Durable Access to Book Historical data

An academic archive converted into Linked Open Data

The project “Durable Access to Bookhistorical data” converted an existing born-digital academic archive into structured data, organised and published according to the FAIR data management principles. 

Paul Hoftijzer, professor of History of the Book , developed an archive containing the results of extensive book historical research conducted over the course of several decades. This collection contains detailed descriptions of people, organisations and events relevant to the Leiden book industry in the early modern period. 

To ensure that these data remain accessible and to facilitate the reuse of the archive, the CDS transformed the archive into structured Linked Open Data. As a result, we can now perform quantitative research, which can help to clarify some of the broader historical patterns.  

We explain more about the technical part of the project in our blog Digital Scholarship@Leiden.