SPECIALISED INFORMATION SERVICE ASIA

In the fourth project phase (2025-2027), information supply and the operation of user-oriented search and access systems will continue to be at the center of FID Asia’s activities. The position of the FID Asia within the German Asia-related sciences will be further consolidated and expanded through continuous further development of the services offered and its infrastructure. Cooperation with German and international partner organisations should significantly expand the range of services and access options in the future and at the same time enable the high-quality level of the resources provided to be maintained in the long term.

The following fields of action have been defined for the 2025-2027 project phase:

Field of activity 1: Demand-oriented and evidence-based information supply

Collection development remains aligned with national and international multidisciplinary and transregional research and research-related teaching. The strong use of the collections and the services for information supply over the years prove beyond doubt the relevance of the FID Asia. Since the last funding phase, however, the FID has been increasingly confronted with massive price increases for the printed and digital resources it acquires. An acquisition strategy that is even more strongly oriented towards the needs of users by means of our Patron Driven Acquisition Services (PDA) and the associated accuracy of usage-driven acquisition helps to make even more precise use of the shrinking funds. In this funding phase, additional solutions are to be developed to ensure that the supply of information remains at a high level in the future. Stronger networking with national and international partners also plays an important role here.

Field of activity 2: Operation and adaptation of subject-specific information services

CrossAsia is the technical platform through which the FID’s services are bundled. The new CrossAsia search developed in the previous project phase not only offers a comprehensive search space but is also the interface to other services such as the Blue Loan Service, Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) or the Digitisation on Demand Service (DoD). In order to continuously improve the search, the FID collects and accesses search-relevant data and checks its quality. It is also ensured that the data can be reused by other, connected systems in the sense of a data hub. Another aim is to improve the visibility of individual region-specific services in order to better meet the requirements of user groups and regions. The languages and scripts managed by the FID Asia create special demands on the work and handling of data. With regard to the CrossAsia search, further optimisation of the full-text search and the multilingual search (especially for non-Latin scripts) is planned.

Field of activity 3: Operation and adaptation of the subject-specific information infrastructure

Since the 2019-2021 project phase, the FID Asia has been operating the Integrated Text Repository (ITR), a service that is already one of its core services. With the ITR, a technical infrastructure was created in which licensed and license-free content in the form of full text, image text and image data is stored in a neutral data environment. The first result was the full-text search space based on more than 30 databases with over 418,000 individual titles and more than 67 million digital page objects. This created the technical prerequisites to meet the requirements for hosting and (long-term) archiving. International partnerships are intended to coordinate the workload in the sense of a distributed responsibility structure. In the coming funding phase, the ITR infrastructure will continue to operate and grow to include new resources and ongoing updates of licensed data, which will then also be available in the search and visualisation tools. In addition to the ITR services, the FID Asia offers two further services for collaborative projects from the scientific community: “SOLR as a Service” and MADOC. The image and descriptive metadata of the projects managed in the ITR can be presented via the open source software MADOC. Furthermore, the SOLR-based infrastructure is being expanded to support the search for text and metadata projects. Here, data is managed and indexed in the SBB environment in order to display it or make it searchable in the environments of the partner institutions.

Field of activity 4: Research data and open access publications

In recent years, FID Asia has expanded its commitment to Open Access (OA) in Asian Studies. Since the launch of the CrossAsia repository, FID Asia has been operating a multimedia platform that supports all areas of OA. The repository is now well known in the scientific community and the possibility of independent self-publication is being used. In addition to traditional OA publications, research data is also stored in the repository. The FID actively advises researchers on this and provides support with research data management plans for applications. It is already a passive and active partner in planned third-party funded projects and supports scientific communities and projects with this service. The FID Asia is also involved in two cluster applications of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI): NFDI4Memory and Text+. It actively contributes its expertise in the field of metadata in non-Latin scripts, management, storage and access to licensed data as well as its competence in the field of making license-protected data available in the context of Digital Scholarship. Requests for personnel funding in this field of action were rejected by the DFG with reference to other existing funding guidelines in the areas of OA and research data. FID Asia will therefore examine how it can continue its work in this field of action under the existing conditions.

Field of activity 5: Science communication and public relations / marketing

FID Asia uses numerous forms of science communication and public relations work (such as workshops, online tutorials, training courses, mailing list, social media presence, participation in international conferences and meetings of specialist societies) to raise awareness of its services, especially in East, Southeast and Central Asian Studies, but also in the so-called extended target group. The Scientific Advisory Board supports the FID Asia in this work. Furthermore, the FID Asia is also involved in the “FID Network Asia”, where not only close contact and exchange takes place, but also cooperation with other regional FIDs is initiated and implemented.

Field of activity 6: Organisation, operation and strategic development of the FID Asia

The FID Asia and the CrossAsia platform have developed into an established service and information provider in the German academic landscape. Reliable operation, further development, constant evaluation and quality assurance remain central tasks that the FID Asia is continuously pursuing and expanding. The operation of the services, project management (including control and communication), the indicators, the internal project organisation of the units and the cooperation with the associated partners pose numerous challenges. For this reason, the organisational structure operating in FID Asia will be analysed in more detail in this project phase in order to adapt it to more agile structures – also with regard to the requirements of the future DFG funding guideline FID+. In addition, the internationalisation of FID Asia will continue to be proactively pursued.