CLARIN-DK – status and challenges

The initiative CLARIN-DK (starting as a Danish preparatory DK-CLARIN project) is a part of the Danish research infrastructure initiative, DIGHUMLAB. In this paper the aims, status, and the current challenges for CLARIN-DK are presented. CLARIN-DK focuses on written and spoken language resources, multimodal resources and tools, and involving users is a core issue. Users involved in a preparatory project gave input that led to the current user interface of the resource repository website, clarin.dk. Clarin.dk is now in the transition phase from a repository to a research infrastructure, where researchers and students can be supported in their research, education and studies. Clarin.dk works with a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), uses eSciDoc and Fedora Commons, and is primarily based on open source solutions. A key issue in CLARIN-DK is using standards such as TEIP5, IMDI, OLAC, and CMDI for resource metadata. Optional metadata fields suggested by users have been included when it could comply with the standards, allowing for the diversity needed when describing the research material. Current work includes normalising metadata naming in the search pages, and making search more user-friendly by adding selectable pick-lists for query values. Also a consolidation of metadata quality is currently performed by changing some metadata values to a more harmonized set of values. All deposited metadata are maintained. Clarin.dk will apply for assessment as a CLARIN ERIC B centre in 2013 enforcing the sustainability and persistency of the infrastructure. Clarin.dk has already joined the national identity federation WAYF, implemented SSL-certificates, and offers harvesting of metadata via OAI-PMH as part of the CLARIN centre requirements.