MaDiH (مديح) instance on CKAN is now active !
The MaDiH (مديح) team have made the first datasets visible, to set off the publishing phase of the project.
By Alessandra Esposito, Research Associate
Translated to Arabic: Shatha Mubaideen, Project Manager
One of the main aims of the MaDiH (مديح): Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan project is to provide the public, heritage professionals, and researchers with a national repository containing information on datasets recording cultural heritage held both inside and outside Jordan. This repository is now accessible at
https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/
To create this repository, King’s Digital Lab (KDL) has used CKAN, an open source data portal platform. The basic CKAN template has been customised by Miguel Vieira, Principal Research Software Developer, and Elliott Hall, Senior Research Software Engineer, according to the suggestions of the MaDiH (مديح) Datasets Identification and Publication team (Alessandra Esposito and Shatha Mubaideen) supported by Pascal Flohr, MaDiH (مديح) consultant based at EAMENA, University of Oxford, and Arianna Ciula, the KDL Deputy Director. Fadi Bala’awi (Jordan PI) and Carol Palmer (CBRL Director) have provided strategic guidance.
Given the way in which the data recorded is structured in CKAN, each dataset record consists of 3 levels:
Organization: This is the organisation that owns the dataset.
Dataset: This level details the information related to the dataset structured in a Template.
Resource: This level records the format of the data used by the dataset (e.g. CSV, PDF, access files, image formats, etc.).
The Template contains the following fields:
A protocol detailing the Identification and Publication process methodology and principles has been published in open access on Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/record/3673318#.XkvXAGj7REY. The CKAN template is also being translated into Arabic to increase the repository’s accessibility and will be ready for the next MaDiH (مديح) workshop at the end of March 2020.
The MaDiH (مديح) Datasets Identification and Publication Team has now grown with a new Research Assistant, Arzaq Yousef, based at CBRL. The Team will continue the data collection in preparation of the official launch of the CKAN instance of MaDiH (مديح) at the Hashemite University on the 29th-30th of March. On that occasion, the MaDiH (مديح) Team will organise a user-testing session with cultural heritage professionals and students to collect feedback on usability and possible improvements.
It is important to note that MaDiH (مديح) does not collect the data recorded in the datasets it features, but only the information about those datasets. If you are aware of any dataset we might be missing, both in digital or analogue format, or know somebody that owns such datasets, you can get in touch with us at madih.info@gmail.com.
