Overview

The Digital Infrastructures for Arts, Humanities and Cultural Heritage Community Interest Group (DIAHCH-CIG) brings together researchers, practitioners, infrastructure specialists, and stakeholders from the HEI, GLAM and creative sectors across the UK and Ireland to strengthen and connect the infrastructures that support arts and humanities research, innovation, and creative practice.

The first major challenge addressed by DIAHCH-CIG is the absence of standardised workflows, methodologies and tools used in the creation of infrastructure maps. The landscape mapping exercise – a common first step in most projects – invariably results in highly bespoke datasets that do not align with the FAIR Principles. This group seeks to address this by documenting methodologies, taxonomies and workflows that can be easily replicated, and the production of datasets that are both interoperable and reusable.

The second challenge the group addresses is the fragmented way in which arts and humanities infrastructures are documented and connected. Existing mapping initiatives often prioritise formally recognised, institutionally governed, and publicly funded infrastructures, leaving grassroots networks, community archives, interdisciplinary initiatives, and practicebased
organisations underrepresented.

DIAHCH-CIG aims to create a community of practice around infrastructure mapping, bringing together those developing and maintaining infrastructures to share methods, promote FAIR and interoperable approaches, and encourage open licensing and sustainable workflows. By bringing together higher education, GLAM organisations, creative industries, independent practitioners, and research infrastructure providers, it seeks to improve understanding of the sector’s infrastructure ecosystem while fostering long-term coordination and knowledge exchange.

You can find our more by reading the original proposal for the group.

Coordinators

Elena Zolotariov (School of Advanced Study, University of London), Giovanna Di Martino (Oxford University), and Joan Murphy (Trinity College Dublin).

Contact the group by emailing Elena at eleni.zolotariof@sas.ac.uk.