The workshop of the ReIReS training programme, February 25-28, 2019, showed convincingly the necessity of internal and interdisciplinary knowledge transfer between scholars and others working in the field of historical religious studies and building a research infrastructure.

During the workshop, a lot of tools and methods were presented and practiced, varying from editing tools for critical editions, and working methods for trainings to practical do’s and dont’s for the ReIReS Training Programme. While practicing using these tools together and collecting them for the Training Toolbox Report it became clear, for instance, that librarians need scholars to do their work properly, and that scholars, very often educated in doing research and giving presentations, need didactic skills in order to prepare and provide training. Also good communication between publishers and editors are needed, in order to be prepared for future challenges in the digital age and to make use of the specific competences and added value of publishers.

The workshop was organized by the Theological University of Apeldoorn in the framework of Workpackage 2, and hosted by Fscire in Bologna. Tools that were utilized were, among others, LaTeX, a tool for critical editions, a Python script extracting bookmarks and annotations from pdf files and processing them, and Transkribus, a helpful tool for transcribing handwritten texts.

Additionally, some methods were practiced like the so called “Detective Story” on finding a specific document, the didactic method ‘think-pair-share’ and wall discussion.

The outcome of the workshop, a Training Toolbox Report, will be offered in May 2019 to the partners of the ReIReS consortium.