The Internet allows us to create large virtually integrated domains of language and cultural resources which become excellent sources for cross-cultural and cross-language research. Currently, it is typical that resources are distributed across a number of digital archives. This fragmentation is an obstacle for any usage that transcends the use of isolated corpora. As a way to overcome this fragmentation increasingly more (archive) federations are built in particular in the natural sciences and in the library world.
The DAM-LR (Distributed Access Management for Language Resources) project is one of the first to try establish a federation in the humanities. The DAM-LR federation is built on four technological pillars: (a) a joint metadata domain, (b) a joint domain of persistent resource identifiers (PIDs) and (c) a joint authentication and authorization (AA) domain. The joint metadata domain was created by harvesting IMDI metadata records and providing portals to the resulting joint catalogue. The scalable Handle System was chosen as a PID framework, necessary when working with virtual collections because the persistency of links has to be guaranteed. The AA domain was realized by using the Shibboleth system and allows users with only one single identity to access distributed resources with a single sign-on action.
The DAM-LR project finished its work successfully and will bring in its results in large infrastructure initiatives such as CLARIN. The paper will explain the technologies involved and related aspects as IPR and trust relationships.