Creating a Digital Ottoman Platform (DOP)

Creating a Digital Ottoman Platform (DOP) 8–12 June 2015, Princeton, NJ School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton University) The Digital Ottoman Platform (DOP) workshop was convened to establish an open and accessible digital space in which to collect, manage, link and create source materials, datasets and scholarly work related to the Ottoman world. Increasingly, digital tools make possible more effective and efficient scholarship using long-familiar methods; at the same time, there are digital tools that make possible entirely new forms of investigation and analysis. This DOP space is conceived to include tools of both kinds, to be extensive and inclusive, a first stop for anyone curious to discover the range of available resources about the Ottoman Empire. No such space currently exists in the field of Ottoman Studies, although there is a growing corpus of websites and digital projects connected to the study of the Ottoman Empire, together with an ever-increasing list of digital tools and technologies for scholars in the humanities. A broader historical perspective highlights why the DOP could play a leading role in expanding the digital capacities of Islamic and Near Eastern Studies: The Ottoman Empire included a geography that today encompasses some twenty-five to thirty countries, including Anatolia, large portions of the Arab world, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Crimea, the Caucasus and western Iran. People in the Ottoman Empire used some twenty-five languages and seven scripts; they belonged mostly to the three monotheistic faiths, including many of their various communities. As the largest Muslim empire from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, Ottoman history is also integral to the study of Islamic thought and practice. Numerous Ottoman digital projects are currently underway. The DOP does not seek to take them over or bypass them but rather to cooperate wherever possible in order to promote best practices and create sustainable resources. In order to facilitate and enhance research and the study of the Ottoman Empire, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 451–456 Copyright © 2015 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.2.2.20 participants in the workshop asked the question: what are now the main digital needs of the field and what is currently feasible? Discussions over the course of five days focused on that question and on the challenges of creating and maintaining successful digital projects that are transparently and reliably authored, organized and referenced. The consensus was that a gazetteer of the Ottoman Empire is the digital tool most immediately lacking and the one with the greatest potential benefit to scholars and students working in every part of the field. Although no further agenda was elaborated in detail, participants discussed a variety of digital resources and tools that could contribute significantly to Ottoman scholarship, namely: a biographical database, an inventory of monuments , guidelines for creating useful metadata, examples of digital pedagogy, best practices documents for various technologies, data modeling alternatives, linked data, reliable OCR technology to handle handwritten Arabic-alphabet texts, and more. Ottoman components might also usefully be added to existing digital resources in other fields or modeled on them. The workshop also discussed how and why digital projects falter or fail. Declining or absent human or financial resources, technologies that became obsolete and uncertain goals are only a few of the persistent problems that have undermined promising initiatives. Workshop participants shared their own experiences and it is clear that there is much to be learned from a careful study of past projects and those currently under way. The DOP will thus proceed deliberately and with caution, discovering best practices from the experiences of projects in Ottoman history and in other fields. It is also clear that successful projects should address specific needs or problems and be critically evaluated and tested on a small scale before committing extensive resources to them. The long-term vision is that the DOP: • will be a place to explore, create, collect, disseminate and standardize data about the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world with digital tools. • will make it possible for scholars to locate reliably and share resources and results in original, intermediate and...