The “Deutsche Biographie” as Historical Biographical Information System

Historical Commission Munich, Bavarian State Library¹

(¹ The website www.Deutsche-Biographie.de is a service jointly managed by the Historical Commission and the Bavarian State Library. The Historical Commission is represented by Prof. Dr. Malte Rehbein (Univ. Passau), Dr. Bernhard Ebneth, Matthias Reinert, Maximilian Schrott; the Bavarian State Library, is represented by the dep. Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum. Speaker tba.)

Abstract

In order to provide sustainable biographical information in the internet (Ebneth 1997) it has to be source-based, reliable and citeable as like as ordinary scientific data and research ever has. To become relevant in the digital age it additionally requires to be used, reused and re-mixed providing adequate interfaces and licenses.

Therefore the the Deutsche Biographie adopted following principles to provide biographical resources online. First it is based on dictionaries of scientific biographies who are based on archival research, collected and edited in a peer-review-like process. These biographies serve as a foundation of knowledge which is (2) enlarged by bibliographic metadata drawn from selected freely available authority files (GND). In order to provide further relevant and more actual material to its entries (3) the Deutsche Biographie is linking to enduring resources with institutional background.

The website www.Deutsche-Biographie.de offers faceted search capabilities, visual representations of selected interpersonal relationships and individual maps for geographical scope of the person's life.

In the near future the search and presentation modes will be made even more transparent by open search and visualisation interfaces. Users of different levels of expertise shall be equipped with suitable tools to search and visualize as well as analyse, share and export their results. Citeability will be extended to the visualisations, individual research queries and results and, reuseability will be admitted by providing open licenses and new remixing interfaces. DH experts will access the RDF-store and query in Sparql, or use the Neo4J-Graph-Database and query in Cypher. In order to meet these different user requirements a research laboratory will be installed providing access to information, providing individual search, analyses, customizable visualisations for intermediate users, for experts even more possibilities.

In addition to individual access the Deutsche Biographie will start to cooperate with other institution aiming to establish an interoperable ontology of biographical information ultimately leading to easier integration of scattered biographical resources worldwide.

Publications

Bernhard Ebneth: Biographische Lexika im digitalen Zeitalter. In: Peter Csendes, Elisabeth Lebensaft (edd.): Traditionelle und zukunftsorientierte Ansätze biographischer Forschung und Lexikographie. Symposium des Instituts Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon und biographische Dokumentation, abgehalten in der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften am 14. und 15. November 1997 [= Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, Schriftenreihe 4], Wien 1998, S. 71-80.

Sektion (Chair: Hans-Christof Kraus): Vernetzung von historisch-biographischen Lexika und Fachportalen im Linked (Open) Data Framework - Praxis, Modelle und Optionen. DHd 2014, 25.-28. März 2014, Universität Passau.

Team Deutsche Biographie, Malte Rehbein: From Biographies to Data Curation – the Making of www.deutsche-biographie.de, in: BD2015 - Biographical Data in a Digital World 2015. Proceedings [...], April 9, 2015, Ed. by S. ter Braake et al., CEUR Workshop Proceedings Vol-1399, p. 13-19 <http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1399/paper3.pdf>.

Sophia Stotz, Valentina Stuß, Matthias Reinert, Maximilian Schrott: Interpersonal Relations in Biographical Dictionaries. A Case Study, in: BD2015 - Biographical Data in a Digital World 2015. Proceedings [...], April 9, 2015, Ed. by S. ter Braake et al., CEUR Workshop Proceedings Vol-1399, p. 74-80 <http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1399/paper12.pdf>.

Malte Rehbein: Geschichtsforschung im digitalen Raum. Über die Notwendigkeit der Digital Humanities als historische Grundwissenschaft. [15.4.2015], Preprint <http://www.phil.uni-passau.de/fileadmin/dokumente/lehrstuehle/rehbein/Dokumente/GeschichtsforschungImDigitalenRaum_preprint.pdf>.

Bernhard Ebneth, Matthias Reinert: Potentiale der Deutschen Biographie (www.deutsche-biographie.de) als historisch-biographisches Informationssystem, in: Europa baut auf Biographien, Tagung der ÖAW 6.-8. Oktober 2015, Wien (forthcoming).