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| collaboration:projects:republic_of_letters [2016/07/06 09:59] – lefferts | collaboration:projects:republic_of_letters [2016/07/06 10:04] – lefferts |
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| The conference Rethinking the Republic of Letters took place in Warsaw, 12th-14th June 2016. It was organized by the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the University of Warsaw and devoted to the topic: digital functionality from the perspective of current scholarly activities. COST Action IS 1310 works towards assembling the blueprint of the trans-national digital infrastructure to support collaborative work on early modern intellectual history. The participants have been working for three years to create the methods of building and visualizing the model of the relations between intellectuals in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. More information about this program can be found [[http://www.republicofletters.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Briefing-document-for-COST-Action-IS1310-June-20152.pdf|here]]. The full program of this conference can be found [[http://www.republicofletters.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Conference-programme-Warsaw-2016.pdf|here]]. | The conference Rethinking the Republic of Letters took place in Warsaw, 12th-14th June 2016. It was organized by the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the University of Warsaw and devoted to the topic: digital functionality from the perspective of current scholarly activities. COST Action IS 1310 works towards assembling the blueprint of the trans-national digital infrastructure to support collaborative work on early modern intellectual history. The participants have been working for three years to create the methods of building and visualizing the model of the relations between intellectuals in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. More information about this program can be found [[http://www.republicofletters.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Briefing-document-for-COST-Action-IS1310-June-20152.pdf|here]]. The full program of this conference can be found [[http://www.republicofletters.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Conference-programme-Warsaw-2016.pdf|here]]. |
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| The spatial and temporal, personal and material features of letters combine to form the agenda of six Working Groups: | The spatial and temporal, personal and material features of letters combine to form the agenda of six Working Groups:\\ |
| WG1 - Space and time | WG1 - Space and time\\ |
| WG2 - People and networks | WG2 - People and networks \\ |
| WG3 - Texts and topics | WG3 - Texts and topics\\ |
| WG4 - Documents and collections | WG4 - Documents and collections\\ |
| WG5 - Data exchange and strategic planning | WG5 - Data exchange and strategic planning\\ |
| WG6 - Visualisation and communication. | WG6 - Visualisation and communication.\\ |
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| Each of the six Working Groups had its own time to present the activities of its members. First was Working Group 5 – Data Exchange and Strategic Planning. Its members: Howard Hotson and Arno Bosse talked about the new project EULO, its technical guidelines and the possibility to receive financing for this project from Horizon 2020. The aim of this project is to bring together, and integrate on European scale, the information about postal communication: persons, places, dates etc. EULO will consist in assembling data from different projects and the preparation of standards. As a result, common access to these data will be enabled. The new database will be characterised by different modes of sharing data, different kinds of data shared, decentralized data creation and storage, as well as centralized interrogation and curation. | Each of the six Working Groups had its own time to present the activities of its members. First was Working Group 5 – Data Exchange and Strategic Planning. Its members: Howard Hotson and Arno Bosse talked about the new project EULO, its technical guidelines and the possibility to receive financing for this project from Horizon 2020. The aim of this project is to bring together, and integrate on European scale, the information about postal communication: persons, places, dates etc. EULO will consist in assembling data from different projects and the preparation of standards. As a result, common access to these data will be enabled. The new database will be characterised by different modes of sharing data, different kinds of data shared, decentralized data creation and storage, as well as centralized interrogation and curation. |
| The last session of the first conference day was dedicated to the presentation of various projects conducted by members of the fourth COST Action’s group. Elizabethanne Boran in her paper talked about bibliographical sources for researching letters of Irish intellectuals, and proposed a classification according to senders and topics. Bibliographic sources and projects containing editions of intellectuals’ letters were the subject of the following speakers: Kristi Viiding talked about an Estonian printed edition of correspondence collections, Alexandra Sfoini enlarged on genres of the modern Greek letter-writing, and Pippin Aspaas discussed early modern letters from Scandinavia. Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzing talked about guises of the epistolary form. She the following division: scholarship, religion, institutional correspondence, professions, personal letters, literary, and miscellaneous letters. She characterised each of the discerned types. | The last session of the first conference day was dedicated to the presentation of various projects conducted by members of the fourth COST Action’s group. Elizabethanne Boran in her paper talked about bibliographical sources for researching letters of Irish intellectuals, and proposed a classification according to senders and topics. Bibliographic sources and projects containing editions of intellectuals’ letters were the subject of the following speakers: Kristi Viiding talked about an Estonian printed edition of correspondence collections, Alexandra Sfoini enlarged on genres of the modern Greek letter-writing, and Pippin Aspaas discussed early modern letters from Scandinavia. Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzing talked about guises of the epistolary form. She the following division: scholarship, religion, institutional correspondence, professions, personal letters, literary, and miscellaneous letters. She characterised each of the discerned types. |
