BMBF joint project KA3- Cologne Center for Analysis and Archiving of AV Data
The joint project KA3 was funded by the BMBF in two funding phases from 2015-2020. As part of the project, the infrastructure for curating and archiving AV data at the Cologne site was fundamentally revised and the technical basis of the Language Archive Cologne (LAC) was designed for long-term and more intensive use. The project is also testing the use of methods from the field of machine learning to recognize specific phenomena that can facilitate or even replace the process of manual annotation of large amounts of data. The results of the project are the current technical basis of the LAC and the KA3 services for audio analysis.
Partner Institutions
Data Center for the Humanities (DCH), University of Cologne
Digital Averroes Research Environment (DARE), University of Cologne
Abteilung Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ASW), Institute of Linguistics (IfL), University of Cologne
Thomas-Institut, University of Cologne
IT Center University of Cologne (ITCC), University of Cologne
Archive of German Memory (ADG), University of Hagen
Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS), Sankt Augustin
(First phase only: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI-PL), Nijmegen)
Management
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (IfL)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Witt (DCH/IDS)
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lang (ITCC)
Team
University of Cologne:
Jonathan Blumtritt (CCeH)
Anke Debbeler (DCH; from 2019)
Mark Eschweiler (DARE; from 2019)
Anne Gerlach (DCH; from 2019)
Jochen Graf (ITCC)
Lukas Mönch (DCH; from 2020)
Miguel Ramirez Peña (DCH)
Felix Rau (DCH)
Christoph Stollwerk (ITCC)
2nd Funding Phase
In the second funding phase, the focus is on completing and testing a dynamic repository for audiovisual data. During implementation, the sometimes very different requirements of the various disciplinary access points in terms of findability, access control, metadata and annotation formats will be taken into account. This makes the repository open and versatile for different disciplines. A dynamic repository for audiovisual data is still the most urgent desideratum, as there is no stable offering in this area worldwide that allows user-controlled uploads and downloads with secure regulation and control of access authorizations.
For the audio mining and document analysis components, the focus is on the stabilization and user-friendly provision of the Fraunhofer IAIS tools that were tested in the first funding phase and modified for scientific research. In the case of audio mining, these are the automatic transcription and indexing of German-language AV recordings and language-independent speaker diarization (assignment of the speech signal to different speakers). In document analysis, the focus is on text line recognition, which is the basis for all further analysis steps in the research of handwritten manuscripts.
Like during the first funding phase, the development of the repository as well as the analysis tools will be accompanied by three pilot studies in linguistics, oral history, and philosophy. The pilot studies ensure that the user perspective is consistently present in the development process and that all developments are immediately tested for their practical usefulness.
coordination
Conference contributions
Research Data and Humanities - RDHum 2019
Oulu, 14-16.08.2019. "Challenges and Developments in Preserving and Publishing of Large Audio/Video Data". Workshop: Jonathan Blumtritt*, Johan Frid, Jens Larsson, Martin Matthiesen, Felix Rau*.
6th Annual Conference of the Digital Humanities in German-speaking Countries (DHd) 2019 "multimedial & multimodal"
Frankfurt & Mainz, 25-29.03.2019.
"Qualitätsstandards und Interdisziplinarität in der Kuration audiovisueller (Sprach-)Daten". Workshop: Thomas Schmidt, Jonathan Blumtritt, Hanna Hedeland, Jan Gorisch, Felix Rau, Kai Wörner. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2596094
"Metadaten im Zeitalter von Google Dataset Search". Presentation: Jonathan Blumtritt, Felix Rau. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2596094
INEL-Workshop (Indigenous Northern Eurasian Languages) "Linguistic diversity, minority languages and digital research infrastructures"
Hamburg, 20-21.09.2018. "Applications and limits of machine learning for language documentation resources". Lecture: Felix Rau.
2nd Workshop "Research infrastructures for the humanities"
Berlin, 10.04.2018. "eHumanities-Zentrum: KA3". Lecture: Jochen Graf.
5th Annual Conference of the Digital Humanities in German-speaking Countries (DHd) 2018 "Kritik der digitalen Vernunft"
Cologne, 26.02.-02.03.2018.
