The aim of this project is to combine historical and current data on world literature in a way that allows large-scale developments to be described and observed automatically. The focus will be on entities such as authors, works and reception records as they are represented via corresponding norm data in digital encyclopaedias, knowledge databases, catalogues and in the Linked Open Data cloud (Wikipedia, Wikidata, DBpedia, Index Translationum, VIAF, various national libraries, etc.). Thanks to standardised semantic linking across all the mentioned digital repositories, mutual references within world literary contexts will be extracted and brought together in a language-independent way. This data will be analysed and evaluated using network analysis and made available in an interactive web app, an "Observatory of World Literature".
The data of this 'Observatory' will not only be made available to the Cluster of Excellence, but also to the entire research community. This will also fulfil a promise of Research Area 5 of the Cluster and provide a digital component for researching temporal communities. Corresponding research still showed in 2017 that even in digital, constantly evolving knowledge databases, it is primarily the traditional canon that is implicitly replicated. To what extent this has changed in the meantime is one of the questions that the project wants to answer. On this basis, it will also be possible to ask how the ongoing digitisation of world literature in all its aspects can also contribute to conveying a more diverse image of world literature.
Participants
Student Assistant