This directory provides access to extensive research data collected within the project “Kaiserin und Reich. Zeremoniell, Medien und Herrschaft 1550 bis 1740/45” (funded by FWF, P 28241). In total, it comprises 467 contemporary prints, 145 press reports and 1863 visual sources. These data were collected by the editors in the course of their research on the role of the Empress in the Holy Roman Empire; initial evaluations can be found in the presentations and publications resulting from the project.
The publication of the data material is to be placed in the framework of the Open Data Initiative in the humanities. This initiative responds to the fact that questions of the dissemination of research results, the provenance of data and ultimately its reusability by third parties are becoming increasingly important. However, no more complex database with elaborate digital visualization and query mechanisms was planned within the framework of this project. In order to make the material available for subsequent use, however, the project collaborator Marion Romberg created a CMS with relatively simple open-source tools: The data, initially collected and processed offline in the literature administration program Zotero and a separate image database, was transferred to the free CMS WordPress for online presentation. Extended by free plugins like teachPress, the CMS was adapted for the publication of our research data. On the one hand, this brings with it technically fixed conditions in terms of presentation form, terminology and query options, to which both publishers and users* must currently limit themselves. At the moment, the WordPress community is a lively community of IT laymen and IT experts, and the developers of plug-ins, inspired by the needs of these users, are constantly developing them further.
On the other hand, the list does not claim to be exhaustive, but does claim to be representative. The source research was conducted within the most important local, published and online collections. Due to the facts that firstly, it was an accompanying product (and not the main goal) of the research project, secondly, that the period under investigation was relatively long, and thirdly, that in many cases new ground had to be broken with this data collection, completeness could not be the goal of the survey. Ultimately, the data presented here represents a genre-specific lower limit of the media presence of the respective empress.
Direct access to the source material is largely made possible by permalinks to already existing digitised material in library, museum and image databases. This applies entirely to the corpora “Contemporary Prints” and “Press Coverage”; also to about 60% of the corpus “Visual Representation”. The metadata provided are initial information on the work, which was usually obtained from the place of storage or the source itself and requires more extensive research than was possible during the project. Therefore, not only concerning the 40% that remain without a link to a picture, but also for more precise work with the other material a visit of the collection remains indispensable.
With this directory we would like to show on the one hand that even the simplest means can be used to prepare source material, document data sets and make them available transparently to a broader, not purely academic audience in the sense of a “citizen science” approach. On the other hand, we hope that the material will encourage users of the directory to pursue further studies and generally advance research on the empresses.
For additions and corrections please contact Dr. Marion Romberg (marion.romberg@oeaw.ac.at).