This panel aims to engage an international audience to discuss the past, present and future of a key resource in European book history and cultural history: Union Catalog of Books Printed in German-Speaking Countries in the 17th Century (VD17). It is assembled, curated and provided by nearly 50 libraries.
The VD17 provides an excellent example of a high-quality retrospective national bibliographical database of the sort that many researchers would like to use as research data. German researchers (Lauer et al. 2024) recently discussed the possibilities and needs regarding this valuable resource and their promise as (FAIR) research data.
Drawing on the DARIAH Bibliodata Working Group’s report (Umerle et al. 2022) addressing the joint agendas of stakeholders in the bibliographical data landscape in the humanities as a framework, the panel participants will discuss:
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The infrastructure needed for the creation, provision and curation of bibliographic metadata,
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Concrete examples of bibliodata analysis; its challenges and research outputs,
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Forms of collaboration between libraries, researchers and infrastructure providers regarding the exchange of data and knowledge.
Panel contributions will be 5-minute-pitches, so that the discussion becomes the most important part. Chairs and more members of the DARIAH WG bibliodata intend to join the discussion.
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The VD17 in the bibliographical data infrastructure landscape
Hartmut Beyer: VD17: The bibliography of 17th-century German books as part of the national research data infrastructure
While the VD17 was conceived as an instrument for humanities research, there is still a lot to be done for its usability. The further development aims at a common working environment for all three VDs, the integration of digitised material and full texts as well as the provision of reusable research data.
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Data analysis and beyond
Eetu Mäkelä, Thea Lindquist: Analyzing the publications of members of an early modern German academy (or, the sword cuts both ways) - opportunities and challenges presented by the VD17
The 17th-century German academy Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft was the first and largest of its kind and has attracted much scholarly interest. The VD17 offers an unparalleled opportunity to interrogate the publications with which its many members were associated.
Maximilian Görmar: The Republic of Letters beyond letters - Analyzing scholarly networks with VD17 data
With the use of digital methods, the view of the Republic of Letters as an epistolary network became more pronounced in recent years (Hotson/Wallnig 2019). The VD17 data offer opportunities to give new insights beyond that approach (Görmar 2024). The limitations of the VD17 as well as its opportunities for research shall be discussed in the contribution.
Saskia Limbach, Michaela Scheibe: Working with VD17 - restrictions and opportunities
There are advantages and disadvantages of some VD17 features, such as download options for larger corpora of data, and the focus on a single century. We will highlight how a focus on the early modern period and including additional data offers more possibilities for researchers in the future.
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Bibliodata as a collaborative effort?
Peter Kiraly: Library catalogue as research data - some problems and suggestions
There has been a growing demand for bibliographic data as research data, and in parallel, libraries are publishing their catalogues. However, the analysis of bibliographic data also requires the researcher to overcome problems (data not available, data structure specially coded, semantic units of library data not evident) which will be discussed and solutions offered.
Karin Schmidgall: A different look at catalog data - constant or variable?
Curating catalogue data is an ongoing task for libraries. There are several topics to be considered: What factors influence the data quality of catalogues? How can we build workflows that make it possible to feed catalogue data enriched in projects back into the library catalogues in order to sustainably increase data quality?
