A Text as a Set of Research Data. A Number of Aspects of Data Acquisition and Creation of Datasets in Neo-Latin Studies

Jacek Pokrzywnicki; Grzegorz Kotłowski; Elżbieta Starek

doi:https://doi.org/10.34808/x55q-sz53_dyr_roz5

A Text as a Set of Research Data. A Number of Aspects of Data Acquisition and Creation of Datasets in Neo-Latin Studies

Abstract

In this paper, the authors, who specialise in part in neo-Latin studies and the his-tory of early modern education, share their experiences of collecting sources for Open Research Data sets under the Bridge of Data project. On the basis of inscription texts from St. Mary’s Church in Gdańsk, they created 29 Open Research Data sets. In turn, the text of the lectures of the Gdańsk scholar Michael Christoph Hanow, Praecepta de arte disputandi (Recommendations on the art of discussion) written in 1754 and a series of 17th-century syllabuses from classes at the Gdańsk Academic Gymnasium became the core of two other Open Research Data collections. The article discusses: the authors’ approach towards the text (this approach primarily takes into account the traditional-ly understood philological research paradigm), and then the method of obtaining data from church (church parish) or state institutions (Polish Academy of Sciences Gdańsk Library). In the authors’ opinion, the issue to which they devote the most attention is also operations on the original text, i.e. transcribing the original record into a character that a modern recipient of Latin texts can expect – both an amateur of history or old literature, as well as a professional researcher of the history and writings of the early modern period.