Sharing Multimodal Data: A BUA Infrastructure for Audiovisual Research Data in the Humanities and Social Sciences

In the ‘Sharing Multimodal Data’ project, the Oral-History.Digital interview portal developed by Freie Universität is being further developed in collaboration with researchers at Charité, Technische Universität, and Humboldt-Universität Berlin into Audio-Visual.Digital, a joint BUA infrastructure for audiovisual research data from the humanities and social sciences.

Audio-Visual.Digital (av.d) will be an infrastructure that can be used by all institutions of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) to secure, index, share, and reuse audiovisual research data from the humanities and social sciences in accordance with FAIR principles. In the ‘Sharing Multimodal Data’ project funded by the BUA for 2026, the Digital Interview Collections department of the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin is developing a prototype to demonstrate the need for and feasibility of such a platform.

Audio-Visual.Digital is based on the Oral-History.Digital research data platform established at Freie Universität. There, oral history interview projects can upload their audio and video data, including accompanying materials, and edit them using tools for automatic transcription and thematic tagging. Sophisticated user management allows content to be made accessible in a finely granular manner, depending on the status of indexing and the rights situation. The information infrastructure is based on open-source software; the research data is stored and processed securely and in compliance with data protection regulations.

In close coordination with the BUA project for research data management CARDS and the Digital Network Collections, this research and investigation environment is now being expanded for various application scenarios at BUA institutions. First, the institutions will be informed about the project, relevant holdings, data-specific requirements and institution-specific workflows will be identified, and pilot projects will be initiated.

To improve technical connectivity, the oh.d software will be expanded to meet different requirements and set up as a new instance. Later integration into the BUA Shared Services Catalog and the BUA Data Space is being prepared.

To this end, the project team is collaborating with scientists from various disciplines at Charité, TU and HU in three pilot projects. The pilots, which are limited in scope, focus on individual adjustments that can be implemented within a short time frame, as well as on conceptual agreements and requirement specifications as a basis for later further development, including third-party funded development. The pilots for medical history, video sociology and European ethnology are complementary and designed to significantly expand the disciplinary and institutional reach of the infrastructure as a whole. An expansion to other disciplines, such as Semitic studies, will be examined in the course of the project. Appropriate dissemination measures will publicise the project results within the BUA framework and beyond.

The Berlin University Alliance (BUA) works to promote a joint innovative research space in Berlin. It is funding this project as part of its  Objective 5 "Sharing Resources" from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026.

Peter Kompiel, Tobias Kilgus, Herdis Kley, Jan Kühn, Dennis Mischke, Cord Pagenstecher, Doris Tausendfreund

Freie Universität Berlin
University Library
Digital Interview Collections
Project "Audio-Visual.Digital"
Garystr. 39
14195 Berlin
Web: https://audio-visual.digital
Email: mail@audio-visual.digital