Research group for Media, Innovation and Communication Technologies

BelgicaWeb - Sustaining access to Belgium's born-digital heritage

  • Born-digital heritage

  • Archiving

  • Digital humanities

  • User Requirements

Project description

BelgicaWeb aims to open up born-digital data by making these collections available for (re)use and research. Making the born-digital data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) is at the heart of the BelgicaWeb as the project aims to offer agile search by developing a multilingual user-friendly platform and an API that will allow offering the collections as data. In this project, MICT’s research will pay particular attention to the needs of the researchers and other potential users through the establishment of a reference group of experts at the start of the project who will  iteratively provide input.

The BelgicaWeb project wants to ensure the scientific exploitation and social valorisation of born-digital heritage content. To achieve this, the project will: 1) investigate how to sustainably provide access to archived collections; 2) develop the necessary data infrastructure; 3) enrich the (meta)data of archived content via linked data, Natural Language Processing or other digital methods; 4) analyse the relevant legal frameworks and 5) promote Belgium’s born-digital heritage.

BelgicaWeb will develop an integrated access platform that is optimised for both archived websites and social media and that will offer data-level access to born-digital collections via an API. The project will enable KBR to build further in-house expertise in offering born-digital collections as data via an API and developing and maintaining an access portal. Providing access to archived born-digital heritage has a strong impact on civil society as it supports citizens’ right to information and offers insight into the online behaviour of citizens at large.

Project details

Partners:

The project brings together partners with a range of expertise. CRIDS at UNamur will provide expertise on the relevant legal issues, IDLab, GhentCDH and MICT at Ghent University will work on data enrichment, user engagement and evaluation and outreach to the research community respectively. KBR will serve as project coordinator and will work on the development of the access platform and API and data enrichment. Partners already have experience working together with web and social media archiving in the PROMISE and BESOCIAL projects, which is an additional strength for this project. 

 

Project Duration: 01/05/2024 - 01/05/2027