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From manual work to artificial intelligence: developments in data literacy and research infrastructure using the example of the Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (2001-2024)

Digital History Conference Basel 2024

Presentation by Dr. Kaspar Gubler, Thursday Septemer 12, Session 2A, 11-12.30 pm

For the presentation: https://api.quarto.pub/repac/

The presentation at the conference outlines the evolution of digital skills and the research infrastructure in the digital history project Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG) from 2001 to 2024. The RAG, a prosopographical database on scholars of the Old German Empire (1250-1550), not only collects but also analyzes data, with a particular focus on visualizations such as maps, networks, and time series. A significant milestone occurred in 2017 with the migration of the database from MS Access/MS SQL Server to the nodegoat research environment. This transition was transformative for the project, as nodegoat greatly enhanced the efficiency of data management and analysis, enabling seamless data visualizations without the need for external software.

Sharing is caring: The RAG project went beyond using the new research environment nodegoat solely for its own purposes by sharing this valuable infrastructure with other projects within the faculty of humanities. With the support of strategic funding for digitalization, the multi-user platform nodegoat GO was established at the faculty. Today, this platform is widely used across nearly every discipline, by both students and researchers, and is increasingly being integrated into teaching as well. In 2024, around 250 users will be using nodegoat GO at the University of Bern for around 400 projects (from experiments to international research platforms).Since nodegoat GO is also used at other universities (academies), such as those in Basel, Amsterdam, Prague (Akademie věd České republiky), Ghent, Uppsala, to name just a few, it facilitates the exchange of open research data and data models between various projects and institutions. As the universities of Bern, Ghent and Uppsala are members of the ENLIGHT-group, they can use their nodegoat GO platforms as a common teaching tool, for example on linked open data or data models in the humanitites.

One such international platform is Atelier Heloise, in which the RAG project actively participates. Atelier Heloise is a global network of historical research projects focused on the digital exploration of university and knowledge history. These projects aim to pool and analyze their research data on a shared platform. The platform used for this purpose is nodegoat GO, chosen for its international reach and flexible data modeling capabilities.

Abstract of the conference paper:

“The Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG) is a prosopographical research project dedicated to studying medieval scholars and their impact on society in Europe from 1250 to 1550. The RAG database contains approximately 62,000 scholars and 400,000 biographical entries across 26,000 locations, derived from university registers, academic sources, and general biographical records. As a pioneering project in digital prosopography, the RAG is exemplary for the development of data competences in the last 20 years. The presentation will therefore highlight the methods, procedures, best practices and future approaches used to date. What is special about the RAG is that the project not only collects data, but also analyses it in a targeted manner with a focus on data visualisations (maps, networks, time series). RAG presents the results in its own series of publications (RAG Forschungen).”

See also with further information:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-skills-und-geteilte-forschungsinfrastrukturen-der-kaspar-gubler-ti2qe

Conference program:

digihistch24_brochure (PDF)