EquipEx+
Biblissima+: a digital and multipolar research infrastructure
Winner of the call for expressions of interest "structuring equipment for research" - ESR / EquipEx+ in 2020, the Biblissima+ digital infrastructure, supported by the Condorcet Campus, is coordinated by Anne-Marie Turcan-Verkerk, Director of Studies at the EPHE - PSL.
The project is led and supported by 17 institutions and their research teams: the Campus Condorcet – the CNRS – the PSL University with the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the École nationale des chartes and the École normale supérieure – the EHESS – the ENS de Lyon – the National Museum of Natural History – the Interministerial Service of the Archives of France – the University of Avignon – the University of Caen – the University Lumière Lyon 2 – the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 – the University of Poitiers – the University of Tours – the company TEKLIA.
Biblissima+, "Observatory of Ancient Written Cultures, from Clay to Print", is a multipolar digital infrastructure for fundamental research and service dedicated to the history of the transmission of ancient texts, from the first Mesopotamian clay tablets, 3,000 years ago, to the first printed books, regardless of media and language. Biblissima+ concerns all heritage collections transmitting ancient texts, including archaeological sources, seals and coins, but also the archives of modern scholars and contemporary researchers who describe and analyze these documents. Biblissima+ is developing in coherence with ILARA, the Institute of Rare Languages of the EPHE - PSL, and takes over from the Biblissima team (2012-2021).
Biblissima+, a digital and multipolar research infrastructure
Biblissima+ creates a national portal that achieves the interoperability of heterogeneous digital resources that is totally open source and an exceptional working environment offering cutting-edge digital toolchains to enrich, share and reuse corpora according to the principles of open science.
The partner teams, which develop the main building blocks of the infrastructure (scientific resources and innovative tools), form as many centres of expertise on a national scale, in the regions (Aubervilliers, Pierrefitte, Caen, Lyon-Avignon, Orléans, Poitiers, Tours) and in Paris.
The building blocks proposed by the competence centres have made it possible to identify 7 major fields at the cutting edge of innovation, which form as many clusters bringing together researchers, curators and engineers, organised according to the research cycle, from the material approach of the document to the in-depth study of the text it transmits.
These clusters structure communities. They produce, organize and pool tools, reducing redundancies, promoting inventions and their reuse.
- Cluster 1: acquisition of corpora of interoperable sources (2D and 2D images).
- Cluster 2: Consideration and searchability of materials analysis data.
- Cluster 3: artificial intelligence, pattern and handwriting recognition.
- Cluster 4: In-depth processing of graphical systems and document analysis.
- Cluster 5: editing of sources according to the EpiDoc (for epigraphy: cluster 5a) and TEI (for the different textual typologies: cluster 5b) standards.
- Cluster 6: Musical Heritage Challenges and MEI.
- Cluster 7: Interoperability and text analysis.
The Biblissima+ team coordinates the dialogue between clusters and the chaining of tools, as close as possible to the users and ensures the interoperability of the results. A simplified Biblissima+ portal makes it possible to build datasets, and to bounce back to the galaxy of tools. A system of calls for projects open to all, designed to produce new interoperable datasets and new tools, makes it possible to gradually integrate new data and new communities. One part of the call for projects is international.