2012: a very successful year for CLARIN-NL

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Jan Odijk's picture

Jan Odijk

18 April 2013

The year 2012 has been a very successful year for CLARIN-NL. The CLARIN ERIC was established, and this fact was celebrated on several occasions (at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences; at the opening of the Academic Year 2012-2013 in Utrecht, and on a special occasion set-up by the European Committee). Many people active in CLARIN-NL have become active for the CLARIN ERIC, its governance organisation and committees.

Infrastructure

Basic functionality for the CLARIN infrastructure has been further extended (AAI, federated search, vocabulary services, CMDI metadata profile for tools, etc.). The vocabulary service developed in CLAVAS (CLARIN Vocabulary Access Service) is already in use, even outside of the Netherlands, inter alia in Austria. A plan for integrating the various pieces of the CLARIN infrastructure has been elaborated and is ready to be executed.

Centres

The various CLARIN centres have re-assessed their ambitions and all have reconfirmed their ambition to become at least a B-centre, and some even aim to become a B+ centre or an A-centre. A range of independent data providers has expressed their willingness to make their data available in a CLARIN-compatible manner and have executed (NISV) or are executing plans (KB, DBNL) to realise this. Others are preparing plans for this.

Subprojects

All subprojects from the Third Call have started up and are currently running. The researchers in these projects are, as usual, supported for various CLARIN-related aspects by the HelpDesk, and for metadata and semantic interoperability via tutorials, workshops and dedicated experts. The results of the Call 2 projects have become available in 2012, adding to the results of the Call 1 projects that were available already for quite some time.

Call 4

As planned, a Fourth call for data curation and demonstrator projects has been launched. It included both an Open part and a Closed Part. In total, 11 subprojects could be awarded funding (out of 20 submissions). These projects have been started or will start in the first half of 2013.

Year Rewarded projects # projects # finished projects
2009 Projects Call 1 11 11
2010 Projects Call 2 9 8
2011 Projects Call 3 13 1
2012 Projects Call 4 11 0

The cooperation project of the Netherlands and Flanders (TTNWW) is coming to an end. It has, inter alia, resulted in a workflow system that enables a researcher to combine a wide variety of language and speech technology web services to enrich data for his or her research. A keynote speech on this system has been held at CLIN 2013 in Enschede. Systematic support for the CLAM-system, which originated in this project and has enabled many to turn their tools into web services in an easy manner, could be provided thanks to CLARIN-NL. The Data Curation Centre, one of the (virtual) CLARIN-NL centres of expertise, has started its activities. It curated several resources and made a data curation guideline.

The Nederlab project, a project that aims to provide data and tools for the longitudinal study of the Dutch language and culture, has been supported financially and has been set up as the second (virtual) CLARIN-NL centre of expertise, ready to start its activities in 2013.

A wide range of events was organized by CLARIN-NL: various tutorials (both nationally and internationally), workshops, information sessions, etc. CLARIN-NL also supported various independent events financially, and it has supported various researchers to attend workshops and conferences. Many of these workshop and conference visits have led to presentations and publications. Newsflashes have been sent out regularly, and CLARIN-NL has supported eData & Research, in which a wide variety of articles on or related to CLARIN have appeared.

PR & Awareness

After the first redesign of the website (the second redesign will be in may 2013) several CLARIN-movies, showcases, and screen captures that show the results of various subprojects have been made and placed on the website. Moreover, many CLARIN-participants wrote a blog about the progress of their projects and/or about their CLARIN-project presentations in and outside the Netherlands.

The National Coordination Point has functioned well. Some members have left the CLARIN Board and the CLARIN NAP, but excellent replacements have been found for them. The IAP has been extended with a number of renowned international experts.

Conclusion

Finally, a project proposal for a successor project, CLARIAH had been submitted in 2011. It was put on the National Roadmap in 2012, and it received 1 million euro of ‘seed money’, from the deputy minister Halbe Zijlstra on a special event for this occasion in Utrecht (March 3, 2012), The ‘seed money’ is to be used for maintaining the consortium dynamics and for preparing a new proposal to be submitted by 2013.

Jan Odijk