CLARIAH-EUS is a node within CLARIAH-ES, Spain's distributed infrastructure for CLARIN and DARIAH, Europe's two principal digital research infrastructures for the humanities, arts, and social sciences. CLARIAH-EUS aims to sustain research in these fields of study that is related to Basque or Basque culture by supporting scholars with digital tools and resources. The node is unique because it seeks to service a language (Basque) and not a territory, making the infrastucture transnational in scope. In this article, we describe the motivations for creating CLARIAH-EUS, how it was constructed, the projects that are in currently in development, and future plans.
true of social scientists, who have adapted to the
emergence of big data by devising novel techniques that take
The nature of research is in constant flux. This steady advantage of an ocean of digital information, casting
change is especially evident in fields where technology new light on how data can represent reality [
Over the past two decades, however, a small cadre ically crafted to aid the humanities, arts, and social
sciwithin these disciplines has begun to take advantage of ences. And the successful application of this particular
digital technology in ways that have given rise to new specialization, it is worth remembering, depends to a
modes of research and, consequently, new lines of in- great extent on the availability of tools, resources, and
quiry [
Although Basque may be counted among the
lesserspoken languages, its situation in terms of language
technology is comparatively favorable to languages of a
similar size. This is largely thanks to significant progress in
“fostering the necessary sociolinguistic conditions for the
successful development and dissemination of LT,” which
has resulted in “state-of-the-art technology and robust,
broad-coverage NLP for Basque” [
The CLARIAH-EUS consortium was created to help address these shortcomings. Its goals are twofold: 1) The UPV/EHU is represented by the Vice-Rectorate promote language technology for researchers involved of Basque, Culture and Internationalization,3 which parin Basque-related humanities, arts, and social sciences ticipates as a financing entity, and by HiTZ, the Basque and 2) foster and facilitate relationships between these Center for Language Technology.4 The latter, which also researchers so that they may better exchange ideas and in- provides funding, is responsible for CLARIAH-EUS’s adnovative approaches. For these reasons, CLARIAH-EUS ministrative ofice and several of its members are part of is centered on language rather than territory or region, the CLARIAH-EUS steering committee. making it transnational in scope. Organizationally speak- With the help of these institutions, CLARIAH-EUS has ing, the network is a node within CLARIAH-ES, Spain’s hired four staf members, who oversee the maintenance distributed infrastructure for CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH of the CLARIAH-EUS infrastructure and perform duties ERIC, Europe’s two principal digital research infrastruc- within the administrative ofices of both CLARIAH-EUS tures for the humanities, arts, and social sciences. and CLARIAH-ES (for which HiTZ is also responsible).5
As stated above, one of CLARIAH-EUS’s objectives is to The development of CLARIAH-EUS has occurred in two support language technology for researchers involved in stages: a design phase (2021-2023) (see sections 4.1. and Basque-related humanities, arts, and social sciences. Part 4.2) and an implementation phase (2023-present), during of this activity involves producing digital resources for which time CLARIAH-EUS has become an active node Basque and integrating them into the CLARIN ERIC and (see sections 4.3 and 4.4).
DARIAH ERIC infrastructures. Doing so will generate tools that are designed with Basque in mind and provide 4.1. First workshop: needs and manifesto researchers with better access to them. A second, closely related area of activity, will focus on ofering services to On November 26, 2021, an initial workshop,6 Euresearchers who create or wish to utilize Basque language skararentzako hizkuntza-teknologia Humanitateetan eta technology for the digital humanities. Zientzia Sozialetan garatzeko CLARIAH-EUS azpiegitura
Another ambition of CLARIAH-EUS is to establish a diseinatzen (Designing the CLARIAH-EUS infrastructure to research community that is devoted to sustaining lan- develop language technology for Basque in the Humanities guage technology for Basque-related humanities, arts, and Social Sciences), was organized by HiTZ to create the and social sciences. On the one hand, the purpose of this CLARIAH-EUS infrastructure. goal is to encourage collaboration between scholars that Its objective was to discuss opportunities and needs may lead to more impactful research or greater opportu- for diferent research areas. The workshop’s activities innities for participation in international projects. On the cluded: 1) compiling a collection of use cases and posters other, the aspiration stems from the belief that a strong of digital projects developed for anyone who wants to research community is more likely to cultivate an en- study Basque, 2) making a list of the strategic resources vironment that yields innovative approaches to Basque necessary for Basque and Basque research in diferent disdigital humanities and language technology for Basque. ciplines, and 3) obtaining the involvement of researchers to promote the CLARIAH-EUS research infrastructure.
