A draft proposal for a standard for the coding of machine readable sources

'Maschinenlesbare Quellen' werden alle Darstellungen einer Quelle auf einem Computer genannt, die von quellenorientierter Datenverarbeitung genutzt werden. Damit werden Daten erfaßt, die bedeutende Textteile zusammen mit codierten Informationen enthalten - wie in den Datenbanken demographischer Forschung verfügbar. Außerdem wird Material einbezogen, daß fast vollständig aus Text besteht, wenn auch aus sehr kleinen Einheiten, die grob strukturiert sind - Material also, wie es in den Datenbasen der mikroanalytischen Forschung existiert. Außerdem werden schließlich mehr oder weniger uncodierte Darstellungen fortlaufender maschinenlesbarer Texte erfaßt - wie sie normalerweise aus mit Hilfe des Computers erstellten Bearbeitungstechniken resultieren. Drei Ziele werden verfolgt: (1) die Darstellung eines Vorschlags für einen allgemeinen Standard zur Beschreibung und Definition von Inputformaten, die bei der Verarbeitung von maschinenlesbaren historischen Materialien benutzt werden; (2) die Unterbreitung eines Vorschlags für eine generelle Definition eines maschinenlesbaren Formats, in dem soziale Daten formal für eine Austauschprogramm beschrieben wird; (3) die Erstellung eines Arbeitspapiers für die Arbeit über das Softwaresystem, das als CLIO/C bekannt ist. (KWübers.)'Machine readable sources' we call all representations of a source on an electronic computer which are used by source-oriented data processing. So we include data, which contain significant portions of text along with coded information - as available in the data bank of demographic research (in its broadest meaning); we include at the same time material which consists almost completely of text, but of very small units of it, being heavily structured - material, that is, as it exists in the data bases of microanalytical research; and we also include, finally, more or less uncoded representations of continuous machinereadable texts as usually resulting from computer aided editing techniques.' (author's abstract

Between the Chairs: An Interdisciplinary Career

The author was one of the earliest representatives of computer applications within historical research in Germany, later being appointed to the first professorship for computer applications in the Humanities in Germany outside of linguistics. The following text describes his experiences as part of that development, which lead from the beginnings in the seventies to the current state of “Digital Humanties”. His view on this development of an interdisciplinary area left him with rather mixed memories: behind a sparkling front story of an enfolding field, he frequently had the feeling, that there was a tendency to ignore the huge epistemic potential of a serious attempt to apply computer science to the field of history in favor of glamorous but shallow short term goals

The Cologne Information Model: Representing Information Persistently [2009]

If we want to decide, whether two digital files contain exactly the same amount of information, or of how precisely the amount of information they contain differs, we need an abstract model of the information, unto which the instances represented by the content of two different files can be projected. A meta model for this purpose is presented. It differentiates between the byte values representing the payload in a file and the significant properties of that payload represented by meta information in the file. That model is embedded into a broader discussion of the best way to understand the nature of information as it influences the processing of the representations derived from the data in question. Links to the software solution implemented in the Planets project for the processing of data following the model proposed are provided