CERL Annual Seminar 2019
Collections and Networks Reconstructing the Historical Context of Texts, Publications and Objects with digital methods.
Organized by: CERL
Speaker(s): Alexander Jahnke,Andreas Walker,Anette Hagan,Bettina Gierke,Brian Geiger,Bryan Tarpley,Howard Hotson,Leo Lahti,Maria Georgopoulou,Marian Lefferts,Mathias Göbel,Mia Ridge,Mikko Tolonen,Robert Giel,Susanne Al-Eryani,Uwe Sikora
The theme of the 2019 annual CERL seminar was Collections and Networks: Reconstructing the Historical Context of Texts, Publications and Objects with Digital Methods. Our host was the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, and the event took place on Wednesday 9 October 2019.
Programme
– 8:30: Registration
– 9:15: Welcome, Kristian Jensen, CERL Chairman and Wolfram Horstmann, SUB Göttingen
– 9:45: Uwe Sikora, SUB Göttingen, ‘Interlinked! The TEI-XML Markup of Maya Hieroglyphic Texts Aided by a Digital Sign Catalogue’
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Abstract: On the IDIOM-Projekt
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Short Bio: Uwe Sikora studied Egyptology, Classical Archaeology and Akkadian Studies at the Georg August University in Göttingen (Master of Arts). Since 2014 he is working on various digital humanities research projects with focus on data modeling and data analysis. Research interests: Modeling and building information systems for projects in the humanities.
– 10:15: Susanne Al-Eryani, SUB Göttingen, ‘From the shelf into the world: Baron von Asch and the Göttingen University collections’ 
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Short Bio: Susanne Al-Eryani studied Social and Cultural Anthropology and Arabic and Enlgish language and literature in Göttingen. Her research focused on Islamic cultures, and she carried out her field research in Yemen on wedding ceremonies and marriage strategies. Since 2016 she has worked as subject librarian for Oriental studies (with focus on the Middle Eastern and North African regions) and Non-European Archaeology at the Göttingen University library.
From 2014-2018 she has been involved in the ASCH-Projekt that aimed at the development of a metadata model for the contextualisation of different types of digitised resources. Since 2019 she is team member of the Research and documentation centre for political and religious extremism in Lower Saxony.
– 11:15: Andreas Walker, ‘From domain experts to data scientists. Connecting the Heritage of the Printed Book Database and its users’
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Short bio: Andreas Walker is a metadata librarian in the Data Conversion Group of the State and University Library Göttingen working on linked open data and research infrastructures. His academic background is in library and information science, linguistics, literature, art and media studies.
– 11:45: Brian Geiger and Bryan Tarpley, UC Riverside, ‘Introducing the ESTC21: Converting the English Short Title Catalogue to Linked Data, original goals and lessons learned’
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Short bio Geiger: Brian Geiger is the Director at the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research, UC Riverside, and Co-Director with the British Library, English Short Title Catalogue. He received his Ph.D. in American History from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA and his MILS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the CBSR in 2007.
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Short bio Tarpley:Bryan Tarpley received a degree in computer science and has worked professionally as a web application developer for over a decade. He also recently completed a Ph.D. in English at Texas A&M University, where he works in the field of the Digital Humanities at the Center of Digital Humanities Research.
– 12:15: Mikko Tolonen, University of Helsinki, Finland and Leo Lahti, University of Turku, Finland, ‘Historical research on large data set with bibliographic records, such as the Fennica, ESTC and HPB database’.
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Short bio Tolonen: Mikko Tolonen is a tenured assistant professor in digital humanities at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki (https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/portal/fi/persons/mikko-tolonen(1f6c4343-d64e-48d5-b6af-39d5f3442502).html). His background is in intellectual history and he is the PI of Helsinki Computational History Group (https://comhis.github.io/) at Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-centre-for-digital-humanities).
In 2015-17 he worked also in the National Library of Finland and its project on digitized newspapers as professor of research on digital resources. He is the subject head of digital humanities and he has designed the DH teaching modules the faculty of arts. He is the chair of Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries (DHN: http://dig-hum-nord.eu/). His current main research focus is on an integrated study of public discourse and knowledge production that combines metadata from library catalogues as well as full-text libraries of books, newspapers and periodicals in early modern Europe. In 2016, his research group was awarded an Open Science and Research Award by Finnish Ministry of Education.
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Short bio Lahti: Leo Lahti is Adjunct Professor and research group leader in applied mathematics at University of Turku, Finland. He obtained PhD in statistical machine learning and bioinformatics from Aalto University (2010), and has subsequently carried out data-intensive research in areas ranging from machine learning and molecular life sciences to digital humanities.
He has also published popular open research software, is the founder and first coordinator of Open Knowledge Finland Open Science work group, and a scientific advisor in data science for various companies. His key research themes cover methods and applications of modern statistical data analysis in emerging application fields such as computational history. For more information, see: http://www.iki.fi/Leo.Lahti
– 13:45: Howard Hotson, ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters: current projects and future prospects’
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Short bio: Howard Hotson is Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History at the University of Oxford. Amongst his central interests is the possibility of rewriting aspects of transnational intellectual and cultural exchange ‘from the ground up’ by rooting institutions, traditions and ideas in ‘intellectual geographies’ created by different combinations of physical, economic, social, political, cultural and religious conditions.