Nine institutions and thirty-four researchers from 3. Funding institutions twenty research groups participated and fourteen projects were presented. In addition, 134 organizations and individuals signed a manifesto7 calling for the creation of a digital humanities infrastructure for Basque.
CLARIAH-EUS is focused on maintaining long-lasting and steady financial support so as to ensure short-, midand long-term research initiatives and guarantee the reusability of resources. Several public stakeholders share this perspective and have provided funding to the infrastructure. Currently, CLARIAH-EUS is supported by the Basque Government through its Department of Culture and Linguistic Policy,1 the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa,2 and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
kultura-hizkuntza-politika-saila/ 2https://www.gipuzkoa.eus/eu/
various organizations and research groups. This was obtained from ten entities: HiTZ (UPV/EHU), Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea (UEU), Iker research group, Elhuyar, Gogo
4https://www.hitz.eus/eu 5https://www.clariah.es/ 6https://www.clariah.eus/eu/1-workshop 7https://www.clariah.eus/eu/manifestua
group (UPV/EHU), Aholab research group (UPV/EHU), Ixa research group (UPV/EHU), Soziolinguistika Klusterra, and the Unesco Chair in Human Rights and Public Powers (UPV/EHU). Nine of these organizations or research groups are from the southern Basque Country and one (Iker) is from the northern Basque Country.
During this time, the CLARIAH-EUS node was also defined in relation to CLARIAH-ES in Spain and the CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH ERIC infrastructures at the European level.
As underscored above, one of CLARIAH-EUS’s principal objectives is to support researchers by providing tools and resources10 that can be employed in digital humanities and social sciences. Some of the tools and resources available through CLARIAH-EUS were produced before the infrastructure was constructed. These have been integrated into the infrastructure to multiply their outreach and usability. Others, however, have been or are being developed under the auspices of CLARIAH-EUS. The following examples fall under both categories.
CLARIAH-EUS’s second workshop8 was held in Novem- ParlaMint 4.0 is a set of comparable corpora11 containber 2023. In contrast to the previous workshop, its objec- ing transcriptions of parliamentary debates from twentytive was to present the CLARIAH-EUS infrastructure and nine European countries and autonomous regions, mostly its aims, as well as to survey ongoing work in Basque dating from 2015 and to mid-2022. The individual corpora digital humanities. comprise between nine and 126 million words and the
The event served as a kickof ceremony for the found- complete set contains over 1.1 billion words.
CLARIAHing members. CLARIAH-EUS’s structural organization EUS has created the corpus [
CLARIAH-EUS’s implementation. To use the service, a petitioner must first register a request at www.clariah. eus/contacto. Once a petition is activated, CLARIAHEUS updates the status of the request as changes occur. The petitioner’s opinion is solicited at the end of the collaboration or service through a survey: https: //www.ixa.eus/events/clarink_survey. All node services are evaluated at the end of each year.
Furthermore, petitioners will also be asked to acknowledge the node in resulting publications or on websites by including the CLARIAH-EUS and HiTZ logos, along with the following statement: “SUPPORTED by CLARINEUS. HiTZ Center - University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU.”
clariah-eus-euskararako-ikerketa-azpiegitura-eraikitzen
9https://www.clariah.eus/eu/2-workshopa-azpiegitura-eraikitzen
Three datasets related to social media analysis are
available for the purposes of experimentation and the
development of tools for Basque: 1) the Heldugazte12 [
Basque in the Making (BIM): A Historical Look at a
European Language Isolate and Syntactically Annotated
Historical Corpus in Basque (SAHCOBA) are two projects15
for the construction of a morphosyntactically annotated
Basque historical corpus [
EUS, our objective is to restructure its current status as a CLARIN K-centre into a CLARIN B-centre in order to provide technical services as well as instructional guidance to researchers. With respect to future work, our current outlook is shaped by three criteria: • Creating or adapting resources and services that researchers can access from the CLARIAH-EUS node. • Creating or adapting resources and services that are strategically needed within the Basque community. • Creating or adapting resources or services that can be articulated with CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH ERIC.
and services in CLARIN and DARIAH by adapting
existing resources. By way of example, we hope to integrate
the Analhitza tool [
partment of Culture and Linguistic Policy, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the Vice-Rectorate of Basque, Culture and Internationalization at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and the HiTZ center for their generous support.