Project objectives

The project ‘From 1914-1918-online to the Open Encyclopedia System (OES)’ (see GEPRIS entry), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2016 to 2020, was fundamental to the development of the OES software.

The project was the first to implement a standardised platform for the creation, publication and maintenance of online encyclopaedias in the humanities and social sciences. OES complements existing electronic publishing options with web-based open-source software for lemma-based publication formats, thereby closing existing gaps in the open access publishing landscape. The modular and configurable software supports central editorial workflows and linked (open) data. In the publication layer, it enables various forms of navigation, search and user interaction with the content. The OES framework draws on the tools and procedures developed in the DFG's predecessor project ‘1914-1918-online’. Application-specific functionalities were placed on a generic basis and supplemented by components to support the article management workflow, the administration, indexing and publication of bibliographic collections, the multilingual input and management of indexing vocabularies, and article versioning.

Two OES applications were published during the project period: the Compendium of German-Greek Interconnections and the Compendium heroicum. OES is a modular open-source software for the creation, publication and maintenance of online encyclopaedias. The OES code was published on GitHub in October 2020 under a GPL2 licence. The Freie Universität Berlin has committed to ensuring the provision and maintenance of the current encyclopaedias and the OES code.

Project partners

The DFG project ‘From 1914-1918-online to the Open Encyclopedia System (OES)’is a joint project of

• Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS), now part of the Central Facility FUB-IT, Freie Universität Berlin
• Friedrich Meinecke Institute (FMI), Freie Universität Berlin
• Centre for Modern Greece (CeMoG), Freie Universität Berlin
• Bavarian State Library (BSB)

Project team

Project management

• Prof. Dr. Nicolas Apostolopoulos (CeDiS), until 2019
• Dr. Klaus Ceynova (BSB)
• Prof. Dr. Oliver Janz (FMI)
• Prof. Dr. Miltos Pechlivanos (CeMoG)

from 2019: Dr. Albert Geukes and Dr. Brigitte Grote for CeDiS

Project staff

CeDiS

• Christoph Schimmel (project management)
• Ilker Egilmez (freelance software developer)
• Phuong Anh Ha (software development)
• Büsra Altun (student assistant)

FMI

• Dr. Jennifer Willenberg (scientific coordinator, editorial team)
• Dr. Margit Wunsch Gaarmann (project management)
• Manuel Freistein (research assistant)
• Theresia Knuth (research assistant)
• Dr. Carla MacDougall (editor)

CeMoG

• Dr. Bart Soethaert (project management CeMoG)
• Marco Hillemann (research assistant)

BSB

• Gregor Horstkämper (project coordination)

Publications (selection)

Apostolopoulos, Nicolas / Egilmez, Ilker / Schimmel, Christoph: Open Encyclopedia System – Open-source platform for open access online encyclopaedias, in: Freie Universität Berlin / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / Technische Universität Berlin (eds.): Open in Action in Berlin-Brandenburg. Open access projects of scientific institutions in Berlin and Brandenburg 2016, Berlin 2017, pp. 22–23, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-5832.

Apostolopoulos, Nicolas / Egilmez, Ilker / Schimmel, Christoph: Open Encyclopedia System. Open Source Software for Open Access Encyclopedias, in: Maria Gäde / Violeta Trkulja / Vivien Petras (eds.): Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same? Understanding Information Spaces. Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium for Information Science (ISI 2017), Berlin, 13–15 March 2017, Glückstadt 2017, pp. 380–385, online: http://isi2017.ib.hu-berlin.de/ISI_17_ONLINE_FINAL.pdf.

Apostolopoulos, Nicolas / Nassar, Maaly: Events Discovery Assistant: A Semi-Supervised Spatio-Temporal and Semantic Model for Discovering First World War Events, in: 2017 IEEE 11th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC), San Diego (CA) 2017, pp. 401-406, online: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7889570&isnumber=7889486.

Freistein, Manuel: Challenges and Choices: Illustrating 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, in: VISUAL HISTORY, Rivista internazionale di storia e critica dell’immagine IV, Pisa 2018, pp. 149-159.

Janz, Oliver: 1914-1918-online: The International Encyclopedia of the First World War, in: Ellie Lem-onidou (ed.): Cent ans après: la mémoire de la première guerre mondiale / One hundred years after: the Memory of the First World War, Athens 2018, pp. 201-217.

Janz, Oliver / Willenberg, Jennifer: ‘L´arciduca Francesco Ferdinando d´Austria ha chiuso il suo ac-count’. La prima guerra mondiale nell'Internet, in: Officina della Storia 14 (2015), online: https://www.officinadellastoria.eu/it/2016/02/21/larciduca-francesco-ferdinando-daustria-ha-chiuso-il-suo-account1-la-prima-guerra-mondiale-in-internet/ [published in 2016].

Janz, Oliver / Willenberg, Jennifer: Der Erste Weltkrieg digital (The First World War in Digital Form), in: Thomas Schleper (ed.): Erinnerung an die Zerstörung Europas. Rückblick auf den Grossen Krieg in Ausstellungen und anderen Medien (Remembering the Destruction of Europe: Looking Back on the Great War in Exhibitions and Other Media), Essen 2016, pp. 103-109.

Pechlivanos, Miltos: ‘Για τις νεοελληνικές σπουδές στο Freie Universität Berlin’ (Academia, vol. 13, 2018, pp. 65-79): http://academia.lis.upatras.gr/index.php/academia/article/view/2918/3218.

Review

1914-1918 online

Crivellari, Fabio and Nitz, Wenke: "From the “Great War” to global research. The encyclopaedia “1914-1918-online” – achievements and limitations," in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, online edition, 13 (2016), online: http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/1-2016/id%3D5337

Enderle, Wilfried: ‘Facts and Information in the Digital Space: From Encyclopaedias, Historical Dictionaries and Biographical Reference Works to Historical Information Systems,’ Clio-Guide, Berlin 2016; online: http://guides.clio-online.de/guides/arbeitsformen-und-techniken/fakten-und-informationen/2016

Migowski, Ana Lúcia: ‘Digital Dark Age, An overview for the Humanities and Social Sciences’, in: On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 1 (2016); online: http://www.on-culture.org/journal/perspectives/digital-dark-age/

Schetter, Frederik: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, in: Portal “Learning from History”, 28 February 2018; online: http://lernen-aus-der-geschichte.de/Lernen-und-Lehren/content/13913

Compendium heroicum

Stefanie Middendorf: Review of: Compendium heroicum. The online encyclopaedia of the Collaborative Research Centre 948 ‘Heroes – Heroisations – Heroisms’, in: H-Soz-Kult, 16 November 2019, http://www.hsozkult.de/webreview/id/rezwww-188