Speaker
Description
This poster session presents the progress of the “Program for Strengthening Data Infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences,” initiated in 2023 and led by the Historiographical Institute and the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo. The program’s primary goal is to expand the Japan Data Catalog for the Humanities and Social Sciences (JDCat), which was developed during the preceding “Program for Constructing Data Infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences,” led by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). JDCat is a comprehensive platform designed to promote data sharing and utilization across various fields in the humanities and social sciences. It has been operational since 2021 and currently hosts 38,373 metadata entries, accessible in both Japanese and English. In the current program, we plan to harvest new metadata from the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties and Kobe University Library. In addition, we will include metadata from qualitative studies, such as interview transcripts. These new entries include materials related to wooden tablets and earthquake disasters. Alongside the metadata on Japanese historical materials and social survey data already available, these additions will diversify the data types and support new research initiatives. Secondly, we aim to enhance the utilization of JDCat in research and education, as it remains underutilized according to a recent user survey. To address this, we plan to demonstrate practical use cases through the JDCat Analysis Tool. Developed in the previous program in collaboration with the National Institute of Informatics, the tool provides a cloud-based environment featuring Jupyter Notebook and RStudio, enabling users to create and run R or Python programs with ease—thereby improving data accessibility and analytical capacity.
