In the research project "studiolo communis", following the example of the studiolo of the Renaissance - a room for study and contemplation equipped with works of art, study objects and books - a working environment was developed that supports the examination, comparison, evaluation, linking and commenting of media objects and research results.

Images from an image database can be integrated for this purpose - in Paderborn, the easyDB database is used for the "Image Archive of the UNESCO Competence Center". But other media objects such as text, sound and film recordings can also be integrated. Here the metaphor of cooperative knowledge spaces is implemented, where media objects can be created, edited and arranged in a co-active way (communicative, cooperative and collaborative).

In contrast to other approaches and projects, the focus was not on the sustainable ordering of research findings and their enrichment with metadata, but rather on the flexible structuring in the research process according to the respective questions and the knowledge associated with the objects and artefacts. For this reason, the premise was to link the space for action with the space for perception and to design it in such a way that the operations required in the research process could be carried out directly on the media objects. For this purpose, the objects can be aggregated in the co-active working environment "studiolo" and the resulting arrangements can be enriched by individual information or references to other sources.

The coactive working environment is integrated into the infrastructure of the university and has interfaces to technical systems (authentication, communication, data backup, ...) as well as to other research-relevant systems (document and literature management).

Project duration

July 2010 - September 2013

An interdisciplinary project by

• Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Seng, Professorship for Material and Immaterial Cultural Heritage UNESCO
• Prof. Dr. Reinhard Keil, Professorship "Informatics and Society" at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute
• Dr. Gudrun Oevel, head of the Information and Media Technologies Center (IMT)

Project funding

The project "studiolo communis - building a co-active working environment for an extended research discourse in the history of art and architecture in support of the UNESCO Centre of Excellence 'Material and Immaterial Cultural Heritage'" was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the programme "Scientific Library Services and Information Systems (LIS)".