Specialised Information Service for East, Central and Southeast European Studies

• Applicant: Dr. Dorothea Sommer, since 6/2025
• Subject Area: Ancient History ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; Empirical Social Research ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Protestant Theology ; Early Modern History ; Human Geography ; Roman Catholic Theology ; Medieval History ; Modern and Contemporary History ; Political Science ; Communication Sciences ; Prehistory and World Archaeology ; Economic and Social History ; History of Science
• Term: since 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284429882

The overarching objectives of this grant application are essentially those of the previous applications: FID-Ost seeks to support current and future German research in the humanities and social sciences on Eastern and Southeastern Europe in a number of ways: on the one hand through services for direct use by academia, on the other hand through services for other libraries and information facilities and finally through structural support of the German research landscape on Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In order to achieve these goals, the current services will be consolidated, bearing in mind the upcoming revision of the FID funding programme. Special foci will be placed on Ukraine and Moldova, the Western Balkans and Hungary, which is new to FID-Ost in this funding phase. In particular fields new services will be tested, for instance, translating full texts using large language models in order to make East European and German research more accessible. These above mentioned goals are pursued within seven specific work areas: 1.) Acquisition & provision of commercial information resources (print materials and electronic offerings to be licensed: Books, periodicals, databases & more); 2.) Acquisition and archiving of free information resources (e-books, e-journals, digital research projects, research data, weblogs & podcasts); 3.) Digitisation & e-publishing (expansion of the open access repository OstDok, publication of topic dossiers, ego-documents and research data); 4.) (In-depth) indexing and automatic translation (catalogue enrichment, expansion of the cooperative ARTOS article database, standard data preparation in Ukraine, automatic translations, support for a Ukrainian digital library); 5.) The FID research gateway osmikon: expansion of content, technical renewal, redesign); 6.) Cooperations: FID as part of the FID-system, networks, cooperation, internationalisation (networks North-East and Asia, AG-FID, networking and internationalisation); 7.) Target group communication, training, public relations.

• DFG Programme: Acquisition and Provision (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Klaus Ceynowa, until 6/2025