NFDI4Memory is a consortium for disciplines working in the field of history. Alongside NFDI4Culture, NFDI4Objects and Text+, it is one of the four humanities consortia within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) network. Research institutions and memory institutions (archives, libraries, collections, museums) work closely together in NFDI4Memory. One focus is on methods of digital source criticism and the contextualisation of data. 4Memory aims to integrate historical data that is available in very different data formats and results from numerous specific application contexts and requirements. This includes texts from antiquity to modern times, images, photos, audio and video recordings, statistics, structured data, metadata, ontologies and hypertexts. 4Memory also focuses on personal data, spatial structures and the change in classification systems and categories over time.
 

• Ensuring the quality of historical data by establishing clear guidelines for the handling of data and metadata
• Improving the interoperability and reusability of historical data and data collections by harmonising and implementing clearly defined standards
• Expanding the connection of existing data collections by extending cross-platform search options and by increasingly making different historical data available for research purposes
• Improving the digital competence of historically oriented humanities scholars with regard to the management of research data and promoting cultural change in historically oriented disciplines through active dialogue with the relevant communities.

The Department of Media History at the Institute for Media Research is involved as a member/participant in Task Area 2 through Prof Dr Stefan Kroll. This works with two working groups in Munich and Halle (Saale) on the linking and contextualisation of historical research data in order to enable modern data management and form the foundation for the planned 4Memory Data Space. The aim is to lay the foundations for historically sensitive and unambiguous standard and metadata, develop research-based historical categorisations and link them with those of archives, libraries and museums for joint use in the Semantic Web.