"Audio Mining für die Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften: Usage scenarios and challenges". Workshop: Joachim Köhler, Almut Leh, Nikolaus Himmelmann, Felix Rau. doi:10.18716/KUPS.8085
"Nutzerunterstützung und neueste Entwicklungen in Forschungsdatenrepositorien für audiovisuelle (Sprach-)Daten". Workshop: Jonathan Blumtritt, Felix Rau. doi:10.18716/KUPS.8085
8th DINI/nestor workshop "Research data repositories"
Stuttgart, 27.11.2017. "Generic components and subject-specific requirements in the KA3 project". Presentation: Jonathan Blumtritt, Christoph Stollwerk.
3rd Annual Conference of the Digital Humanities in German-speaking Countries (DHd) 2016 "Modelling - Networking - Visualization: The Digital Humanities as an Interdisciplinary Research Paradigm"
Leipzig, 07-11.03.2016. "User-Experience of Language Archives: A Reassessment of the Interaction of Archive and Users". Presentation: Jonathan Blumtritt, Felix Rau. Link to the Book of Abstracts | Link to the slides
*presenter with several co-authors | external co-authors
Publications of the project partners
Gref, Michael, Christoph Andreas Schmidt, Sven Behnke, and Köhler, Joachim. "Two-Staged Acoustic Modeling Adaption for Robust Speech Recognition by the Example of German Oral History Interviews.". In IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, ICME 2019 Proceedings. Shanghai, China/Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 2019. pp.796-801. publica.fraunhofer.de/documents/N-555493.html
Gref, Michael, Joachim Köhler, and Almut Leh. "Improved transcription and indexing of oral history interviews for digital humanities research." In European Language Resources Association -ELRA-, Paris: LREC 2018, Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. Proceedings. May 7-12, 2018. Phoenix Seagaia Conference Center Miyazaki, Japan Paris: ELRA, 2018. pp. 3124-3131. publica.fraunhofer.de/documents/N-494202.html
Gref, Michael, Christoph Andreas Schmidt, and Joachim Köhler. "Improving robust speech recognition for German oral history interviews using multi-condition training." In Informationstechnische Gesellschaft -ITG-: Speech communication. 13th ITG Conference on Speech Communication 2018 : October 10-12, 2018, Oldenburg, Berlin: VDE-Verlag, 2018 (ITG Technical Report 282). publica.fraunhofer.de/documents/N-531366.html
Köhler, Joachim, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, and Almut Leh. "KA3: Speech Analytics for Oral History and the Language Sciences," ERCIM NEWS, 111 (2017). pp. 13-14.
Köhler, Joachim, Michael Gref, and Almut Leh. "KA³. Further development of language technologies in the context of oral history", BIOS - Journal for Biographical Research, Oral History and Life Course Analysis, 1-2/2017. pp. 43-59. doi.org/10.3224/bios.v30i1-2.05
Leh, Almut, Joachim Köhler, Michael Gref, and Nikolaus Himmelmann. "Speech Analytics in Research Based on Qualitative Interviews. Experiences from KA3". VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 7, no. 14 (2018). pp. 138-49. doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2018.jethc158
Leh, Almut, Michael Gref, and Joachim Köhler. "Audio Mining.Advanced Speech Analytics for Oral History". Palabras y silencios = Words & silences (2019). 9 pp. http://publica.fraunhofer.de/eprints/urn_nbn_de_0011-n-5690113.pdf
Trilsbeek, Paul. "Migrating The Language Archive to a new repository solution". In Open Repositories 2019. Hamburg, 2019. pp. 41-44.
Trilsbeek, Paul, and Menzo Windhouwer. "FLAT: A CLARIN-Compatible Repository Solution Based on Fedora Commons". In CLARIN Annual Conference 2016. Aix-en-Provence, 2016. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11755/b72c4df0-9f35-4f4e-9725-a36bcecd5723.
1st phase
Funding code: 01UG1511
Duration: 10/2015-09/2018
2nd phase
Funding reference: 01UG1511A
Duration: 10/2018-09/2020
Contact
Felix Rau (DCH)
f.rau(at)uni-koeln.de
+49 221 470-5832