D-Parsas, a digital infrastructure specializing in cultural and linguistic areas

Digital Paris Research School of Area Studies - D-PaRSAS is a technical and editorial platform project (2020-2022) supported by Inalco and the University of Paris. This platform is intended to facilitate the production, archiving and enhancement of multimodal data (audiovisual, visual, sound, textual, 3D, etc.) documenting research, and also teaching, on cultural and linguistic areas.

This project participates in the field of digital humanities and is in line with the policy in favor of Open Science advocated by the National Open Science Plan of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) and the European Commission's EU's Open Science Policy.

It therefore responds to the imperatives of repository, structuring and accessibility of the data produced, its interoperability and reuse, as well as the perpetuation and enhancement of scientific heritage.

The d-PaRSAS project is of prime interest to Inalco as an institution wishing to assert its central position in research on geographical, linguistic and cultural areas, particularly non-Western ones.

Objectives of the D-Parsas project

To provide project partners with a hardware and technological infrastructure suitable for the production, archiving and valorization of multimodal data documenting research on cultural and linguistic areas. The d-PaRSAS technical infrastructure includes a recording studio, mobile audiovisual capture devices and a data center consisting of servers for data storage, processing and dissemination.

Produce an editorial platformOpen Archive in Language and Cultural Area Studies - LaCAS for the valorization and patrimonialization of research on cultural and linguistic areas.

The LaCAS open archive is a prototype scientific and technical platform that brings together multimodal data corpora (visual, filmic, sound, textual, 3D, ...) produced by researchers, teacher-researchers, research teams and laboratories working on the world's geographical, linguistic and cultural areas. It offers the capacity to model fields of expertise and to valorize knowledge. It is organized around 5 areas of activity:

• Acquisition (collection), safeguarding, archiving and dissemination of visual, audiovisual, sound and textual data;
• Structuring, description and (re)publication of data corpora according to a methodological approach respecting the fair data framework (easy to find ; accessible; interoperable; reusable) and using open-source tools;
• Use of data in specific contexts of use : face-to-face and/or distance learning, continuing education, scientific expertise activities, intercultural awareness-raising and mediation, participatory science projects;
• Research and development: in semantic, terminological and linguistic data engineering
• Communication, training and valorization

Realize a series of pilot projects in digital humanities and open science in the form of web sites and portals enabling on the one hand the consultation and exploration and on the other hand the editing of data documenting a particular research field and/or the research perimeter of an institution.

One of the first pilot projects is the portal Archives Ouvertes de l'Inalco - AOI, currently under development. This portal is dedicated to data documenting the research of teacher-researchers and researchers working in teams under Inalco's supervision or cotutelle ("Inalco research ecosystem").

It aims to provide centralized access to this data of various kinds (publications, "grey literature"; scientific events; field corpus, archives; courses/seminars; research projects, scientific missions; research actors and themes, ...) scattered throughout the digital and "classic" mediaphere (data warehouses (HAL, Nakala, Persée, ...), identifier platforms (IdRef, ORCID, BNF...), union catalogs (Sudoc, Worldcat, Calames, OpenEdition....), institutional sites, team sites, personal sites and blogs, social media, institutional and team brochures, HCERES reports, ...).

It will also provide access to research documentary holdings mostly deposited on HAL, MédiHal, Nakala, Cocoon... to research collections; to a research map and a teaching map (in the form of structured information) at Inalco; to a professional vocabulary, the Lexique langues O' .

Several other projects under consideration will enrich this aspect of the D-Parsas project: "Techniques et savoir-faire en Himalaya (Ifrae); ANR Memomines project (Inalco (Plidam), Lille 3, Univ. de Valenciennes); 3 Archives projects (Cessma, Ifrae, Case); Fonds photographique (Ifrae); Documentation " Langues à petits effectifs " (Sedyl)

Produce pedagogical documentation and training workshops enabling the appropriation and use of the services offered by the LaCAS editorial platform.

Towards a community infrastructure

D-Parsas plans to develop the LaCAS platform into a true community infrastructure by establishing institutional partnerships with universities and major institutions, art and civilization museums and other national infrastructures such as the Institut des Sciences Humaines et sociales INSHS (CNRS), the Centre pour la communication scientifique directe CCSD, the TGIR Huma-Num, GIS aréaux, Réseau national des Maisons des Sciences de l'Homme (RnMSH), Unités Mixtes des Instituts français de l'étranger UMIFRE...