Mikhail (2013). "Interactive Global Histories: For a New Information Environment to Increase the Understanding of Historical Processes". 2013 International Conference on Culture and Computing: 105. doi:10.1109/CultureComputing.2013.26. hdl:10356/147855. ISBN 978-0-7695-5047-3. S2CID 7398031.
  6. ^ "Engineering Historical Memory". NTU Digital Humanities Research Cluster. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  7. ^ Nanetti, Andrea; Cheong, Siew Ann (2018), Chen, Shu-Heng (ed.), "Computational History: From Big Data to Big Simulations", Big Data in Computational Social Science and Humanities, Cham: Springer International Publishing, p. 359, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95465-3_18, hdl:10356/143168, ISBN 978-3-319-95465-3, retrieved 2022-08-17
  8. ^ Cui, Winnie (2016-01-29). "Bringing together history and data science with Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Research Blog. Retrieved 2022-06-26.
  9. ^ Stanley-Baker, Michael (2018-11-30). "Digital Humanities at NTU". Constellations. 2. Retrieved 2022-07-18.
  10. ^ "Engineering Historical Memory (EHM) | EADH - The European Association for Digital Humanities". eadh.org. Retrieved 2023-09-11.
  11. ^ "Engineering Historical Memory". EHM. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  12. ^ Clini, Paolo; Quattrini, Ramona (2021). "Editorial. Digital Cultural Heritage, arts reproduction and Museums systems. Languages and techniques in a Covid and post-Covid scenario for new forms of heritage against the silence of a fragile culture". SCIentific RESearch and Information Technology. 11 (1): 7. doi:10.2423/i22394303v11n1p1. S2CID 237334847.
  13. ^ Nanetti, Andrea (2022). "Waterways Connecting the Peoples of the World. A presentation of the EHM application for Fra Mauro's mappa mundi as a virtual laboratory for investigating the Maritime Silk Road discourse in the digital time machine". Venezia e il senso del mare. Percezioni e rappresentazioni [Venice and the sense of the sea. Perceptions portrayals] (forthcoming). Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.
  14. ^ Chiang, Yao-Yi; Duan, Weiwei; Leyk, Stefan; Uhl, Johannes H.; Knoblock, Craig A. (2020). Using Historical Maps in Scientific Studies: Applications, Challenges, and Best Practices. Springer. pp. 18–19. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66908-3. ISBN 978-3-319-66908-3. S2CID 208086010.
  15. ^ "The world map of Fra Mauro". Museo Galileo. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  16. ^ "Evento: Venezia and Suzhou. Water Cities along the Silk Roads - Unive". Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  17. ^ "Risorse libere. Mappe e cartografie". University of Cagliari (in Italian). Retrieved 2022-07-18.
  18. ^ "Bibliothek". The German Center for Venetian Studies (in German). Retrieved 2022-07-18.
  19. ^ "Genoese Map". MEDEA-CHART. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  20. ^ "Fra Mauro". MEDEA-CHART. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  21. ^ Unsworth, John (2021). "Introduction to Digital Humanities (syllabus)" (PDF). University of Virginia. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  22. ^ "General Education: Level 1 - Foundational Courses". Hong Kong Baptist University. 2022. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  23. ^ van Oort, Max; Hoogeveen, Aron (2022). "Image-Based Video Search Engine". Delft University of Technology. Retrieved 2022-07-18.
  24. ^ "GLAMi Award Winners – MW21". MuseWeb. 2021. Retrieved 2022-06-27.
  25. ^ "Finalists 2021 | Falling Walls". Falling Walls. 2021. Retrieved 2022-06-27.
  26. ^ "Ecco la candidatura presentata dalla Commissione Nazionale Italiana per l'UNESCO per la IX Edizione del Premio UNESCO "Jikji Memory of the World"". UNESCO. 2022-04-28. Retrieved 2022-08-08.

External links edit