How Danish users tried to answer the unaskable during implementation of clarin.dk

In this paper we describe the aims of the Danish national research infrastructure preparatory project, DK-CLARIN, 2008-2011. In the description we focus on user perspectives and the efforts to involve users, in particular for those aspects that are close to the user, i.e. resources and tools. We also describe some important aspects of the resulting implementation. Users were involved in various ways, most importantly through focus groups, in particular a focus group for the design of the web interface, and a focus group for specific design issues such as metadata search and other types of search mechanisms. clarin.dk accepts a wide variety of resources, e.g. text, text annotation, audio, video, media annotation, lexicon and tools. Those tools that are integrated in clarin.dk can be activated through a workflow planner. DK-CLARIN is now through the preparatory phase, and is ready to participate in CLARIN ERIC when it is established. The participation will be through the upcoming Danish national research infrastructure for the humanities, Digital Humanities Laboratory, planned to start early 2012.