Contextualised Prosopography as Access to Cultural Heritage. The case study of the Repertorium Academicum (REPAC)

Gubler, Kaspar (2023). Contextualised Prosopography as Access to Cultural Heritage. The case study of the Repertorium Academicum (REPAC). In: XII Atelier Héloïse - European Network on Digital Academic History: Digital approaches to university cultural heritage. Objects, collections, and places of knowledge production. Torino. 25.10.-27.10.2023.

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Archives and Libraries; Art Collections, Antiquities, and Buildings; Scientific Museum and
Botanic Gardens: The meaning of the objects that we find in the areas mentioned is usually
only revealed through the biographical contextualisation of their creators. Or to put it another
way: without precise knowledge of a person’s biography, we can only begin to understand
their works, collections and buildings. If, on the other hand, we have knowledge of a person’s
origins, education, professional activities, careers and, for example, breaks in their life, this
forms a solid framework for the analysis of the objects. In addition, deeper insights are
possible in such analyses if the life paths of individuals are examined collectively and
contextualised digitally. To do this, we can now draw on a variety of digital methods and
tools that make it possible to collect and analyse large amounts of biographical data. In
addition, we can use the tools to conduct advanced analyses and visualise data, for example
on maps or with network analysis. REPAC uses such new possibilities of data analysis by
digitally connecting and evaluating not only “person and knowledge” in the project, but also
“person and object”. Objects, like persons, are seen as carriers of knowledge. Objects can
be, for example, libraries that the scholars in the REPAC database own or have founded.
This information on libraries thus only corresponds to a rough categorisation of the data.
However, since we know the subject specialisation of the scholars, we can already make
initial content-related emphases in the classification and analysis of the libraries and assign
them, for example, to the legal, theological or medical field. Admittedly, such information on
objects in REPAC, since the project has to deal with the entire tradition, is documented in
varying density for the time being. However, trends can already be discerned, but the indepth
analysis of a library’s holdings is only just beginning. The technical prerequisites for
recording and evaluating such libraries in terms of structure and content are available at the
REPAC. How such an evaluation can be carried out practically and technically will be
explained in the presentation. This includes, for example, the import of large amounts of
data into the REPAC database (nodegoat) and the semi-automated categorisation and
labelling of the data (texts). Especially the content classification of texts is still a challenge
for research. For this purpose, tools and their practical application within REPAC will be
presented. For example methods for precise or also fuzzy named entity matching in digital
collections.

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