Shanghai memory as a digital humanities platform to rebuild the history of the city

Abstract

Abstract With the development of digital technology, Memory Projects, such as the American Memory and the Venice Time Machine, have been explored continually as typical digital humanity projects. In these projects, humanists are able to look into the thousand-year-history with a macro view by a ‘data telescope’, as well as numerous micro views by ‘data microscopes’. This article investigates representative historical memory and city memory projects from over the past 20 years and analyses the purpose, investigation, cooperation, methods, implementation, and technical routes adopted. The following problems are apparent: resource decentralization and fragmentation, duplication of database construction, single-user service mode and low utilization rate of cultural heritage resources, etc. This study provides an overall technical route to solve these problems by examining ongoing practice. The Shanghai Memory Project, undertaken by Shanghai Library, uses knowledge reorganization and data reconciling technologies such as Big Data, Semantic Web, and Knowledge Graph to construct an overarching Humanities Research Environment, which is co-constructing, sharing, and interconnecting to avoid problems of resource decentralization and database duplication. The Project provides a user service model, which combines the library creating knowledge with user-generated content. Implementing data visualization technologies, such as AR, VR, etc., the project improves the collection display and promotes the utilization of the resources. The Urban Memory Project is a comprehensive program that relies on cooperation and interdisciplinary collaboration, co-construction, and the sharing of data. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Urban Memory Projects play a significant role in helping to develop the Digital Humanities’ infrastructure.