Towards infrastructure
Here are two (new) considerations, one from above, one from below.
Above: the Computational Humanities Programme (to be) is interested to expose parts of the existing collections of the KNAW institutes to computations that might reveal higher level patterns. This kind of research tries to aid human interpretation of materials by spotting patterns, starting by very local, low-level patterns, and climbing up to ever more semantical patterns.
Below: the BIGgrid is actively stimulating humanities people to express use cases and whishes for using the GRID. Also DANS is actively pondering how we can get hooked on the power of the GRID.
AlfaLab seems to be in the middle, where both ends may come together.
How?
By including an abstraction layer where the following concepts operate with each other:
* physical data files
* user identities
* workflows
If every AlfaLab application will use this layer, and does not create its own data logic, we make miles in creating a KNAW collection infrastructure with added value.