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| During the second day, the first session was organized by Working Group 1, and devoted to the relations between the Huguenot intellectuals, who escaped from the threat of terror in their own lands. Analyses of the letters written by the Huguenots allow for sketching a geographical, social, scientific, and intellectual map of their connections. These analyses showed the features and nature of the community in question. It was unlimited in the geographic, religious and political sense, but egalitarian, scientific, and unbiased. Its members travelled around Europe, were interested in classical culture, and studied at European universities. The researchers tried to answer the following questions: who wrote the letters, when were they written, where were they written from, and what were they about. The authors of the presented papers sought to determine the relations between the place and the subjects of the letters, between their numbers and the times of writing. The language of the letters was analysed too: what words were used to describe other people, places, books, or problems. The researchers created a model of the Huguenot world. It was concentrated in Latin-speaking Europe, stretched beyond time, religion, and showed little interest towards politics. Such a world gave them a sense of stability, and created the institutional framework of their community. It was a perfect republic of minds. | During the second day, the first session was organized by Working Group 1, and devoted to the relations between the Huguenot intellectuals, who escaped from the threat of terror in their own lands. Analyses of the letters written by the Huguenots allow for sketching a geographical, social, scientific, and intellectual map of their connections. These analyses showed the features and nature of the community in question. It was unlimited in the geographic, religious and political sense, but egalitarian, scientific, and unbiased. Its members traveled around Europe, were interested in classical culture, and studied at European universities. The researchers tried to answer the following questions: who wrote the letters, when were they written, where were they written from, and what were they about. The authors of the presented papers sought to determine the relations between the place and the subjects of the letters, between their numbers and the times of writing. The language of the letters was analysed too: what words were used to describe other people, places, books, or problems. The researchers created a model of the Huguenot world. It was concentrated in Latin-speaking Europe, stretched beyond time, religion, and showed little interest towards politics. Such a world gave them a sense of stability, and created the institutional framework of their community. It was a perfect republic of minds. |
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| The next part of the conference presented the works of members of Working Group 2, and discussed the prosopografical database EMLO. Because no man lived in isolation, every act of human life occurred in time, space, and among other people. So, everybody always is an acting person in time, amongst events, and plays a particular role. Every person plays different roles both in the events and institutions, which he is connected with: a unary role, a binary role, or a role an event. The data shows the relations between all these elements. The researcher aimed to build a model on the basis of the chosen group of people. He determined the relations connecting them, which were not clearly seen at the start of the work. He seeks to show a man’s life as a sequence of the interlinked events from the date of his birth to the date of his death. | The next part of the conference presented the works of members of Working Group 2, and discussed the prosopografical database [[http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/|EMLO]]. Because no man lived in isolation, every act of human life occurred in time, space, and among other people. So, everybody always is an acting person in time, amongst events, and plays a particular role. Every person plays different roles both in the events and institutions, which he is connected with: a unary role, a binary role, or a role an event. The data shows the relations between all these elements. The researcher aimed to build a model on the basis of the chosen group of people. He determined the relations connecting them, which were not clearly seen at the start of the work. He seeks to show a man’s life as a sequence of the interlinked events from the date of his birth to the date of his death. |
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| Eero Hyvönen from Finland presented the database LOD (Linked Open Data – War Sampo) as a prosopographical research tool. The LOD includes the data related to the events of the Second World War that took place on the Finnish territory of Karelia. The database includes maps, names of soldiers (biographies, photographs, bibliographies), military detachments (maps of battles; where the information about archival materials can be found), names of fallen soldiers with obituaries, authentic photographs showing people and places. The database helps to understand Finnish history and propagates the idea of peace. It is part of the great Database Sampo that encompasses the topics of the Culture, Book, and Travel. | Eero Hyvönen from Finland presented the database LOD ([[http://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/sotasampo/en/|Linked Open Data – War Sampo]]) as a prosopographical research tool. The LOD includes the data related to the events of the Second World War that took place on the Finnish territory of Karelia. The database includes maps, names of soldiers (biographies, photographs, bibliographies), military detachments (maps of battles; where the information about archival materials can be found), names of fallen soldiers with obituaries, authentic photographs showing people and places. The database helps to understand Finnish history and propagates the idea of peace. It is part of the great Database Sampo that encompasses the topics of the Culture, Book, and Travel. |
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| The next prosopographical database was the EMLO database that embraced data related to the academic world of the Middle Ages. It is an ideal model, thanks to the great amount of historical sources and because the categories used to describe this realm are uniform, simple, clear and objective. The scholars travelled to the same universities to study, and their travels made the natural network of the travels destinations. They spoke the same language (Latin), they professed similar ideas, and the universities had the same structure and conferred the same degrees. So the language needed to build the database was very simple to create. | The next prosopographical database was the EMLO database that embraced data related to the academic world of the Middle Ages. It is an ideal model, thanks to the great amount of historical sources and because the categories used to describe this realm are uniform, simple, clear and objective. The scholars travelled to the same universities to study, and their travels made the natural network of the travels destinations. They spoke the same language (Latin), they professed similar ideas, and the universities had the same structure and conferred the same degrees. So the language needed to build the database was very simple to create. |