These interests have drawn him into the social as well as technical problems of devising sustainable digital infrastructure to support large-scale, collaborative research during the next generation. Much of his thinking has been conditioned by directing since 2009 the Mellon-funded research project, Cultures of Knowledge in Oxford, responsible for creating the collaboratively populated union catalogue, Early Modern Letters Online. Between 2014 and 2018 he also chaired the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters, the findings of which have just been published by the Göttingen University Press. He is also currently the PI on the AHRC-funded project, Networking Archives.
– 14:15: Mathias Göbel, SUB Göttingen, ‘Semantic Networks in Structured Text Data’
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Short bio: Mathias Göbel received his Dipl.-Hdl. (Economics and German) from Göttingen University in 2012. Since 2012 Mathias is preparing the “Genetic-critical and annotated hybrid-edition of Theodor Fontane’s notebooks based on a virtual research environment” at Göttingen State and University Library.
He is responsible for the digital workflow, IT infrastructure and the presentation layer (website) of the Theodor Fontane Notizbücher project. Since 2015 Mathias is a member of the DraCor research group (formerly known as DLINA), reworking a larger text corpus of dramatic texts to fit the requirements of a network analysis based on co-occurence of characters on stage. And yes, Mathias is doing some Text Mining as well.
– 15:30: Mia Ridge, British Library, ‘Living with Machines: applying data science methods to historical library collections’
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Short bio: Dr Mia Ridge is the British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections. As part of the Library’s Digital Scholarship team, she helps enable innovative research based on the British Library’s digital collections, offering support, training and guidance on applying computational research methods to historical collections. Current projects involve crowdsourcing the transcription of historical playbills, and experimenting with machine learning-based methods with library collections. She is a Co-Investigator on the Living with Machines project.
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On the Living with Machines project
– 16:00: Robert Giel, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, ‘Working on a new German Manuscript Portal: Cultural objects and descriptions’
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Short bio: Dr. Robert Giel is head of the manuscript section within the manuscript department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. He studied history and library science at Bonn and Berlin and was a co-worker on the Manuscripta Mediaevalia-project from ist beginnings in 1996. For the last two years he has primarily been involved with the project for a new manuscript portal.
– 16:30: Bettina Gierke, Herzog August Bibliothek, ‘Specialised Information Service book studies, library and information science – A first offering’
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Short bio: Bettina Gierke is coordinating a DFG-funded project at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel to set up a Specialised Information Service for the topics Studies of the Book, Library and Information Science. Before she took over this exciting task she was head of library at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. Bettina started her career at the Royal Collection Trust in London where she was Collections Information Assistant before being made Curator for Books and Manuscripts. Bettina studied Art History and Classical Archaeology at Kiel University.
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Abstract: In October 2017 the Herzog August Bibliothek in cooperation with the University Library Leipzig started to fill the DFG-funded project Specialised Information Service Book Studies, Library and Information Science (FID BBI) with life. It is our aim to ensure that researchers in these and related fields are provided with the specialised literature they need for their work. The first step to achieve this was the development of a discovery tool which should make the search for literature easier but also more focused.
As a basis, we use the open source software VuFind adapted to guidelines set out by the Herzog August Bibliothek. The aim is to develop a perfectly fitting research tool for the FID BBI. It is an ongoing challenge to find a means of filtering different data resources to present clients with a catalogue both selective according to their requirements and comprehensive within those parameters. The subjects of our Specialised Information Service are very wide. The portal offers quick access to literature but can also be used for more complex research questions. Currently we are working on customer-driven acquisition and digitise on demand services, for open and out of print publications.
– 17:15: Guided Tour of the Library
Presentations
- Susanne Al-Eryani, SUB Göttingen: ‘From the shelf into the world: Baron von Asch and the Göttingen University collections’: presentation
- Andreas Walker: ‘From domain experts to data scientists. Connecting the Heritage of the Printed Book Database and its users’: presentation
- Brian Geiger and Bryan Tarpley, UC Riverside: ‘Introducing the ESTC21: Converting the English Short Title Catalogue to Linked Data, original goals and lessons learned’: presentation
- Mikko Tolonen, University of Helsinki, Finland and Leo Lahti, University of Turku, Finland: ‘Historical research on large data set with bibliographic records, such as the Fennica, ESTC and HPB database’: presentation
- Howard Hotson: ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters: current projects and future prospects’: presentation
- Mathias Göbel, SUB Göttingen: ‘Semantic Networks in Structured Text Data’: presentation
- Robert Giel, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: ‘Working on a new German Manuscript Portal: Cultural objects and descriptions’: presentation
- Bettina Gierke, Herzog August Bibliothek: ‘Specialised Information Service book studies, library and information science – A first offering’: presentation
