Fellowship research projects
Leon Munz: Dissertations on information science – an analysis of a heterogeneous discipline
Information science is an especially heterogeneous and multidisciplinary academic discipline. Its thematic boundaries and focal points are constantly evolving as the result of public requirements and the influence of a technological imperative. These circumstances make it considerably more difficult to identify dissertations relevant to the discipline by means of automated processes based on existing classification systems such as Dewey decimal classification (DDC).
To solve this problem, an approach is to be developed that goes beyond the existing metadata to incorporate other attributes, such as institutes or contributors from the requisite full texts or online sources, for identification purposes. The aim of the project is the automated creation of a corpus of dissertations relevant to information science and a subsequent descriptive analysis of thematic trends in the discipline.
Suellen Dutra Pererira: Publish or Perish? Publications by women in the natural sciences in the catalogue of the German National Library, 1900 – 1970
Although the career path of women in the natural sciences is a popular topic in the sociology of science, there are few publications containing quantitative data on women’s publishing history. To close this gap, the “Publish or Perish?” project is evaluating the German National Library’s metadata from collections of works on mathematics, physics, chemistry, pharmacology and biology published between 1900 and 1970. With the aid of the quantitative analysis of bibliographic metadata, this project aims to answer questions such as: What proportion of natural sciences publications between 1900 and 1970 were written by women? Did successful female scientists publish as much on average as their male colleagues? Did women publish more during certain phases within this period? To evaluate potential network relationships between the female authors, the project will use GND data on the authors and their publications. Finally, by analysing bibliographic and GND data, the project will assess whether women’s success in the natural sciences depended on how often they published and on their early participation in institutionalised scientific networks.
Hendrikje Schauer: Literary public 1945 – 1962: DH-based analysis of DNB data
One of the recurring topoi of critical public discourse in the German post-war era is the claim made by literary authors that they were not (or were no longer) able to publish freely and were being censored and/or marginalised. These problematic claims, some of which have been adopted in research, are to be analysed precisely based on DNB data.
In the context of the intense engagement with the literature of the post-war era, this project focuses on public perspectives and public practices. The project combines DH-based approaches with classic methods of literary criticism in the form of textual interpretation informed by an awareness of intellectual history and the law.
Nicole Schwitter: Age-related, period-related and cohort-related effects on the moods and topics of literary works
Literature is highly prized in Germany, and various studies have highlighted the positive effects of reading and writing on people’s psyche. What people read and write about changes with time as well as within a lifetime: not only are there books written specifically for children and young people, but there are also differences in the genre preferences of adults of different generations. In general, literary history is shaped by eras during which specific topics and styles are particularly prevalent. This research project will closely examine the temporal element of thematic trends and moods in German literature. Temporal differences can reflect the effects of different eras or also age-specific changes or generational differences, as typically distinguished between in demographic research. The definition of eras in literary research is based on period effects. This research project will firstly analyse the temporal trends in literature based on the year of publication, and secondly engage with the authors’ potential age-related and generational effects, which are generally paid very scant attention in literary studies. The titles of every book published in Germany since 1913 will be evaluated to derive key concepts and moods. Using the Integrated Authority File (GND) and the free platform Wikidata, the book data will be expanded with data on the authors. In this context, the catalogue data will be treated as a panel data record. The aim of this approach is to separate the specific influences of age, cohort membership and effects of contemporary history in order to explain moods and thematic focuses in German literature and create a complete quantitative overview.
