Open ehumanities digital ecosystems and the role of resource registries

The last few years have seen a massive push towards collaborative working methods in the humanities. Many large and small eHumanities Digital Ecosystems (DEs) have sprung into existence. The big challenge ahead is now to see how these subsystems can begin to merge into one larger eHumanities DE while still maintaining their individual characters and strengths. Starting out from a presentation of TextGrid as an exemplary DE in the eHumanities, the article studies two prerequisites for successful interoperability between DEs in the field, namely loosely-coupled services and the visibility of resources. The authors then propose a reference ontology for eHumanities resources, both services and documents alike.