The research support services provided by FZE include the planning and development of software solutions as well as consulting and training services. Software products are developed within the research projects and tailored precisely to their requirements, moreover they can be used in various fields of study in the humanities and social sciences. Two developments are of particular importance: they offer adequate solutions for research data management, as well as the visualisation and analysis of research data in a complex research process.
FuD: Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities
The software system FuD is designed to be an integrated work, publication and information platform for the humanities and is constantly being improved by the Service Centre eSciences.
It supports the cooperation in spatially distributed working groups during the different phases of the research process, from the inventory and collection of primary data, their indexing and analysis, to the publication of results and data archiving.
The broad spectrum of research use ranges from the collection and development of primary data of various types, the production of source and register editions and further subject-specific publications to the preparation of digital editions of works as well as the creation of inheritance archives and personal databases.
Meanwhile, FuD is used by various scientists at universities, academies and institutes. FuD offers support for the following application areas:
- Examining of undeveloped archive material
- Collection of archaeological objects and visual evidence
- Creation of source and regest-editions
- Analysis and visualisation of communication structures and networks
- Digitisation, revision and online publication of printed documents
- Creation of digital work editions with inheritance archive
- Discourse analysis and historical semantics
- Prosopography: Creation of a database of persons
- Development of historical-geographical information systems
Further information can be found on the project’s website: www.fud.uni-trier.de
VennMaker
VennMaker is a software tool for the actor-centered visualisation and analysis of social networks.
Up to this point, social science network analysis has only had complicated instruments for the collection and quantitative evaluation of data. For a long time there was also a lack of convincing analysis and visualisation tools that could digitally display and evaluate qualitatively compiled social networks.
In the context of the project „VennMaker“ this gap has been closed. VennMaker is a software-based instrument that can be used for the communicative collection and validation of personal networks as well as for the visualisation of internal and external relationships in working groups, colleges or projects. Thus, it is for example perfectly suited for client-centered consulting work on a scientific basis.
Further information can be found on the project’s website: www.vennmaker.com