Building up a comprehensive dataset and collaborative network for digitizing and investigating the German letter in the age of Enlightenment
Cooperation-project of the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the University and State Library Darmstadt
The project, designed as a multi-level process, aims at establishing a co-operative network, creating a representative digital collection and a portal dedicated to the „German“ letter of the 18th century. The corpus will include letters of the 18th century that correspondents have written in the German-speaking area or sent there. It potentially includes all languages, although German, Latin and French will predominate. The Letters will be accessible via metadata, images, and full texts.
The goal of the first phase is to create a reliable and comprehensive corpus and data set. In this way, research will be provided with a reliable data basis through the integration of the scattered and so far not homogenised data. Using existing infrastructures such as the web service correspSearch, the aim is to create a comprehensive data collection and web portal on a collaborative correspondence index that supports the humanities using digital research methods.
The sub-project at the BBAW will enhance the functionalities of the web service correspSearch and supports the providing of metadata by projects and institutions.
The project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the programme „Cataloguing and Digitisation“.