4 | Literature data: Digital collection research
The digital holdings of the DLA are constantly and rapidly growing in all areas of the archive. Emails, electronic scripts, net literature, virtual adaptations of literature in games – these growth areas are processed with the help of digital collection research. In 2013 the project ›Net Literature‹ took on the expansion of the Online Literature Collection and constructed a foundational pool of sources that aimed at typological exemplarity in technical and aesthetic terms. Since then, digital collections research at the DLA has gone on to take place within the context of numerous cooperative projects: in the Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association, currently in its second funding phase (2019-2024) by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in the Science Data Center for Literature, funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts since 2019, and in the Text+ consortium, which is currently undergoing a funding application process within the programme of the National Research Data Infrastructure.
Literature circulation is turned to literature data cycles. On the one hand, it is important to ensure the data quality of the archival material through correspondingly thorough subject indexing, but on the other hand, it is also important to use the ‘datafication’ of literature for research. The DLA is therefore currently using methods of computational text analysis in the project ‘Transatlantic Book Movement’ (Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association; project staff: Stefanie Hundehege, Sarah Gaber, Ilka Schiele, Stefanie Höpfner). The aim is to undertake research into the provenance of books from Jewish ownership using digital means. The Science Data Center for Literature, on the other hand, focuses on the development of literature under the conditions of its digital reproducibility.
Another aspect of this research field is addressed in the case study ‘Archiving, indexing and researching born-digitals’ (Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association; project staff: Dîlan Canan Çakir), which focuses on paradigmatic digital estates and collection objects, including the digital literary medium of computer games and the digital author’s estate of the media scholar Friedrich Kittler. The conference ‘Games & Literature. On the Literaricity, Research, Collection, and Archiving of Computer Games’ (in conjunction with the European Federation of Games Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects, DIGAREC – Centre for Computer Games Research at the University of Potsdam, the Computer Games Museum Berlin and the Foundation for Digital Games Culture, 28-30 June 2023) will reflect on aspects of researching literature and computer games as well as collecting, archiving, and exhibiting them.
Furthermore, the department of Editions and Digital Humanities takes a practical approach in developing model examples that show how editions with structured texts can be created, in particular editions of personal data, such as letters, notes, and diaries.
In August 2023, the Research Association’s international summer school ‘Literature Data and Digital Literature’ will be held at the DLA in partnership with the research project ‘Textklang’. The summer school offers doctoral students from different disciplines a framework to explore the potential of digital approaches for their own research questions and to discuss them with international experts.
Contact
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
Department of Research
Schillerhöhe 8-10
71672 Marbach
Telephone +49 (0) 7144 / 848-175
Telefax +49 (0) 7144 / 848-191
Email forschung@dla-marbach.de